From DSC:
Seeing the functionality in Freehand — it makes me once again think that we need to use more tools where faculty/staff/students can collaborate with each other REGARDLESS of where they’re coming in to partake in a learning experience (i.e., remotely or physically/locally). This is also true for trainers and employees, teachers and students, as well as in virtual tutoring types of situations. We need tools that offer functionalities that go beyond screen sharing in order to collaborate, design, present, discuss, and create things. (more…)
The Digital versus Brick-and-Mortar Balancing Game — from educause.edu
Excerpt:
The blended campus required after two years of upheaval calls for out-of-the box thinking about what to keep and what to discard from both digital and physical work and learning spaces. Technology leaders face critical decisions regarding workplace culture, physical classroom design, and traditional campus spaces.
Making the move from fully in-person instruction to a learning environment that also accommodates remote students (and remote faculty) requires rethinking and redesigning physical learning spaces to provide an equitable experience for all learners. Technology leaders will need to overcome sizable obstacles to create inclusive classrooms that enable faculty and students to reap the many benefits of hybrid [hyflex] learning.
Also see some of the other most urgent issues in higher education here:
Teaching: Fresh Approaches to Faculty Development — from chronicle.com by Beckie Supiano
Excerpt:
Baranovic can’t imagine returning to the old model: He’s sticking to panels in Zoom. Among the benefits, he says: “This arrangement breaks institutional silos, allows faculty to talk more about their experiences, shares effective practices from sources faculty trust (their peers), creates a stronger sense of community, makes it easy for panelists (they receive the questions ahead of time if they want to prepare, but because they’re speaking to experience, they don’t really have to prepare), and creates a form of support that works like therapy but doesn’t feel like therapy.”
Next, Baranovic hopes to turn the panels into a podcast format for professors unable to attend in real time.
From DSC:
As someone who had been involved with Teaching & Learning Centers for years, I can tell you that it’s very disheartening to put together a training session for faculty members and have very few — if any — people show up for it. It’s a waste of time and it leaves the T&L staff and/or IT staff members feeling discouraged and unvalued.
Over the years, I developed a preference for putting things into an asynchronous digital format for faculty members and adjunct faculty members to access per their own schedules. The institutions that I was working for got a greater ROI from those sessions and they were able to visit an internal “course” or website to reference those materials on-demand.
I also like the idea of podcasting here, but that takes a lot of time and effort — and isn’t always possible when you are one person trying to assist hundreds of faculty members (from a technical support and an LMS admin standpoint).
As an Instructional Designer, I also want to comment that it’s hard to help steer a car if you can’t even get into the car. Those institutions that are using team-based approaches will be far more successful in designing and developing more polished, effective, accessible learning experiences. Very few people can do it all.
L&D is going through an identity crisis — here’s why that’s a good thing — from chieflearningofficer.com by Linda Cai
We’re in a new situation, and we need to do something different. Our employees are hungry for growth and purpose amidst the Great Reshuffle, and companies need to respond and act or risk watching their talent walk out the door.
Excerpt:
That’s why organizations need our expertise more than ever. The demand for L&D specialists increased by 94 percent between July and September of 2021 compared to the previous three month period, according to our just-released 2022 Workplace Learning Report.
At the same time, our research also revealed that we have work to do. The report reveals L&D professionals spent 35 percent less time learning than their HR colleagues in 2021. It is not surprising, since a lot of them are overwhelmed by workload, and well-being has decreased. But the L&D function is going through what might be its most consequential transformation to date, and our success depends on whether we can learn the skills that this new world of work requires of us. Are we prepared to take on this increasingly strategic role for years to come?
It will not be easy. But we can start this important work by doing two things: loosening up how we think about ourselves, and going back to why many of us got into this business — to help people do their best work and be their best selves.
Here’s a relevant quote from the 2022 Workplace Learning Report:
“We really need to change and think about more productive and sustainable ways to help connect talent to opportunity, and our view is that that’s going to be done through a skills-based approach.”
Ryan Roslansky
CEO, LinkedIn
3 Questions for Susan Aldridge — from insidehighered.com by Edward J. Maloney and Joshua Kim
Excerpt:
According to RNL research (2022), over each of the last five years, face-to-face undergraduate and graduate enrollments had a net decline, while online enrollments have seen significant expansion. The pandemic further accelerated online growth. University presidents and provosts are taking advantage of the post-pandemic environment to transform their universities by building digital ecosystems.