Five Levels of Involvement of Educational Development in Quality Enhancement - an Example

Five levels of involvement of educational development in quality enhancement - an example from the University of Southern Denmark

Rie Troelsen

SDU Centre for Teaching and Learning, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

Abstract Educational development units (EDUs) are at the forefront of many quality enhancement activities aimed at teaching and learning at universities. University of Southern Denmark have worked with a model for enhancing teaching quality which entails five levels; definitions, descriptions, documentation, evaluation and recognition of quality in teaching. It will be demonstrated how both institutional strategies relate to each of the five levels and how the local EDU is involved in the operationalization of the strategies.

Introduction Quality enhancement at universities has during the last decade played an ever more important role, not at least due to world-wide rankings of universities regarding excellence in research (Kehm & Stensaker, 2009) but also in respect to improving the quality of teaching and learning (McAleese et al, 2013). Activities intended to enhance quality in teaching can be classified using at least three approaches; institutional, cultural and personal (Frost & Teodorescu, 2001) and thus requires engagement at many levels in the university organization (Brown, 2012; Little, 2015). Still, educational development units (EDU) are at the forefront of many of these quality enhancement activities. Holt et al (2011) point to 10 key points of leverage where EDUs can and should be actively contributing in organizational change, including new visions, teaching development program, disseminating exemplary practices and supporting teaching excellence through awards and fellowships. Using Holt et al.’s points of leverage as the starting point the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) have worked with a model for enhancing teaching quality which entails five levels; definitions, descriptions, documenting, evaluating and recognition of quality in teaching. Method Points of leverage for educational development units to focus on in their ambition to enhance and contribute to organisational change are areas where small, well-focused actions can make a relatively larger impact (Senge, 1990). Holt et al. (2011) have conducted an explorative study consisting of interviews, a survey and focus groups among educational developers and leaders of EDUs at 38 Australian universities. By analysing the data they present ten points of leverage as being indicative of the types of action that can be taken in an organisation to create and sustain longer-term value in teaching, learning and the student experience. The ten points of leverage are: 1. New visions/new plans 2. Preparation of new continuing academic staff 3. Compulsory casual teaching development program 4. Just-in-time professional development 5. Communities of practice 6. Strategic funding for development 7. Supporting teaching excellence through awards and fellowships 8. Disseminating exemplary practices online 9. Recognition and use of education ”experts” 10. Renewing leadership Holt and colleagues, however, notice that the points of leverage are best mobilized in appropriate combinations and that not all will be relevant at particular points in time for every institution. In our case, by considering the actual and possible network connections of our EDU across, up and down the organisation, we select and combine the above-mentioned leverage points and come up with five levels of involvement in enhancing teaching quality at SDU:  Definitions of quality (New visions/new plans)  Descriptions of competences in teaching and educational leadership (Preparation of new staff, Compulsory teaching development program, Just-in-time professional development)  Documentation of competences (Communities of practice, Disseminating exemplary practices online)  Evaluation of competences (Recognition and use of education “experts”)  Recognition of competences (Supporting teaching excellence through awards and fellowships) Findings In the following each of the above-indicated levels are described together with examples of how the particular level is operationalised at SDU and how our EDU is involved in enhancing teaching quality at the particular level.

The first level of involvement is the definitions of quality. Most universities have formulated visions for teaching and learning as part of their quality assurance and quality enhancement policy. Quality policies need to be clearly formulated and developed in collaboration with relevant stakeholders – students, teachers, Heads of Studies, administrative staff and the EDU. In the Policy of Quality at SDU, it is especially sub-policy 4 on University Teaching and Learning and Teaching Staff Development (SDU, 2013) that contains visions on teaching and learning. Here it is stated that “teaching staff have knowledge, skills and competences on teaching and learning which they continually develop” (SDU, 2013; 14). The sub-policy refers furthermore to the underlying principles for education at SDU which is Active teaching and learning (SDU, 2016). The EDU has been engaged in both the development of the underlying principles and the formulation of the sub-policy. The present involvement of the EDU at the level of quality definition relates to an obligation to offer educational development activities aiming at active teaching and learning and an annual follow-up reports on the number of participants in the offered educational development activities.

