Part 1 The Presentation
https://app.slidebean.com/p/jnfk2C9s4T/Consulting-Proposal
I had originally planned to create a custom video as an example of a discussion that I might have with a colleague to influence and persuade the merits of adapting eportfolios and implementing COVA theory into their instructional methods.
What is the proverb? “Good intentions pave the way to Hell.” Maybe a bit severe, but my plans did not go the way I intended. Unexpectedly, I was contacted by FEMA and they wanted to inspect my property on Thursday afternoon and that was followed by my mortgage company and insurance company wanting to inspect my property on Friday. In addition, each had testimonial documents to review and wanted additional information submitted.
I, in turn, altered my plans for this assignment by producing a presentation instead.
Part 2
The Why, the What and the How: Transferring University Press e-Portfolio and Learning Culture to the Lamar University Department of Communication
My innovation plan background is a culmination of many years professional experience and learning. I’ve always been a life-long learner and throughout my career, I’ve always pushed myself to be an indispensable asset to every organization I’ve been a part of – if you’re going to do something; do it the best you can.
Teaching has been no different. In addition, since my undergraduate experiences at Lamar over 25 years ago, I have always maintained a close and personal relationship with the Department of Communication serving on various alumni panels and advisory councils.
The University Press (UP) culture and my experiences there, I have always believed, provided to me a significant learning experience and environment. I feel fortunate to have had long-term mentorships from several faculty members, particularly from long time Director of Student Publications Howard Perkins.
However, in my professional capacities, I frequently directed staff hiring and development and many, many recent graduates, regardless of university affiliation, applied for positions woefully unprepared and lacking substantive examples of what they had learned and produced while in school.
Forward to 2015, I was recruited by current Director of Student Publications Andy Coughlan and a faculty committee to co-advise the UP, direct UP advertising and to teach, as needed, within the Department of Communications.
The culture of the UP has always been informal in practice, but highly professional in expectations of quality produced work. The UP is perennially among the most awarded student publications in Texas and the south-central region of the United States among collegiate programs. For example, the UP is the holder of 14 Associated Press Managing Editor’s news awards – more than the University of Texas and Texas A&M combined. The APME does not have a student awards category.
A component of UP culture has been portfolios. Students, especially Communication majors and editors, were expected and encouraged to create portfolios of their published works. However, portfolios were not mandatory or required as part of the program and after every graduation period, it was fairly common for graduates to return to the UP to track down their story clips, photos and etc.
My desire as co-advisor was to formalize eportfolios as a part of all student’s UP experiences as allowable and reasonable and also to capture elements of UP culture so that its practices and culture could, perhaps, be extended and replicated to other parts of the Department of Communication.
The DLL program has provided the opportunity for me to research and develop an innovation plan, implementation plan, metrics for measurement and now, a plan for Professional Learning (PL) to support those plans.
Throughout the courses in the DLL, I have referenced many authors and works, and with each successive class I have attempted to narrow and sharpen the focus and emphasis of my innovation plan. My plan and its references have been edited considerably since the first draft produced in EDLD 5303.
Preeminent in my references are several overlapping components and learning theories, especially the structure of Choice, Ownership, Voice and Authenticity as defined by Harapnuik (2016), Finks Taxonomy of Significant Learning (2003) and Christensen’s disruption theory for higher education (2011) to create an overview of my plan.
Constructivism is the primary structure I have used in my classroom for years, although I never really knew what to call it until I entered the DLL program. I have been able to research the work of Bruner’s (1966, 1990) and Piaget’s (1960, 1981) development of constructivism and frame their work within the context of my plan objectives.
The greatest asset for my innovation plan has been to develop a framework to define UP culture and practice. I have listed multiple resources to try provide context to describe the culture and practices of the UP, but I have especially focused on exploring Siemens theory of connectivism (2004) and Vygotsky’s elaboration of psychological theories in learning environments. In addition, Bandura’s findings on collaboration in social environments was referred to me by Dr. Harapnuik as an additional resource to review and I chose to include it because there a social/groupthink reward and failure aspect to UP culture.
