Induction to teaching programs: what are they good for?

Don Houston and Cassandra Hood, Flinders University

Flinders, like many other universities has provided an induction to teaching at university program for many years: ours is named the Flinders Foundations of University Teaching (FFOUT). The participant feedback had almost always been good, senior staff familiar with the program had been confident of its many benefits, and once upon a time it won an AAUT Citation. However, the program’s impact had not been formally evaluated.

To move past anecdotes of value to evidence, we undertook a formal evaluation in 2015. We surveyed and interviewed participants who had undertaken FFOUT between 2011 and 2014. The data confirmed our confidence in the value of the program. The participants generally agreed that the program has positive effects on their knowledge about university teaching, their practice and their conversations and thinking about their practice. The results reinforce other research indicating that such programmes do have beneficial effects on individual academics and that those benefits also extend to work groups and have value to the institution.

One very prominent pattern in the results was that staff who had participated in FFOUT more than two years prior to the evaluation had even more positive views about its value than more recent participants. We speculated that this group had had more time and opportunity to try things from the program to enhance their teaching –particularly in areas like topic and assessment design –than more recent participants caught up in doing teaching to survive!

We observed that the transfer of learning by academics to practice takes time and is mediated by many factors. Nevertheless, where it was seen that institutional and local departmental cultures value teaching, programs such as FFOUT, provide a useful strategy for quality enhancement in higher education.

Of particular note was that a critical mass of past FFOUT participants in a workgroup was needed to positively influence both attitude to teaching and practice. FFOUT participation allowed respondents to contribute to existing conversations around teaching as well as to initiate them, in settings where teaching is valued. Unsurprisingly, local cultural factors and practices, as well as academic leadership impacts how teaching is viewed and supported. Beyond influence on individuals’ practice, participation adds to that critical mass who appreciate and work toward improving teaching.

Given the impact of academic leadership on departmental culture, it will be interesting to see how the current restructure of our university’s academic groupings to colleges from faculties impacts on the culture of learning and teaching within various workgroups. With many educational leadership positions recently filled, we hope that those staff committed to teaching maintain and are supported in their focus on quality teaching that FFOUT encourages and supports.

The key take away messages from our work are: programs like this do have benefits to participants and to the wider institution; those benefits can be optimised where participants receive support from colleagues and managers in their day to day workplaces; and the full benefits need time to accrue.Two publications from the research so far are:

University teacher preparation programmes as a quality enhancement mechanism: evaluating impact beyond individual teachers’ practice   │  Quality in Higher Education (2017)

Our HERDSA 2016 conference paper:
http://www.herdsa.org.au/publications/conference-proceedings/research-and-development-higher-education-shape-higher-10

To quiz or not to quiz?

Dear All

Colleagues from 19 Australian universities are contributing to the development of the ‘Contemporary Australian Teaching Practices’ MOOC which we will pilot in semester 2, 2017. As the MOOC is designed specifically for university staff who are new to teaching, we have designed it to introduce basic concepts such as how to provide constructive feedback or teach a diversity of students.  Ideally I would like to see our new teaching colleagues spend about two hours a week across a semester, exploring a different topic every week.

However, it is possible that some colleagues who have been teaching previously will access the MOOC. While I want to encourage people to dip into all of the 11 modules, people will of course, pick and choose what is of value to them: just in time, just for me.

I wonder if it would be useful therefore to have say one multiple choice question from each module in a preliminary ‘self assessment’ quiz, which colleagues could use to guide their choices.

What do you think? To quiz or not to quiz???

Cheers

Kym

Scholarly teaching and scholarship of teaching: continually improving your teaching

Dear All

We are developing the module on scholarly teaching and sotl. This module is expected to provide 2 hours of engagement by the participants. So the module is a practical introduction to the concepts and at the end, we will direct people who want to engage further, to resources/literature.

The ‘table of contents’ for the module is given below. What we want to do in the module is introduce new teaching staff to the difference between being a scholarly teacher and engaging in the scholarship of teaching. We’ll ask staff to: view a video clip of international colleagues discussing their definitions of SoTL; skim a chapter on the benefits of SoTL; and find a teaching and learning journal in their discipline.

Then we plan to introduce the different types of evaluation strategies that can be used to improve teaching and collect evidence to improve student learning and for probation, promotion, teaching awards. This work will be based on the 2009 Light, Cox and Caulkin evaluation chapter in their book “Learning and teaching in higher education”. Strategies include things like peer review, buzz groups, questionnaires, reflective triads, and focus groups. In terms of activities, we will ask participants to try one of the strategies.

As we are in the process of finalising our module, we would appreciate your thoughts on the current approach to the module and our questions below.

1. Can you suggest great resources that we simply must include?
2. Are there particular (short) activities that we might consider?
3. Any other feedback?

Module table of contents

Welcome video (introduction to the module)

Context and definitions

Teaching and learning scholars

Why take a scholarly teaching approach?

