Game changers: developing graduate faculty for a technology-rich  (Page 4/14)

We are pursuing a different direction in contributing to the paucity of literature that addresses the professional development of faculty in moving from traditional to technology-infused teaching (Ambrosino&Peel, 2011; Gomes&Mullen, 2005; Horvitz&Beach, 2011; Papa&Papa, 2010). While we recognize the necessity and importance of the more prevalent dialogue for improving preparation programs and the leadership field more broadly, we highlight this different dimension. Our contribution is unusual in that our professional development orientation is team-based, our recognition as graduate faculty innovators of technology-rich learning environments is already established, and our reflection on pedagogical innovation is at the program, not course, level where we together create, implement, and evaluate. As such, in this collaborative reflective essay we explore our shared learning within the Educational Leadership and Cultural Foundations Department where we construct meaningful professional learning opportunities in graduate-level online environments. We include consideration of this kind of effort for the broader work of leadership preparation programs.

On a deeper level, our context for this professional development involves the revitalization of ourselves as a community of scholar-practitioners in disciplined renewal. In order to write this reflection, we have elicited each other’s understandings of the initial phase of the 2-year IMPACT V project. By doing so, we have put into action the intention of the grant project to engage consciousness, develop skills, and reflect dialogically around professional development through community-based, technology-infused, 21st-Century teaching and learning.

It is not enough to design or offer an online leadership program with the hope that it will somehow fly simply because of its intrinsic merits of accommodating students at a distance, adult learning pedagogy, and so forth. The development of online degree/licensure programs in educational leadership is about more than translating what we do as instructors in a f2f format to an online learning interface and platform. We are learning that creating impactful and successful 21st Century online programs entails radically redesigning teaching and learning. As such, we recognize that like many faculty we need ongoing, collegial support to develop the skills and dispositions to enable this transformation to occur. Our current funded project provides this support through multifaceted, differentiated professional learning opportunities, although takeaway ideas and applications are possible for different contexts. In this joint reflection we ask, how do educational leadership faculty adapt to and transform the online learning environment within a changing culture that is itself entrenched in bureaucracy?

Background context of the degree program

As four full-time professors who belong to a departmental culture of 13 faculty members, we have recently participated in a strategic planning process in our university, school, and Department. Within the Department, we arrived at a consensus that our core values include innovation and entrepreneurship that cultivate scholarly inquiry and professional development in our work. To our educational leadership team, this value gives deepened credibility to the promise of innovative approaches to online learning. In this vein, we are also committed to a learner-centered approach to our social justice work, which means that we aim to focus our teaching, scholarship, service, and community engagement on equity, excellence, relevance, high quality, and the best interests of students.