Sometimes instructional designers must have difficult conversations with faculty collaborators. Having a few conversation frameworks in your toolkit can help you manage these situations, reduce stress for you and the faculty you work with, and can help you be more effective at improving course quality.
While most of the work instructional designers do is creative, collaborative, and rewarding, sometimes they need to manage difficult conversations, such as when a subject matter expert is late submitting course materials; when a faculty member has concerns about the role of the instructional designer impinging on their academic freedom; when counseling an instructional faculty member about an approach that is definitely not a “best practice”; or simply when providing feedback on course materials to communicate that an assignment is unclear, not well-suited for online learning, or out of alignment with course learning outcomes.
At Oregon State University's Ecampus, a large instructional team works with develop and redevelop several hundred new online courses per year in collaboration with faculty partners. We work over a two-term development period and must coordinate many moving parts -- faculty contributions, multimedia development, accessibility concerns, and meeting rigorous quality standards. Most of the time, these collaborations are creative and professionally rewarding experiences. However, sometimes in these complex long-term projects, conflicts arise and our instructional designers find that they need to have difficult conversations with faculty partners. In our experience, many instructional designers find these difficult conversations to be the most challenging and stressful aspect of their jobs. Managing them well is important, however, if the goals are to build long-term collaborative relationships with faculty, and to improve course quality, both at the individual course level and across the institution.
Having a few frameworks for managing difficult conversations in your toolkit can help reduce stress for you and the faculty you work with, and can help you be more effective at improving course quality.
In this interactive session aimed at instructional designers, learning designers, faculty support specialists, academic technologists, and others who collaborate with instructional faculty to design online and blended learning experiences, attendees will:
- Consider difficult conversations from different perspectives
- Navigate difficult conversations with greater diplomacy and effectiveness
- Apply new strategies for managing difficult conversations
In this session, presenters will discuss several frameworks:
- Choosing the right persuasive approaches for the situation -- ethos, pathos, and/or logos appeals
- Putting on different advocacy “hats,” first as faculty support advocate, and then as student advocate
- Approaching the situation from the “neutral zone” to uncover underlying issues
- Consulting the experts, bringing in research and experienced faculty champions
- Storyboarding conversations-gone-wrong, and re-writing a new approach
We will present these five frameworks, and then lead participants in a storyboard activity by sharing handouts of case studies describing instructional designer/faculty conversations-gone-wrong. Participants will work in groups to storyboard a case study using one of the frameworks to try out a new approach that would bring a more positive outcome.