Obstacles to strengthening ID-Faculty partnerships are prevalent in IHEs. After conducting an environmental analysis to assess existing resources and needs, the presenter proposes a change initiative aligned with Kotter’s 8-step process (Kotter, 2011) to support productive ID-Faculty collaboration. The initiative is assessed using a Concerns Based Adoption Model.
Relevance
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the shift to online learning across all institutions of higher education (IHEs). Universities in the United States have focused on utilizing educational technology, instructional designers, and learning management systems to address the immediate need to transition to online learning. During the COVID-19 pandemic, IDs increasingly played critical roles in facilitating instructors’ rapid transition to emergency remote teaching (ERT; Xie et al., 2021). Collaboration among faculty and instructional designers (Halupa, 2019), in accordance with instructional design practices (Stevens, 2013), contributed to high-quality online education. However, faculty are resistant to partnering with instructional designers because they fear the amount of time working with an ID will take (Brown et al., 2013), the imposition on academic freedom (Chen & Carliner, 2020), or fear IDs will judge their work (Richardson et al., 2019; Kumar & Ritzhaupt, 2017).
Additionally, there remains an ambiguity as to what encompasses the role of an instructional designer (Beirne & Romanoski, 2018), further insinuated by the often overlapping job postings and higher education degrees between various roles (instructional technologist, learning technology, instructional design and technology, and learning design and innovation). The ambiguity results in faculty hesitancy to collaborate with IDs due to unawareness of what IDs do and the need for collaboration. Thus, illuminating the prevalent issue in this presentation to increase faculty-ID partnerships at institutions of higher education.
This research presentation encompasses the work of a qualifying exam paper addressing a real-world issue. First, the author identified and addressed a challenge at their university. Second, an environmental analysis was conducted to assess the current context, resources, and needs of the institution. Third, the environmental analysis illuminated the need to implement a change initiative (Kotter’s 8-step process) with three specific learning objectives informed through the environmental analysis and extensive literature review. Presently, the change initiative is a work in progress and the author has not fulfilled all eight steps. However, a Concerns Based Adoption will be utilized throughout the initiative to assess the effectiveness of each step.
Session Outline
At the beginning of the presentation, participants will be asked to reflect on the existing ID-Faculty partnership at their institutions. Afterward, the presenters will facilitate a whole class discussion for participants to share their reflections. This opening activity sets the foundation and institutional context regarding ID-faculty relationships, as well as an assessment on the current state of one’s ID-faculty collaboration level. The presenters will introduce their institutional environment and context to establish the purpose and objective of the presentation.
Once the foundation is set, the presenters will elaborate on the four written chapters outlining the context, environmental analysis data, Kotter’s 8-step change process, and Concern Based Adoption Model and share the proposed strategies, models, and theoretical applications that have or will be used to tackle the identified challenge.
Upon establishing the institutional context and identifiying the relevancy of the problem statement, the presenters will elaborate on how the SPELIT Analysis tool was used to systematically analyze the social, political, economic, legal, intercultural, and technological environments of the university (Schmieder-Ramirez & Mallette, 2006).
As a result of the extensive analysis of the social, political, economic, legal, intercultural, and technological environments at SHU, a change initiative is recommended to increase faculty-ID partnerships. The change initiative is necessary to change the perception of instructional designers, which will increase the adoption rate of faculty partnerships with IDs and lead to long-term faculty partnerships. Therefore, the presenters began utilizing Kotter’s 8-step process to: (a) increase awareness of the roles, skills, and responsibilities of instructional designers, (b) increase the adoption rate of faculty utilizing instructional designers to support their course development and usage of the learning management system, and (c) develop long-term faculty-ID partnerships.
Kotter’s Change Theory encompasses an eight-step framework that is one of the most widely used change strategies and has been praised and applied in fields as diverse as education (Foote et al., 2016; Nitta et al., 2009). The presenters will establish a sense of urgency by convincing senior leadership and developing a strategy to portray the need for faculty-ID partnership, building a guiding coalition of the appropriate stakeholders to support the initiative, forming a strategic vision based on the university’s strategic plan and belonging commitments, communicating the vision to all faculty, removing barriers through scaffolded consultations, celebrating short-term wins to demonstrate progress, sustaining acceleration through an expansion of our team, and instituting change by modifying the perception and culture of working with IDs. In implementing all eight steps, I hope: (a) to increase awareness of the roles, skills, and responsibilities of instructional designers, (b) to increase the adoption rate of faculty utilizing instructional designers to support their course development and usage of the learning management system, and (c) to develop long-term faculty-ID partnerships.
Finally, the critical part of the change initiative process is determining how I will know it was successful. The Concerns Based Adoption Model (Hall, 1973) will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the change initiative. In correlation to the first objective, a shift in the perception and feelings of faculty is critical to ensuring the change initiative's success. Thus, the first dimension of CBAM, Stages of Concern, evaluates the perceptions and feelings of faculty toward the change initiative (Hall, 2013; Hall, 1979). The seven stages of concern assess the range from the earlier stages of a change process to broader impacts once the change process has been accepted.
The second dimension, Levels of Use, will evaluate the effectiveness of the change initiative meeting the final two objectives by measuring how many faculty members seek out support and share their experiences with their colleagues. Furthermore, LoU will be used to evaluate how often faculty continue to meet with IDs (routine) to keep innovating their course (refinement) and ask for support (mechanical), which will lead to long-term faculty-ID partnerships.
Session Conclusion
The session will conclude with a roundtable discussion regarding the strategies and action steps taken to implement the presented change initiative. Participants will have the opportunity to provide feedback to the presenters and consider the feasibility of the proposed change initiative in their context.