My Goals
As an educational developer I seek to facilitate partnerships with faculty in opportunities that help them grow as instructors. For me this means that I see every contact with faculty as an opportunity to provide a value added experience in that development. Over the years I have adapted a coaching approach to working with instructors to ensure they achieve their goals in teaching, but also in their goals for individual consultations I have with them. As a guide or coach I look for ways to build a cooperative and soft space where we can experiment and fail forward in a non-judgemental arena. Applying evidence-based materials that support my efforts are paramount to this entire process.
Learning Centred Approach
I value learning-centred approaches in my own teaching, and so I also model that behaviour in my role as an educational developer. Mentoring faculty by encouraging interactive learning, planned lessons, and scaffolded curriculum is important to me as I meet instructors where they are in their own teaching journey. Each interaction with faculty is unique. Giving and receiving honest and critical feedback is essential for this model to work, and so I spend time building trust. Through mentorship, trust building and critical feedback, I am able to feel confident in performing community outreach. In my role as an educational developer, I feel like I occupy the space between the space of the ‘classroom’ and the learning community, in league with the instructor. I believe that activating that connective space engages the community in a collective purpose of learning and change. The institution and the learning communities pre-existed before I came on the scene, but I see it as my role to help craft a safe space for these effective partnerships to flourish.
Common among all of these pieces – building partnerships, mentorship, honest and critical feedback – is listening skills. The hallways, discussion forums, chat rooms, help desk requests echo with the sounds that help us find the gaps. Listening to identify the gaps and help guide the way to uncovering effective resources is a critical determining factor in my educational developer philosophy. An example of this philosophy in action involves the identification, adoption and adaptation of teaching technology. Education and its delivery are always evolving. Part of my role is to ride the crest of experimentation in order to help faculty avoid unnecessary missteps since an educational developer will be routinely called upon for expert advice. As an active listener I feel I can participate in the conversation around dynamic technological and pedagogical changes in the field of Teaching and Learning; wayfinders over barricades.