The second level of involvement is the description of competences. If the visions for teaching and learning are to be implemented in the organisation it is crucial that teachers and educational leaders possess the competences to do so. In the same way as a clear and concise definition of quality is necessary for giving direction, the competences of teachers and educational leaders also need to be clearly described in order to be pursued throughout the organisation. At SDU a competence profile has been formulated for both teaching and educational leadership and as an example a very rough overview of the competence profile for teachers is shown below:

The competence profile points to different competences for different groups of employees. The EDU is at this level involved by acknowledging the different needs and thereby offering different kinds of educational development activities for different target groups. As examples, we offer both courses and networking opportunities for Heads of Study, a Lecturer Training Programme for assistant professors which in itself acknowledges the great variation in teaching experience and teaching context among the participants, and introductory courses for PhD students with no former experience in teaching.

The third level of involvement is the documentation of competences. Documenting your teaching practice is related to reflecting your practice and a reflective practitioner is important to realisation of the vision of teaching and learning. At SDU the Policy of Quality states that every employee (with teaching obligations) must possess an updated teaching portfolio. The EDU has worked with the Faculties to develop their teaching portfolio model (a template with headlines, examples and stimulus questions that were relevant to the teaching traditions and culture at each Faculty) and offers a course on how to get started with the teaching portfolio. At an organisational level there is also focus on internal knowledge exchange and communication in general in order to inspire and learn from each other. The EDU has in that sense been very much involved in enhancing and developing internal fora for “making it transparent how learning has been made possible” (Trigwell, 2012). According to Trigwell, this is also the essence of scholarship of teaching and learning and so the EDU aims at making it possible for teachers to engage themselves in SoTL in different ways.  Tool for Developing Assessment Methods, for Developing Feedback Activities and for Implementing the Underlying Principles of Education The tools are meant to inspire teachers to develop their practice by, amongst other things, giving access to a wide range of examples of good practice. Teachers describe, connect to theory and reflect on their exams, feedback activities and ways to design active teaching and learning. The tools are available at http://sduup.sdu.dk/en  Development projects as part of the Lecturer Training Programme - presented at a poster session During the Lecturer Training Programme, the participants have to complete the “Developing your teaching” project. In their projects, participants must account for the teaching and learning activities they have designed and completed, the underlying pedagogic considerations, and also their own and the students’ evaluations of the activities. The projects are presented at a poster session on the Campus Square.  Teaching for Active Learning conferences The purpose of the conferences is to give the participants the opportunity to share, document, demonstrate, substantiate and analyse their own examples of active teaching and learning. Some of the participants also publish their contributions in the conference publication. Read more about the conference at http://www.sdu.dk/en/sduup (click on Conferences).  The chance to publish One of the purposes of the EDU is to contribute to the documentation and publishing of pedagogical practice in higher education. This makes it possible for teachers to get feedback from or collaborate in other ways with the EDU on articles for Danish Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education or Learning and Media.

The fourth level of involvement is the evaluation of competences. In order to recognise excellence and quality in teaching and learning, the competences need to be assessed and evaluated. The competences can be evaluated in a summative and a formative way. Regarding the summative way, all applicants for associate and full professorships at Danish universities are required to include a teaching portfolio in their application and this is of course also the case for SDU. There is, however, no template or guidance for the assessment committees as to how a teaching portfolio should be evaluated – neither from a national authority nor the organisation SDU – but the same can be said for the evaluation of research competences; there are no official and written evaluation guidelines for the assessment committee to assess the research competences of applicants. The involvement of the EDU is in this regard related to the competence development of colleagues at SDU to engage in portfolio assessments. As part of the Lecturer Training Programme, a portfolio interview is conducted. Partners in this portfolio interview are the participant, an educational consultant and a colleague (associate/full professors) from SDU and the group discusses strengths and weaknesses in the portfolio of the participant as a finalisation of the programme. App. 60 assistant professors participate in the programme per year and thereby annually app. 60 colleagues from SDU are given the opportunity to experience how you talk about and evaluate a portfolio. It is an indirect and unsystematic competence development of colleagues in evaluating teaching competences, but so far it is the EDUs sole involvement in the summative evaluation of competences at this level. The competences are also evaluated in a formative manner through the Performance and Development Review conducted by the Head of Department. The purpose of the annual performance and development review is to follow up on the employee’s work tasks and working life from the previous year and formulate future development plans both regarding research and teaching. The EDU has been involved in formulating a guide to the teaching part of the performance and development review but future work lies in enhancing competence development of Heads of Departments as to how teaching and learning competences can be formative evaluated and how future plans for development of teaching competences can be formulated.

The fifth level of involvement is the recognition of competences. It is important to recognise – both internally in the organisation and externally – the achievements of quality teaching in a way that creates parity of esteem with conventional research activity. At SDU an annual teaching award is given on the grounds of nominations from students. As for now, the local EDU is not involved in setting up criteria for or evaluating the nominations, or in any other formal forms of recognition of competences. Here is work to be done.

