It can be difficult to fully recognize and leverage educator learning communities on large campuses. The #iteachmsu Commons provides an educator-driven space for sharing teaching resources, connecting across educator networks, and growing teaching practice. Join us to preview our new commons website and share feedback about your first impressions!
We believe that a wide educator (Faculty, Graduate TAs, Learning Designers, Advisors, et al.) community helps learning happen across our campus at Michigan State University. But, on such a large campus, it can be difficult to fully recognize and leverage this community’s teaching and learning innovations. To address this challenge, the #iteachmsu Commons provides an educator-driven space for sharing teaching resources, connecting across educator networks, and growing teaching practice.
#iteachmsu Commons content may be discipline-specific or transdisciplinary, but will always be anchored in five core teaching competency areas. At iteach.msu.edu, you will find individual posts and articles, curated playlists, educator learning module pathways, and a campus-wide teaching and learning events calendar. We cultivate this commons across spaces. And through campus educator engagement, we will continue to nurture a culture of teaching and learning across MSU and beyond.
This Emerging Ideas Session will showcase the #iteachmsu Commons website, a concept partly conceived at a previous OLC Innovate Conference, in its current beta form. OLC Innovate attendees will have the opportunity to interact with the site and share initial thoughts. We’ll also have large posters of site screens, and will ask attendees to respond to a short series of prompts based on the core functions of the site (e.g. sharing teaching resources, connecting across educator networks, and growing teaching practice).
We also recognize that we’re not the first people to re-center teaching on a college campus without a teaching and learning center. We’re interested in collecting resources and ideas from our OLC colleagues regarding what educator development efforts exist in their communities. It’s important to understand existing initiatives in other spaces, and we’re excited to learn with and from others at OLC Innovate.
Our emerging ideas session will consist of small, and varied engagement activities to accommodate various learning/engagement styles while soliciting diverse feedback from our peers, including:
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Opportunities to interact with our web space live
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Mini-dialogues with #iteachmsu commons team members
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Sticky wall feedback of first impressions on design
Participants will leave with a great overview of the ways in which we approach gathering community feedback, plan for and implement prototype testing moments, and incorporate user experience data into our website (re)design. They will also move towards a good understanding of the potential impacts large, decentered campuses like Michigan State University have on the maintenance, development, and growth of educator learning communities. It is our hope, by sharing about the #iteachmsu Commons and through learning from others in the OLC Community, to further work towards a future where educators across the board (not just those that “teach”) not only value sharing, connecting, and growing, but where they also feel valued in doing that type of work.