When launching a digital courseware pilot, the path to success can be different for every faculty member. Sharing perspectives from multiple institutions, courses and disciplines, this session profiles different, common faculty approaches. It highlights the unique challenges they encounter along the way and explores solutions that help them achieve success.
Tidewater Community College (TCC) and TN eCampus each launched personalized learning pilots with open educational resources (OER) to allow faculty members to explore new models for engaging and connecting with students. These projects sought to bring together the benefits achieved through the access and affordability of OER, as well as testing models to improve metacognition and the faculty-student connection.
In the case of TCC, the pilot project involved aggressive timelines for introducing Lumen Learning’s Waymaker courseware starting in fall 2015 as an early adopter and collaborator on course design and development. Over time, TCC has worked to organically expand adoption of two courses in the business department, particularly among part-time and adjunct faculty. Using this approach, the college aims to address issues of affordability, access, and the ability to deliver a consistent quality of higher-touch learning experience throughout the department.
In the case of TN eCampus, initial plans proposed that three courses would go live in the summer 2017 using Lumen Learning’s Waymaker personalized courseware. Only one of the three courses met the timeline, with the other two courses delaying pilot until fall 2017. Still, all courses are on track for successful implementation and showing promise to achieve the initial goals of the project.
In a review of the challenges and successes for each implementation, program leads have identified differences in the faculty members’ approach to evaluating personalized courseware, and some tension between an emphasis on the content versus the pedagogy delivered through a personalized system. Both projects were also impacted by missteps in aligning calendars and roadmaps across the educational institution and the courseware provider.
This session will explore the different faculty personae and suggest approaches to engage and support faculty members with diverse approaches. Faculty personae include the subject matter expert, the innovative teacher, and the frustrated trailblazer. Participants will have an opportunity to identify faculty personae and approaches that they have encountered in similar initiatives to augment the discussion.
The session will summarize initial research and impact studies from personalized learning implementations around the country, and highlight where these experiences map to broader trends. It concludes by suggesting approaches to reduce risk in personalized learning implementations.