Below the described examples of how the five levels of involvement are operationalised at SDU and how our EDU is engaged are compiled.

Teaching Quality SDU policies and practices EDU engagement Definitions of quality Policy of Quality, sub-policy 4: Registers participation in Teachers have pedagogical courses and workshops knowledge and competences which are continuously developed. Course catalogue with Active teaching and learning is courses, workshops and web- the underlying principle for based tools to develop education teaching for active learning.

Description of Competence profiles for teachers - Course for new teachers competences in and educational leaders describe - Lecturer Training teaching and desired competences necessary for Programme educational leadership different positions or assignments - Course for Heads of study - Targeted courses and workshops Documentation of Policy of Quality, sub-policy 4: Portfolio models at every competences Every employee possesses an Faculty is developed updated teaching portfolio Teaching portfolio is part of the Lecturer Training Programme. Course on teaching portfolio is offered.

Focus on internal knowledge Internal fora for exchange and communication – communication (web-based both individual, team based and resources, conferences, local institutional competences SoTL) Evaluation of Evaluated by assessment A portfolio interview where a competences committee (job applications) colleague from SDU participates is part of the Lecturer Training Programme

Evaluated by Head of department Guide to PDR for Heads of (Performance and Development departments Review - PDR) Recognition of Teaching Award (awarded by competences students)

Discussion By compiling the levels of teaching quality with operationalisations at SDU level and EDU engagement into a table shown above two aspects of quality enhancement become clear. One aspect is that the table visualises how criteria for teaching quality relates to recognition of teaching and the processes by which recognition of teaching can be enhanced. In this regard, it adds to the work of Holt and colleagues by suggesting that the ten points of leverage both exist in their own rights and are interconnected. If the aim is to contribute substantially to the quality enhancement in the organisation it might not be the right decision for an EDU only to focus on involvement at one point of leverage. Instead the EDU should take on a more holistic approach to quality enhancement and spread their focus to be involved in at least three points of leverage. The second aspect is the visualisation of where in the process of defining, documenting and recognising teaching quality the organisation SDU finds itself. Very many policies and practices on teaching quality have been formulated, developed and put into action at SDU, but there is still work to be done, both at an organisational level and from the EDU. It is obvious that both organisation and EDU in the future should consider how to develop more (and better) ways of evaluating and recognising teaching competences. One example is to look into the continuous educational development of teachers after their completion of the mandatory Lecturer Training Programme. The EDU provides a wide range of courses, workshops and other development activities for also experienced teachers to learn from but very few teachers attend these activities. This might be grounded in the fact that the organisation provides very few encouragements for the experienced teacher to get engaged in a further development of own teaching competences. Here future work could entail that the EDU facilitated a community of practice for experienced teachers with special interest in e.g. first-year pedagogy with mutual inspiration as an objective, or that the EDU engaged in an action research project with an experienced teacher resulting in a peer-reviewed publication with both teacher and the EDU representative as authors. Another example is to further develop the competences among colleagues (both Heads of Departments and potential members of assessment committees, meaning all faculty) to evaluate teaching portfolios. Here one could imagine that the sub-policy 4 besides the statement that every employee possessed an updated teaching portfolio in a coming version was supplemented by the statement that every Head of Department and member of assessment committees was certified to evaluate teaching portfolios.

Quality enhancement of teaching and learning is not only about enhancing the quality of teaching competences among teachers. It also requires enhancement of quality of educational leadership among Heads of Studies, Pro-deans of education and very many others with educational leadership responsibility. Being an educational leader requires a range of competences as supplement to the competences mentioned in the competence profile for teaching. These being both competences in leadership, knowledge of (political) framing factors for higher education in general and knowledge of pedagogical theories and models for the planning of study programmes. The definition, description, documentation, evaluation and recognition of educational leadership competences is of equal importance in the enhancement for teaching quality as the process from defining to recognition of teaching competences. And in the same way that scholarship of teaching and learning is one way of creating the parity to research, we might start formulating a Scholarship of Educational Leadership to make this aspect of teaching quality enhancement significant and clear.

Practical implications The findings above are examples of how teaching quality can be divided in five levels of involvement and how both institutional strategies relate to each of the five levels and how an educational development unit is involved in the operationalization of the strategies. From this paper you might get ideas as how to analyse your own organisation and its teaching quality enhancement processes. The analysis might lead to a clearer overview over where and how your EDU can contribute to development and sustainability in terms of maximising the teaching quality. References

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