A key next step for each of our Dev Math teams is the extension of regional cooperation and collaboration to provide additional opportunities for faculty engagement. These multiple levels of engagement build on the successful team work and processes observed in the FACCTS projects:
- recommending and re-using exemplary resources for inclusion in regional compendiums (and eventual aggregation into the Developmental Mathematics Collection);
- cooperating around shared interests to understand specific instructional issues, explore potential solutions and evaluate new teaching approaches, tools and technology;
- opportunities to contribute comments and expertise to support the adaptive work of others, and benefiting from their reciprocal ideas and expertise in a loosely-coupled way;
- where gaps have been identified in the existing base of knowledge and resources, opportunities for collaborating in a more intensive team experience on shared issues of importance across colleges (within and across regions).
Graphically, these levels look like this:
Each of these levels on the ladder of engagement leads further toward the goal: “communities of faculty learners to collaboratively examine aspects of teaching practice with an emphasis on professional growth in both cognitive and affective elements” [Wildman et al, 2000]. These communities also provide the core support needed for ongoing enhancement of the NSDL Developmental Math Teaching Collection. While the regional focus encourages local ownership and responsibility and simplifies the logistics of team collaborations, cooperation across regions will be facilitated by the regional Knowledge Exchange Network coordinators as outlined in the next item.
Wildman, T., M. Hable, M. Preston and S. Magliaro; Faculty Study Groups: Solving “Good Problems” Through Study, Reflection and Collaboration, Innovative Higher Education, 24(4), 2000. 247-263
Tagged: NSDL Developmental Math Collection
As noted in the previous post, the JISC agency in the U.K. commissioned a fine report on the evidence for benefits from sharing learning materials. An accompanying report dealt with the business case for a variety of different sharing models:
- “Open sharing (taking a completely open approach in relation to access, although there may be a layered approach to what can be done with materials and even levels of openness in relation to access too)
- Sharing through a Community of Practice (CoP) (sharing between people belonging to a network with some common practice, passion or interest, often but not always subject/discipline based)
- Subject-based sharing – (sharing with other subject specialists usually, but not always, through a CoP)
- Institutional sharing (sharing within an institution, usually within, but sometimes across faculty and or departments)
- National sharing (sharing at a national level, possibly across institutions, possibly across subject areas or domains - e.g., NSDL in the U.S. – my adaptation - and through collaborative initiatives)
- Informal sharing (individuals sharing with other individuals – could be teachers, learners or other groups in the HE community and sometimes as part of a CoP)”
…”There is clearly overlap across many of these approaches as an individual or institution could adopt a range of these approaches… Regional sharing is not identified as a separate category here but could be added to this list…The ‘Good intentions’ report investigated a range of existing business models which illustrate the approaches listed here with particular reference to the open and subject-based sharing approaches.”
In this context the regional compendia being developed by the San Diego, LA and Bay area FACCTS teams are examples of regional subject-based sharing, building on institutional sharing in campus repositories and leading upwards to state-wide sharing in a Community of Practice and to national sharing within the MathDL pathway through the Developmental Math Teaching Collection.
I missed this report when it first came out, in December 2008 from the UK JISC agency:
Good intentions: improving the evidence base in support of sharing learning materials
Lots of good ideas here applicable to our Knowledge Exchange projects. Here is an overview from the introduction:
“The vision of a world where teachers in Higher Education would share and re-purpose their learning materials, using the Web as a medium, with the support of interoperability standards, and repository platforms utilizing those standards has been with us for many years. Despite our best efforts and good intentions we’ve not always moved forward as fast as we would have liked. We’ve encountered many barriers, several forks in the road and often had to make choices without any maps at all. We’ve tried to develop a few one-way systems that have caused frustration and imposed some risk-averse regulations. We’ve witnessed a few accidents and mourned a few casualties. And now we find that after all that work and, sometimes painful, experience our world has changed…Many of the barriers are no longer even relevant. Some still exist (but we know them very well) and the end goal remains the same but we have a clearer picture of the many routes we can follow to get there, and also some of the shortcuts.
This may be taking the analogy a bit far but the evidence suggests that the landscape of policy, technology, and learning and teaching practice may have changed sufficiently for us to realize the vision. There are many different models of service to support sharing of learning and teaching resources and there are as many different contexts in which these need to operate. Each model has grown and adapted to the changing landscape. It is important that policy makers, funders, institutional managers, organizations concerned with learning and teaching, learners and teachers have an opportunity to engage with the benefits of sharing, and have robust mechanisms to support their sharing context. The business cases presented as part of this study go some way towards articulating the evidence that there are benefits to sharing at global, national, regional, and individual levels.”
…more to come in future posts
Tagged: NSDL
One emerging conclusion from the FACCTS program – and the parallel one in Ontario, Canada – is that the collaborative approach is most successful when it fits easily within the ‘zone of proximal development’ for the faculty involved. Specifically, for most faculty the FACCTS project require the development of new skills in knowledge exchange, knowledge mobilization and collaborative workspaces; for faculty who also need to develop complementary skills in other areas such as planning and managing instructional projects, the workload increases and can easily become excessive.
Most of our FACCTS program faculty have found it both necessary and valuable to develop further capability in adapting and applying knowledge and resources from other contexts and institutions. I think our current structure does a good job in assisting team members with identifying appropriate knowledge and resources, but some do not have much past experience in making use of this on their own. Note that this self-reliance is a different skill than what is acquired in traditional faculty development around a specific teaching approach. We have to find ways to increase the professional capability of our faculty to apply the base of knowledge and resources about teaching in their subject area, without detracting from the benefits gained from a craft approach to teaching – especially the autonomy which many of us as faculty find to be a great source of job satisfaction. We will be addressing the development of this capability in the Workshop on Knowledge Exchange and Mobilization for Exemplary Teaching in College Mathematics, planned for the Ontario Math Teaching Collaboratory in May 2010. Something of this sort will be needed as a prerequisite for faculty participation in future cooperative innovation teams.
As a second example of co-requisite skills whose absence may make it difficult for faculty to take full advantage of a cooperative innovation team, faculty who have already been active in improving their courses with incremental projects, adding a collaborative component for knowledge exchange and mobilization fits well and increases the effectiveness of their course improvements (and should lead to effective resources for knowledge exchange). For faculty without much experience in projects to improve teaching and learning, the collaborative component can be one more thing to learn, and one which does not necessarily address the co-requisite skills of planning and management for an instructional project.
I think there are several ways to address this second skill set:
[Read more →]
Our series of postings on projects from the South Bay regional Dev Math team continues with reports by two faculty from West Valley College with complementary projects to enhance Developmental Math teaching and learning.
One project will include the use of technology and infusion of study skills in an Elementary Algebra course. Class notes will be posted online, and I’ll be using a tablet PC along with PowerPoint in class. Podcasts of class will be posted regularly on the class website. Group work will be incorporated in class at least twice a week, and study skills will be infused throughout the course. [Rebecca Wong]
The second project at West Valley focuses on a Developmental Mathematics Teaching Community This began in Fall 2009 with a very successful initial semester of monthly meetings discussing strategies to improve student success in developmental math courses. Next semester, each part-time and full-time instructor in the project will focus on changing one facet of their developmental math course and evaluating the effectiveness of this change. The monthly meetings will revolve around supporting each other in our endeavors. [Gretchen Ehlers]
Tagged: West Valley
