Unhurried conversations: A design for engaging online faculty in the pursuit of equity pedagogy

Introduction

In order to better facilitate faculty engagement and support high-quality, equitable online teaching in our graduate education programs, the leadership team recognized the need for a new collaborative approach. Engaging faculty in meaningful teaching discussions can be challenging, and even more so when your program's full-time and adjunct faculty are spread out across the country. Online faculty, in particular, lack opportunities for organic hallway conversations on teaching that may take place on campus, making it even harder to foster community and collaboration. This dispersed group of faculty can inadvertently create a hierarchy where full-time faculty feel more connected and valued than their adjunct counterparts, creating a sense of lack of belonging. Furthermore, as the remote workforce continues to grow, even full-time online faculty may experience a loss of connection and collaboration.

Additionally, the current structure of program meetings left little time for reflection, sharing, and discussion, indicative of a larger structural problem of practice rooted in legacy practices of "more is better." This rushed approach to meetings hindered the development of innovative ideas, effective teaching strategies, and time for meaningful dialogue. Furthermore, some faculty members had too many meetings, creating an unreasonable meeting schedule.

To address these challenges, the leadership team “joined forces” and, using elements of design thinking, reimagined a new collaborative approach. Together, three online graduate programs formed the Graduate Education Online Collaborative aimed at maximizing all parties' time to focus on improving online teaching and learning experiences through equity pedagogy.

Community of Practice and Unhurried Conversations 

This collaborative effort was informed by the Community of Practice (CoP) framework, which recognizes that communities of practice are groups of people who share similar expertise and come together regularly with a shared learning goal to enhance their knowledge and skills in a focused area (Wenger-Trayner, 2015, Wenger-Trayner, 2010). The collaborative initiative adopted the practice of unhurried conversations, which is a type of dialogue founded by Johnnie Moore, a visiting professor at Salid Business School at Oxford University (Moore, 2023).  Moore shared that the benefits of unhurried conversations provide opportunities for all to be involved, listened to, and empowered to share. Through this collaborative initiative, we hope to strengthen our programs’ vision to foster a culture of shared learning with our faculty and adopt effective online equity pedagogy.

Furthermore, as higher education faces the ongoing challenge of doing more with less, it's important to embrace faculty from all locations. Full-time faculty at smaller institutions, in particular, may teach in multiple programs within the same department, which can be an exciting opportunity to work with varying students and faculty. However, this can present challenges when they are asked to attend multiple program-specific meetings and professional development sessions. Adjunct faculty are also crucial to our programs, filling in gaps in content and staffing. However, their role can be isolating, and if they are filling multiple positions across programs, they may face similar challenges to full-time faculty in terms of meetings and capacity. For both full-time and adjunct faculty, it's essential to find ways to make their participation in meetings and professional development sessions as efficient and effective as possible, given the demands on their time.

Equity Pedagogy for Students and Faculty

We know the ways in which we teach and lead have a powerful impact in either building equity and inclusiveness or limiting it. In our programs, we strive to foster a personal commitment to equity-mindedness while collectively creating teaching and learning structures and cultures that support equity, diversity, and inclusion.  We know student success is directly impacted by faculty and staff and the operation and design of our academic programs. Therefore, it is our responsibility to ensure that our programs are accessible to, inclusive of, and supportive of all students as well as faculty. Creating a collaborative and inclusive environment for faculty is not only the right thing to do, but it also creates a model for faculty to use with their students. We believe equity pedagogy must extend to the faculty group as well. This requires intentionality to create meeting structures where all participants feel safe and valued.

 In looking at individual program data, we noticed we had common needs and concerns, that reinforced the advantages of collaboration.  Many areas identified were related ideas that fall under the umbrella of equitable and inclusive teaching practices and include topics such as student feedback and faculty presence in an online environment. We saw an opportunity. Three program leaders of four online programs made a commitment to team up in order to better support all faculty. In this pilot year, we have established a community of practice (CoP). We are a group of people who share a common concern and passion for improving our work, critical components of a CoP (Wenger-Trayner 2015). 

Over the course of the 2022-2023 academic year, we hosted collaborative sessions that included unhurried conversations and due to the success of this venture, we plan to expand and continue to adopt this practice moving forward. Join us in our education session to hear about our journey and the ways in which you can facilitate your own community of practice and unhurried conversations with your faculty.

Level of Participation

In this education session, we aim to create a safe space for participants and model an unhurried conversation, a critical strategy we adopted in our graduate online collaborative. A key question framing this session will be: “How can an online collaborative utilizing unhurried conversations maximize faculty engagement and support for equitable and inclusive teaching practices?”

This discussion will be guided by the principles of unhurried conversation, which ensures that every participant will have an equal opportunity to speak and be listened to, We believe that this will create a safe and inclusive space for learning and sharing, where all ideas are respected and valued. In addition, we will share examples of our meeting structures, norms and practices, featuring two presenters, online program chairs, and directors, who will share their stories in forming the collaborative. We will also share the benefits, challenges and lessons learned through this experience.

Participants will be encouraged to reflect on their own experiences and challenges in bringing faculty together and setting goals for engaging them effectively. We will introduce the unhurried conversation model and invite participants to experience it firsthand as we explore how online programs can maximize faculty engagement and support equitable and inclusive teaching practices and faculty sense of belonging. 

Session Goals:

This session aims to:

1. provide an overview and share successful strategies of the Graduate Education Online Collaborative and its goal of fostering a culture of collaboration and shared learning among its faculty in its ongoing effort to implement effective equity pedagogy.

2. explore how the Community of Practice (CoP) framework and unhurried conversations can be used to facilitate faculty engagement and support and improve online teaching practices.

3.  provide an opportunity to experience unhurried conversations and create an action plan to address this technique as an opportunity to support faculty and adopt innovative teaching practice.

References

Equitable & Inclusive Teaching. (n.d.). Retrieved May 7, 2023, from    

         https://bokcenter.harvard.edu/inclusive-teaching

Moore, Johnnie. (n.d.). Unhurried Conversations. Unhurried. Retrieved May 7, 2023, from 

          https://www.unhurried.org/conversations

Wenger, E. (2010). Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems: The Career of a 

         Concept. In C. Blackmore (Ed.), Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice 

        (pp. 179–198). Springer London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84996-133-2_11

Wenger-Trayner, E. and Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015) An introduction to communities of 

            practice: a brief overview of the concept and its uses. Available from authors at 

         https://www.wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice.