Implementation of my Learning Challenge activities!
I work in the Centre for Teaching and Learning and while I do not have direct interaction with “students,” I do interact with faculty on a regular basis. We often hear that many faculty would like to attend professional development workshops but the attendance to our sessions is typically low. We are always trying to understand the reasons why faculty aren’t able to attend. We have conducted our own internal research which set out to learn about the types of PD faculty need and want, and what challenges they face when it comes to engaging in their own personal PD activities. I decided to have a look at our most recent “Needs Assessment Survey” results to see what faculty were saying about the challenges they face and why they do not participate in professional development activities. Using the survey results I generated the following Empathy Map.
https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1aiSXVWYqIGPolpIZoeE1wvstkdoK8vXKP05KtSFaM60/edit
From this empathy map I thought about a specific theme found within the survey results around comfort levels of sharing in group settings and came up with the following Learning Challenge question: “How can I create a safe space for faculty to have meaningful discussions about teaching and learning topics that interest them?”
Having to shift everything to completely online activities I needed to find a tool that is readily available and accessible, and private enough for people to get to know each other, build trust and form community to share their thoughts and ideas. I decided that I would use the Microsoft Teams platform as a way to create a private environment for participants to share with each other. This tool will give my students (who are faculty) the experience to see how it can be used to create a learning environment and in turn, use it with their own students. I have created a private group of people who are interested in technology -enabled learning and is meant to be a safe space to discuss topics that relate to the Technologist module as well as discuss their values, pedagogy for remote learning, and challenges they have with technology. After completing the SECTION model activity, I decided MS Teams is definitely a good technology tool to use to suit my purpose and build community. As I reviewed the planning document I realized just how much time I have spent, not only planning out how things will work but how much time it takes to get a group like this up and running.
I am really pleased with how participants are interacting with each other and will continue to monitor and encourage discussion. This module has been incredibly helpful to organize my thoughts and ideas (which have been all over the place) and collect them all in one place so that next time I facilitate a similar group learning experience, I will be able to clearly see what I need to do.
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