Ed & Tech must-reads 170226

Impact of Advance HE Fellowships on professional identity as an educator: an Australian study from Higher Education Research & Development

I’ve had a complicated relationship with the Advance HE Fellowships scheme. Generally I like it as a way to reflect on your educational practice and values and it does seems like a reasonably well accepted credential in the sector. I have also wondered whether it contributes to professional growth as an educator or if it stunts growth by giving a recipient a little pat on the head that tells them ‘you’re fine just the way you are’. It has spread widely in the Australian public higher education system, at a time when more cost and time-intensive professional development offerings (usually some kind of Graduate Certificate in Higher Education Teaching) have tended to be pared back.

This paper by some former Monash colleagues of mine (I remember them working on it several years back) answers some of these questions - but as with a lot of research, there is still a bit of an ‘it depends’ sting in the tail. Sarkar et al interviewed 22 academics and surveyed 218 from 23 Oz unis about how they felt it contributed to their educator identity. Overall it gave them a greater sense of competence - though this was also linked to further engagement in educator development activities and employment in institutions with a good learning and teaching culture. Engaging with this scheme is probably as much a sign of a positive educator mindset as anything but if it can nudge that needle along a little further, that’s still no small thing. (For the record, I have worked through three levels of fellowships and done my share of reviewing applications).

Universal Design for Learning 3.0 in Tertiary Education from ADCET

On the subject of professional development - I’ve shared links to resources and events from the Australian Disability Clearinghouse on Education and Training before and was very happy to see that they have added a new free online course to their collection. (Technically it is an update to version 3.0). Their blurb says why you should look into this far better than I can.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a learning design approach that recognises there is no ‘average’ learner. All learners are individual and come with a wide variety of prior experiences, abilities, preferences and needs. Rather than designing courses for an ‘average’ learner and making individual adjustments retroactively, the UDL approach encourages course design to consider the broadest possible range of diversity of learners. UDL reduces the need for individual adjustments and enhances the experience of all learners.

Demystifying learning outcomes: What they are and how to write them from The Educational Designer

For all the times that terms like Learning Outcomes get thrown around in learning and teaching (we have unit learning outcomes, course learning outcomes and graduate learning outcomes in my institution currently) it is surprising how much the design of them is treated as assumed knowledge. (See also, most of learning and teaching practice tbh). This straight forward blog post from educational designer Dana Bui provides an invaluable introduction to why we have learning outcomes and how to make them meaningful. She provides clear practical instructions and useful examples throughout.