Demonstrating the impact of educational development: The case of a course design collaborative

Higher education teachers’ professional learning: Process and outcome

“…The other manifestation is more organic in nature; an unplanned outcome of engaging in a professional learning activity that nurtures the desire to share gained experiences with other colleagues. We encounter this in the Taylor and Znajda (2015) paper.…”

“…This kind of support is evident in all the papers in this volume. We see for example institutional support of centres for teaching and learning (Hum et al, 2015;Taylor & Znajda, 2015), targeted funds to advance the scholarship of teaching (Hum et al, 2015), academic programs for faculty to gear teaching practice towards a particular educational approach embraced by the university administration and convening of task forces to do the ground work for implementing a particular policy or support a curriculum reform (Bickerstaff & Cormier, 2015;Hoekstra & Crocker, 2015;Nevgi & Lö fströ m, 2015), and a national project to identify the impact and effectiveness of teacher development programs and activities of teaching and learning development centres in Australian universities (Chalmers et al, 2015). Institutional support is heartening as it provides concrete evidence of a desire for organizational learning and helps us reconceptualize professional learning as a goal for the community at large rather than something intended for a limited number of individuals within the community (Laurillard, 1993).…”

“…For instance, Taylor and Znajda (2015) engage their participants in a course design workshop and peer consultation process and observe increased awareness of self and enhanced reflection on teaching practice. In this study, reflection is fostered during the intervention but also highlighted as a targeted outcome or a ''dependent variable''.…”

“…The notion of community development is implicit in some of the reported projects (e.g., Hoekstra & Crocker, 2015;van Schalkwyk et al, 2015), salient in others (e.g., Hum et al, 2015;Taylor & Znajda, 2015) but central to the study reported by van Waes et al (2015). They explore if and how social interaction patterns of faculty shift before, during, and after an instructional development program and look for evidence of mediating or constraining factors.…”

“…One is that the focus of an ''educational development initiative'' is seldom one-dimensional. For instance, Taylor and Znajda's (2015) project aims to foster course design knowledge (skills), change in conceptions and reflective practice (reflection), institutional and community development (institutional), and interest in documenting professional learning (inquiry) (Taylor & Znajda, 2015). The second is that Amundsen and Wilson's (2012) framework is not necessarily comprehensive and may not account for all processes and outcomes of educational development initiatives.…”