Pass the SoLT

A few weeks ago I wrote about the importance of leadership. On a similar theme this week I watched a video presented by Professor Geoff Scott prepared for the Massey University senior leadership team in which he talked about his research on leadership in higher education.

A key finding from the study of senior leaders in the Australian university sector is the importance of 'listening, linking and leading' - in this order. Although I read the full research report, Learning Leaders in Times of Change, a year or so ago, Geoff's presentation got me thinking about the leadership challenge in the context of professional development in the area of online, blended and distance education.

In my own work, three key words standout and inform my thinking about leadership in this area: (i) service, (ii) communication and (iii) impact. Put simply, I often remind myself of the importance of serving or leading with impact in a manner that keeps everyone aware and informed of the end goals that we are trying to achieve. The latter point underscores the importance of communication that builds a sense of purpose (vision) and collective ownership which in my experience is crucial to any successful and sustainable initiative.

You could say these three key words form my mantra for leadership, with a strong emphasis on impact. After all, there is no sensible reason to dedicate hours to an initiative or innovation which is unlikely to have significant impact... what's the point!

It also follows that people are central to effective leadership as it is almost impossible to make an impact in a large project or organization by working on your own. Thus, teamwork is vital along with leadership through influence and networking rather than through direct management.

But putting all the leadership ingredients together to achieve tangible outcomes is no easy matter, as evidenced by the challenges in the area of academic development. The history of academic and professional development in higher education has been problematic for many years. On a regular basis senior managers question the value of academic development, and academic developers--people employed to support academics to enhance the quality of teaching and learning--usually struggle to report clear outcomes as a result of their time and effort.

However, in the current higher education environment it is essential that central service units such as centres for academic development are able to demonstrate their return on investment, including both tangible and non-tangible benefits. The days of assuming benefits automatically follow from the work of a team of academic developers are long gone. And rightly so! The old excuse or argument that evidence of impact is near impossible to demonstrate simply does not hold up in the age of performance management.

Having said that, identifying the most appropriate performance measures of impact is crucial as I am mindful of Einstein's warning that "Not everything that can be counted counts, not everything that counts can be counted".

To address this leadership challenge the Council of Australian Directors of Academic Development (CADAD) recently supported a project to develop a set of benchmarks for academic development centres. CADAD report that they undertook this project for two interconnected reasons.

First, academic development (or the expectations of what it should involve) is changing as universities respond to more competitive higher education environments. Second, institutional performance in learning and teaching is now more important to university reputations and is subject to performance funding. Thus, the performance of academic development units has become increasingly under the spotlight.

The project identified eight key domains of practice for academic development units that could be used to benchmark performance. Each domain is divided into several sub-domains.

Domain 1: Strategy Policy and Governance

1.1 Strategic advice
1.2 Strategic planning
1.3 Governance
1.4 Policy Development and implementation
1.5 Strategic initiatives

Domain 2: Quality of Learning and Teaching

2.1 Standards
2.2 Evaluation and improvement
2.2.1 Student feedback
2.2.2 Peer review
2.2.3 Curriculum review

Domain 3: Scholarship of Learning and Teaching

3.1 Grants and Awards
3.2 Significant projects and research into learning and teaching
3.3 Research into Academic Development

Domain 4: Professional Development

4.1 Planning
4.2 Management
4.3 Delivery

Domain 5: Credit-bearing Programs in Higher Education

5.1 Program and Course Design
5.2 Management
5.3 Delivery

Domain 6: Curriculum Development

6.1 Curriculum planning and Design
6.2 Education resource Development

Domain 7: Engagement

7.1 internal engagement
7.2 external engagement

Domain 8: Effectiveness

8.1 Mission and strategy Alignment
8.2 Leadership and management
8.3 Impact
8.4 Quality Assurance and improvement

Each of these domains and sub-domains is assessed on a five point scale as described below:

1. Beginning / Developing
3. Functional / Proficient
5. Accomplished / Exemplary

The benchmarks have been developed to support both self-assessment and benchmarking with partners. They come with a set of templates to support the benchmarking exercise.

Although the benchmarks are light in terms of identifying the explicit theories which inform practice, professional development, decision-making and performance reporting, they provide a useful framework for developing a whole of institution approach to listening, linking and leading in this area. With a stronger theoretical or philosophical statement supporting the nature of academic development, they should help leaders and micro leaders within these centres to understand the strategic potential of professional development, and to evaluate and enhance academic development unit performance regardless of the design and delivery model.

That said, the relationship between the benchmarks and previous benchmarks developed for professional development in online, blended and distance education (e.g., ACODE Benchmarks) is unclear and there is potential to merge or weave some of these elements into the proposed overarching set of benchmarks for academic development centres. But this is a job for another day.

