Maryla Bialobrzeska
A design based research process used to plan the HELM University Lecturer Development Programme
The primary purpose of the University Lecturer Development Programme (ULDP) is to improve teaching and learning across the whole university sector. In particular, by enhancing academic knowledge and competencies by supporting young lecturers to reflect on their current practices and to enhance their skills in developing learning engagements and assessment for different modalities including face-to-face, blended and totally on-line teaching. Supporting the development of professional skills and attitudes in research and community engagement is the second focus of the ULDP. HELM plans to offer a suite of professional development courses to 1000 lecturers from across all South African universities.
Working collaboratively with a group of approximately 12 teaching and learning experts and 20 master trainers, from teaching and learning units across 15 local universities, Alan Amory led the design of a series of nine online workshops to determine the key competences of the ULDP and to secure agreement on the learning design and the pedagogic approach to be used to develop the course modules for the planned programme.
Saide proposed the use of a Design Based Research (DBR) approach that would allow for iterative engagements that would lead to the development of both a set of key competences as well as to achieving consensus on the design principles, and to the pedagogic approach to be used in developing the proposed course modules [1].
DBR (Fig. 1) shows the progression through a number of cycles of analysis-exploration, design-construction and evaluation-reflection used to develop and improve a solution to solve a particular problem or a number of related problems.
Figure 1: Educational Design Based Research (redrawn from McKenney & Reeves1
The first process in the Design Based Research (DBR) was to identify the problem/s that needed to be considered (analysis-exploration) so as to address the project aims and objectives.
The second process, the development of a solution to the problem/s included two components, first, creating a design and second, the construction of a learning artifact, in this case the suite of course modules.
The third process, which is implemented to improve an intervention and identify design principles (theoretical understanding) is the testing of the solution in practice. This includes two components: evaluation and reflection. A number of iterations through each stage, or through the whole process, serve to improve the solution and design principles.
In this first phase, the inception of the ULDP, the focus was only on the first two DBR processes, i.e. identifying and analyzing the teaching and learning problems or challenges experienced by lectures and then designing an appropriate curriculum framework which would serve to address the identified need/s. A consensus building approach was used to agree on the ULDP competences or outcomes (what) and to agree on the underpinning learning design approach and pedagogic methods to be used in developing the course modules (how).
The third DBR process, evaluation and reflection, will only be implemented once the professional development course modules have been designed and implemented.
To facilitate the first process (the exploration and analysis of the problems faced by lecturers), a braining storming process, based on the participant’s own knowledge and experience of the university context, was implemented. Then, using a purpose-built web application (a widget designed by Alan Amory), the workshop participants engaged online to generate a list of challenges experienced by lectures. The next step was to use the application to prioritise these items and finally to select the top rated items to forge consensus regarding the key challenges that need to be addressed.
In a second iteration of the exploration and analysis process, the results of a professional development needs analysis survey administered to all 15 participating universities, were incorporated into the overall analysis process and a second round of prioritization of items was conducted.
The same type of iterative process, using the interactive functionality of the web consensus building application, was used in further workshops to secure agreement on the competency outcomes for ULDP and for developing learning design principles aligned to competence outcomes, and the target audience.
It was gratifying to note that the workshop participation rates remained consistently high over the almost three-month period in which the workshops were implemented. A large core group contributed to discussions and actively participated in the co-creation of the ULDP Curriculum Framework.
At the end of the process, many of the participants commented on how stimulating they had found the process and the online engagement. Participants also expressed great pleasure in working collaborative across the 15 universities that were represented in this process
[1] McKenney, S., & Reeves, T. C. (2014). Educational design research. In Handbook of research on educational communications and technology. Springer, New York, NY.