Concerns about SoTL (the pros and cons of engaging in L&T research)

Where do I start?

Using evaluation to improve your students’ learning

• Buzz groups
• Peer review of teaching
• Questionnaires
• Etc

Where do I get help from/go from here?

Using SoTL and scholarly teaching to progress your career

Resources

 

Kym Fraser, Swinburne University of Technology

Bernie Fisher, Australian Catholic University

Learning and Teaching Theories – a module under development

We have undertaken to develop the module on learning and teaching theories for the Induction program.

One of the reasons for our interest in this particular topic was that both of us have had extensive experience in assisting applicants for Learning and Teaching grants and awards, and in preparing and mentoring staff for Higher Education Academy Fellowships. In both these mentoring roles, we have found that most applicants have little knowledge of the higher education literature, and the long history of educational research, principles of teaching, and how students learn. Nor can staff readily call on theory to support their learning and teaching approaches and practices. At best, there may be a single reference in applications to Biggs and Tang (which is of course, a standard text in higher education), or a brief reference to Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, as an argument for ‘social learning’.

As teaching academics, we need to be ‘double professionals’ who know about not only the seminal work in our discipline field, but also how that discipline is best taught. There are specialist journals in teaching particular disciplines and professions, and the module on Scholarly Teaching directs your attention to such journals, but there is a rich literature in learning and teaching in general, and if you are to think reflectively and deeply about your practices for teaching students effectively, you should have some knowledge of this literature, and the significant theories that shape or have shaped our current pedagogies. We would have liked to have included a lot more in our module but it was not feasible given the limited amount of time participants will have to spend on each module.

Our module so far consists of some learning activities, video sections, some links to several short documents, and an MCQ, to ‘test’ that you have a very basic knowledge of the education theorists. It also, as a stretch activity, includes making a voki, to encourage participants to use a free app that may open up a world of new technologies that can be used to engage students in this digital world.  The voki activity is at the icebreaker level. It starts to get participants thinking about articulating their first thoughts about their philosophies of teaching. Participants will need to continue to grapple with the development of their teaching philosophies and may need some other form of professional development, like mentoring to fully develop written artefacts.

We would welcome any comments you have for the scope of the module, and any resources we might consider essential.
Sue Bolt and Yoni Ryan

Online learning and teaching induction program progress report

Dear All

I hope that 2017 has started well for you.

The Fellowship team is making sure and steady progress on the development of the modules (named in the December 14 post). Two colleagues are developing each module and an outline of each proposed module has been reviewed by a topic expert and feedback has been provided. Colleagues are now working to develop their modules fully in order to send to them back to their expert reviewer in March.

Over the next few months we will post information about each of the modules and ask your advice on what we are proposing to cover in them.

The Fellowship team has collected survey and interview data from over 20 colleagues in the Australian higher education sector who are in charge of their institution’s teaching induction program. The results provide an interesting snapshot of current provision in our sector.

Earlier this month I reported to the funders of this fellowship, the Australian Department of Education and Training, on progress at the six month mark of the Fellowship. We are on time and within budget on all outcomes. The research that we have conducted is ‘extra’ to the original application. All in all, I am delighted with the progress we are making in the Fellowship and I am immensely grateful to everyone who is contributing to the Fellowship. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable and fabulous collaborative effort.

Cheers

Kym

Teaching induction MOOC principles and learning outcomes

Dear All

In the last two months the fellowship team has made great progress. We met at the end of October and developed a plan for a ‘semester long’ program of introductory modules about teaching topics for staff new to teaching. While recognising that staff can enrol and complete the mooc at anytime, we wanted to provide a planned approach for those who wanted to progress systematically through the content and pace themselves across their first semester of teaching. Below is an image of a possible approach.

Below also are our draft learning outcomes for the MOOC, the underpinning principles and the topics that we anticipate including. We would love to have your comment on any or all

I hope that everyone reading this blog has a very enjoyable break over the festive season and I look forward to being in touch in the new year.

Cheers

Kym

Principles

The MOOC is:

-       situated in and raises awareness of learning and teaching scholarship;

-       pragmatic (ie can be useful today) and contextualised (asks participants to explore their own institution for resources, contacts etc); and

-       aligned to criteria and standards (we are aligning with the UK PSF).

MOOC Learning Outcomes

Completing this program will raise your awareness of:

–      how teaching practice can be informed by L&T theories & conceptual frameworks;

–      the scope of your role as a teacher in higher education;

–      ways to create great student learning experiences.

Model

The MOOC model is currently expected to include:

-       an introduction;

-       the 11 introductory modules (e.g. teaching a first class);

-       a L&T self-assessment quiz which will help participants decide what modules they need to explore;

-       a well-being quiz;

-       documents which will help the staff member to locate particular resources in their university;

-       a glossary of terms; and

-       some specialty modules (e.g. teaching maths).