The last few weeks have been particularly busy and I haven't found much time to reflect on some of my professional reading. However, I just had to make a brief comment on a paper I read last week in the International Journal for Academic Development. For various reasons the article by Holt, Palmer and Challis is particularly timely and well worth a quick read for those interested in the area of academic development and professional learning more generally. The basic thesis is that traditional academic development has failed to deliver what staff need and senior managers expect in today's modern university. Moreover, in the age of performativity traditional teaching and learning centres have struggled to demonstrate the added value they offer to the university and their role and expectation is undergoing a profound change across the sector.

The comparative table presented of the differences between traditional and new centre paradigms makes powerful reading and provides an interesting bluerpint for assessing the performance of teaching and learning centres. For example, traditionally these central units have been disconnected from university senior executive whereas under the new and emerging paradigm (not a term I would personally use) there is a strong connection and tight relationship to strategic drivers. Like all binary models the distinction is somewhat simplistic but it serves to make a strong philosophical point about new ways of working in partnership with the academy rather than continuing to offer workshops and professional development seminars that very few staff attend.

In my own work I'm continually stressing the importance of focusing on IMPACT and OUTCOMES of academic development rather using the number of activities and consultations as a proxy for quality and influence. In this regard, one of my favourite quotes comes from Albert Einstein:

"Not everything that can be counted counts, not everything that counts can be counted".

Having said that, when you adopt a collaborative partnership approach focusing on strategic professional development projects the outcomes are far more tangible as clear milestones and deliverables are identified at the outset. Nevertheless, the article makes the point that the role of these centres needs to be multi-faceted and they need to be actively contributing in a number of areas of leverage for positive organisational change. The authors go on to outline 10 leverage points and in so doing argue for a deeper and more profound reconceptualisation of the purpose and modus operandi of the work of teaching and learning centres.

Overall the paper draws attention to changing strategic leadership perspectives through juxtaposing a more traditional centre paradigm with an emerging paradigm more suited to contemporary higher education environments. It remains to be seen how successful Massey University will be in building a new Teaching and Learning Centre based on many of the characteristics described in this article.

Reference

Holt, D., Palmer, S., & Challis, D. (2011). Changing perspectives: teaching and learning centres’ strategic contributions to academic development in Australian higher education. International Journal for Academic Development, 16, (1), 5–17.

[An electronic copy of this article can be downloaded by Massey staff and students through the University Library]

With all the recent talk about ebooks, it's time to return to the central theme of this blog--that is, the scholarship of learning and teaching (SoLT). First, I need to apologise for reversing the conventional order of words to make a better acronym for the purpose of this blog.

A recent article by Angela Brew (2010) in the International Journal for Academic Development (15:2) provides a valuable contrast to different approaches to supporting the work and growth of academic staff. In this recent think piece, Brew talks about the increasing importance of transforming academic practice through scholarship. The paper's Abstract reads:

In the context of the fast changing university, how are academics to grow the capacity to cope with continual change and what can academic/faculty developers do to assist them? The paper first establishes the context of higher education as a challenging environment. It then reviews ideas about scholarship and explores the application of these ideas to university study of students and academics. It examines the role of the scholarship of teaching and learning in developing the capacity for critical reflection and then applies these ideas to academic practice more generally. Finally, the implications for academic development are addressed.

At the core of the paper is an assumption that scholarship is not an activity but rather needs to be understood as a quality of the way academic work is or should be done. Brew goes on to argue that this notion of scholarship is a key to redefining the nature of academic practice and the type of academic and professional development required in today's "super complex" university. Drawing on Trigwell, Martin, Benjamin, and Prosser (2000), the following four dimensions of the scholarship of teaching are described:

• being informed about teaching and learning;
• critically reflecting on teaching;
• communicating knowledge about teaching; and
• how teaching is conceptualised.

The remainder of the paper expands on the importance of critical reflection as this is claimed to underpin all four dimensions. There is certainly a wealth of literature supporting this assertion and the paper takes the position that academic development needs to support emancipatory reflection which goes beyond the existing situation. The concept of emancipation or transformation is then discussed in the context of academic and professional development in which problematic events and experiences form the basis of rich critical reflection for action. Brew (2010) argues:

A key role for academic developers is that they should encourage academics to question those taken for granted assumptions of the university and of their disciplinary community. This requires challenge (p. 113).

Accordingly, academic developers and teaching consultants need to set up the conditions where inquiries into problematic aspects of academic practice become part of the everyday life. A good example of this is the intensification of academic workload and how the use of new digital technology for teaching, learning and administration is both part of the problem and part of the solution.

