Background

The Why; a bit of background

For many faculty, the recognition of “strategies for … negotiating meaning that individuals develop through everyday activity can feel absent” (Hengstler & O’Neill, 2002, p. 72). One study expressed teacher concerns about foregrounding teaching techniques, by recognizing mainly workshops and conferences as ‘developmental’, which teachers felt “overshadowed more intangible complex processes of learning in-practice” (Fenwick, 2009, p. 4). Since deep learning can extend across multiple contexts, experiences and interactions, and faculty improve practice in a multitude of ways, it is vital to design and implement educational development activities to include them (Gibson, 2013).

Badging as recognition

Micro-credentialing (commonly associated with badging) promises to measure and recognize skills that are valuable in many contexts at a fine level (Bowen & Thomas, 2014; Paul & Chandler, 2015; Gibson, 2013).

The collection of open learning created in the first round of Virtual Learning Stratagy (VLS) funding is extensive so a faculty development passport can be utilized to help faculty map relevant development to these new offerings. Projects like the Designing Quality Tech-Enabled Learning Experiences open course can then be placed in context to existing training/development offered in centers of teaching and learning, that should preceed participation in this course, and a development pathway could then indicate other developments, if done after, that would help faculty to develop mastery in tech-enabled learning design competencies. This type of system, once implemented and tested, can help the ongoing refinement of quality assurance mechanisms for validating development practices within centers of teaching and learning.

Anticipated Contributions

to Faculty Development

When designing a badging system, a crucial first step is to map how centers currently offer faculty opportunities for experimentation and growth. This requires a scan of training calendars located on department websites to capture what a center say it does/offers. Less formal consultation services should then be captured. Other ways that faculty development occurs with and without the center’s involvement should then be identified and added to the map.

Because stronger connections between digital badges and other relevant innovations such as competency-based education, e-portfolios, credit for prior learning, and stackable credentials seem like promising directions for increasing the perceived value of badges (Educause, 2015, p. 1), it is crucial that such a development invite faculty to co-design/refine the faculty development passport. This involvement will help to determine the degree faculty value (and so are motivated to develop in) these areas.

The mapping process helps to cluster faculty supports into recognizable skillsets, and by creating levels of badges, faculty can also be rewarded for shorter/smaller investments (e.g. moderate a session at an institutional event, post or reply to a Community of Practice blog reflective question, creative commons license a developed learning resource, etc.). Time invested in the design process, including faculty in the process, develops a final passport that makes explicit how practice and knowledge emerge through relations amongst formal development events as well as (faculty) investment in connected conversations (Davis & Sumara, 2006).

The expectation from the integration of a badging system to the educational development practice [of the centers of teaching and learning involved in this project] is community growth, and deeper learning, in increasingly flexible ways, which meet faculty where they are at, and motivate their continued growth and development. Because “badges can be a pointer or reference to a process by which a learner engages in and receives validation from a community that practices authentic assessment” (Gibson, 2013, p. 461), educational development activity, now recognized at multiple levels, should encourage a wider variety of practice improvements and so strengthen our relationships with faculty over time.

to Institutional Change

The key to the sustainability of instructional interventions, according to the literature on personal change, is to start with a small change, within the program of instruction, and through the faculty member (Austin, Connolly & Colbeck, 2008). This idea is supported by the organizational change literature of Hegel III, Brown, and Davison (2010) when they speak of creating leverage. Rather than seeking massive change at the outset, the focus should be “on defining pragmatic paths to institutional change in ways that deliver near-term value to strengthen champions of change and neutralize resistance of entrenched interests” (Hegel III, Brown & Davison, 2010, Intro, Sec 6, pp. 6). There is a growing belief in the academic community that badges are one approach to inciting faculty to be this leverage (Hegel et el, 2010; Gibson, 2013).

One study found that instructors were more interested in sharing their digital badges with their school administrators than through their social networks (Grunwald and Associates, 2015). Unfortunately, strong course evaluation ratings, grant approvals, and publications are still the prominent method of determining tenure with very few institutions recognizing faculty engagement in new forms of pedagogy (Warger & Dobbin, 2009; Bates & Sangra, 2011). It is challenging to incite change when faculty are disinclined to experiment while job security is perceived to be at stake. This text/report includes a set of recommendations for other centers/alliances, to maximizes these characteristics. Senior university leaders administering faculty development and micro-credential certifications have been be key contributors to this project to assure its’ pathways are validated/integrated within each institution’s system of reward and promotion.

Co-design for sustainability

Many models of self-directed learning do not separate knowing from that which is known; “rather, there is an assumption that practice, meaning, and identity constitute and are constituted within context” (Garrison, 1997; Barab & Kirschner, 2001, p. 6). This perspective supports a situated approach to learning in development. This perspective has be used to help faculty co-designers reconsider how they experience developmental activities in varied (virtual and place-based) locations that focus on “the way work gets done and on how knowledge is generated and applied in the process” (Sole & Edmondson, 2002, p. 4).

Throughout 2022, thanks to faculty and institutional leadership working in concert on a set of developmental characteristics that are intriguing to acquired, and areas for further development. The end result for each center is a rewards system that aims to remain future-focused and highly sustainable.

References