Reflections on Innovation from Local and Global Contexts

Throughout this course, we have conducted research to help us learn from the innovation attempts of others. This has included successes and attempts that were not successful. By reading about the successes and failures of others, I feel that I have a better understanding of what changes need to be made to ensure the success of my plan.

By ensuring that the plan has been modified to demonstrate that it is based on research and informed practices, and by ensuring that strategies learned throughout this program are incorporated, we will ensure the success of this program. Working with key campus influencers, we will have a champion for the program, an influencer who is highly regarded by the administration and most of the full-time faculty, who will help to ensure buy-in from full-time faculty and campus leadership. Applying strategies learned through 4DX will help us to ensure that all phases of the plan are communicated, keeping everyone informed with a scoreboard, acting on lead measures, and ensuring accountability at all levels and phases.

Reflections on Innovation Planning, focused on what worked, what could have been done better, and applying lessons learned.

What worked

Learning experiences for adjunct faculty are being designed in the Blackboard Learn LMS. This gives the faculty members the “Student Experience” ensuring that they are better prepared to support their learners within their Blackboard courses. Learning experiences in the Blackboard LMS provide any time learning opportunities, and ensure that the part-time instructors can return to the learning experiences to review and reflect as needed.

Journaling activities within the Faculty Support Studio provide a mechanism for mentors to recognise areas of need for their mentees, enabling them to provide “just in time” support. These journaling activities will also help to inform development of additional learning experiences.

What could have been done better

Surveying part-time faculty has not been an effective mechanism for determining professional learning needs of this constituency.

Learning experiences need to be developed so that a novice learner can explore and learn, with scaffolding and supports designed within the course. These learning experiences need to also meet the needs of learners who have demonstrated competencies in the context of the learning experiences. If an instructor has a strong competency in an area, they should not be slowed down with learning that would be redundant for them. Experiences must be developed with both learner levels in mind.

Applying lessons learned

To ensure that part-time faculty feel they have a voice in the professional learning experiences designed for them, we will implement an advisory committee comprised of part-time faculty to ensure that the part-time faculty.

Because our current workforce is comprised of approximately 200 part-time faculty and only about 100 full-time faculty, we need to further develop the mentor program for part time faculty, to ensure that the part-time faculty feel supported while being a drain on the full-time faculty.

The following links to additional resources are provided for your convenience.

Call to Action

Literature Review

Revised Plan for Implementation of a Network of Support and Development for Part-Time Faculty

Implementation Outline