The implication is that we need to confront some of the realities, myths and half-truths of academic work if we are to truly help transform practice. Little will be gained by ignoring the genuine concerns of academic staff. Following on the previous example, this might involve offering a symposium on managing academic workload in the digital university or producing case studies of how selected staff address this problem in their learning design. That said, Brew does point out that:

Academic developers are unlikely to be able to do this if they themselves are not engaged in the scholarship of their own practice (Brew, 2010, p.113).

Put another way, this type of scholarship requires a mindset that seeks out the problematic and looks for light through the cracks. However, this is not an individual activity as it requires a combination of cooperative inquiry, quality circles, action learning sets and shared leadership programmes.

Overall the major contribution of this paper is the ethos that it promotes around effective academic and professional development for transformative change. It highlights the value of an integrated model of academic support and the limitations of traditional approaches to professional development which fail to engage staff in critical reflection leading to better outcomes for learners. Although there are no simple solutions, the paper advocates the value of critical conversations and negotiations around problematic issues within a spirit of inquiry.

Click to see the Massey University holding of this publication.

I recently found time to read a paper on the importance of being human in a distance education context in the International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. The article has sat in my 'to read' pile for way too long but I'm pleased to have made the effort before filing it away on my computer.

At the heart of the paper is the concept of 'personhood' or teacher presence. The research in question explores whether distance teachers should merely be a resource to support students or rather they need to reveal more about themselves as people during the educative process. In thinking about this question I asked myself whether the Learning Management System (LMS) is merely a digital repository for the delivery of course content or should it be an active online learning environment where the teacher is seen as a real person? Of course, the two metaphors of learning (acquisition and participation) are not mutually exclusive but sadly the former is often associated with the 'pump, pump, dump' model of delivery.

Based on the findings, and supported by the literature, the paper concludes that teachers 'need to be encouraged to purposefully channel personal qualities such as passion, understanding, and patience, and they should use self-disclosure, relationship building, and humor through their learning materials and interpersonal relationships with students. In this way they keep distance teaching human' (Reupet, et. al., 2009, p. 54).

If distance students want a more human or personalized approach from teachers, which we know also positively influences student retention, how does this impact the type of course design and related professional development we need to offer academic staff? In the context of blended and distance education it certainly adds another nail to the coffin of the days of offering decontextualized skills training where the focus is on learning to use specific technologies rather than the educational outcomes we seek.

We know that the former type of professional learning fails to not only change and/or challenge pedagogy but rarely leads to better outcomes for learners. This point leads to thinking about how professional development for academic staff could be designed to help teachers become more human and personable. Interestingly, the students involved in the study had several suggestions, including:

• voice over PowerPoint slideshows
• online discussion groups
• timely feedback
• weekly phone chat including chat room tutorials and lectures
• pod casting of the material
• on campus courses
• video nuggets
• being allocated a contact person for problems, personal and teaching
• smaller tutorials in regional centres
• personal emails

Many of the above suggestions involve an element of technology-enhanced learning, and it would be relatively easy for a team of skilled online teaching consultants to package an attractive and integrated professional learning programme around the theme of teacher presence. Instead of offering a mundane session for staff on LMS file management or running a workshop on how to create voice over Powerpoint slides (e.g., Adobe Presenter), there is potential to reframe academic development around a totally different genre.

The literature suggests that academic staff are far more likely to positively respond to, and be engaged by, professional learning which explores the following types of questions:

• What does it mean to teach online?
• How can I become a better online teacher?
• What do my students expect of me as an online teacher?
• How do I get my students online and keep them online?
• How can I take advantage of teaching online without increasing my workload?

The above questions are merely indicative of the possibilities. Importantly, they illustrate the need to situate academic and professional development in a meaningful educational context. A more contemporary approach to professional learning is distinguished by the way it:

• Treats teachers as learners
• Recognises that teacher learning best occurs in context
• Is underpinned by a strong pedagogical foundation
• Helps teachers to design and facilitate environments for learning
• Is learner and impact driven rather than technology-led
• Involves a variety of professional learning opportunities
• Is collaborative and inclusive of all staff including those who support teaching
• Reflects the complexity of teaching and discipline differences
• Builds communities of interest and a culture of continuous enhancement
• Provides opportunities to identify, acknowledge and celebrate success

Finally, instead of professional development being something that is done to academic staff, the above principles underscore the importance of genuine partnerships in which ideas, activities and professional learning opportunities are negotiated with the participants. In many respects this approach challenges the place of the traditional PD workshop and encourages more of a 'reflection in action' model of academic development leading to real changes to teaching practice. Borrowing a quote from David Perkins the model moves the emphasis of professional learning away from training memories to educating minds which can make a difference to learner outcomes.