The implementation process, I chose to emphasize focused on individual and small group conversations and discussions with fellow faculty and staff. Our department is small enough, that I was convinced my greatest chance for success would best be promoted through interpersonal communication (Patterson, et. al. 2012, 2013).
Patterson’s Crucial Conversations (2012) had the strongest impact on my decision to take this approach and it has been successful so far. I feel my strongest asset is to talk to my key influencers to detail my plan. I also felt that this plan was my strongest asset to persuade my key dissenters.
The next phase I’m building up to is a departmental wide roll out of the overall eportfolio plan. I have always known that my plan would need a PL component not only for the actual technical training, but as context to further reinforce the “Why, How and What” of the overall plan. I have been collaborating my department chair Natalie Tindall on and with our dean, Derina Holtzhausen on the final proposal and presentation to the departmental faculty and staff.
I had great anticipation for the EDLD 5318 Instructional Online Design course and I planned my PL component as well as the eportfolio component around my projects for that course. My attitude toward that section was somewhat diminished after a subjective and arbitrary issue between the instructor, the instructional assistant and myself derailed the overall progress and, I think quality of that project.
The event happened as the instructional assistant, after a second time within the first two weeks of the course, sent out an email that contradicted discussions from the online class conferences with the class and instructor. These contradictions were posted in Blackboard discussion and via emails among students. During the second week and after the second confusing mass email, the class had an assignment that in one week (week two) the class was to upload 50 percent of the course and upload the remaining 50 percent the following (week three). I received 50 out of 100 points despite uploading 65 percent of my overall content the first week. I questioned my grade and referred to the verbatim of the assignment text, as did other students. The subjective nature was debated as I uploaded two out of eight assignments, but much of my other material – videos I made, shared videos, rubrics, course guidelines, grading policies, etc. I appealed the decision as the lesson instructions called for “50 percent of course material.” My literal interpretation was course material is course material that includes all course content and does not exclude assignments as a separate component of the assignment nor was there any differentiation in the assignment instructions stating so. I believe I was treated unfairly as the verbatim text of the assignment was not addressed if “course material” and “assignments” were separate components and I still received a poor grade.
I pointed out that this specific issue was addressed in our course book, Tony Bates Teaching in a Digital Age (2015) and the issue was the antithesis of the actual lessons we were being taught and were frankly against the very spirit of COVA and the course as we have experienced for the past year. My question was never addressed or considered and basically the instructor refused to admit there was a valid question to be addressed. I dropped the issue, completed the next assignment and moved on to the next course. To this day I refuse to even see what my final grade was for the course.
The most disheartening item is that the instructor reached out to me (and I to her) and several times she praised my work and providing positive feedback to what I was doing the very week the assignment was due.
Why do I bring this up? Because it goes to the heart of everyone’s innovation plan – if we as instructors cannot provide purpose to what we do, why do it? Everyone makes mistakes, I make mistakes. I make mistakes and my students call me on them. I reevaluate, respond and move on collaboratively with my learners. I don’t blow them off and I don’t provide cover when my instructional team makes mistakes.
This is what I want to avoid in developing my PL plan. About 50 percent of the department has responded favorably to the innovation plan, but they have questions as to the best practices and procedures to implement the eportfolio plan. This is another key point at which COVA will become more important. So many of our professors admittedly use only lecture as a method of teaching and by using COVA as a framework I intend to coach each and every faculty and staff member to develop student-centered learning for their classrooms by helping them change the way they teach. The key advocates for the innovation plan teach subjects such as video production, film production, news writing or news gathering and are confident about transitioning to requiring student eportfolios. The key dissenters tend to fall into course work that is more theoretical and rhetorical in nature and the aversion confronts the goal of the chair and dean to move the department to a more experiential program.
Our assignment asks how we will address instructor support with our innovation plan. The Communication Department will in conjunction with innovation plan, include an instructional support component initially led by myself and my colleague Andy Coughlan. Faculty and staff will progress at implementing the plan at differentiating levels of efficiency and competence and those that are at higher levels of those metrics will be folded into a peer PL instruction cadre. The idea is that over time PL and COVA not only becomes self-sustaining within the department, but becomes part of the departmental culture and practice.
References
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Bruner, J. (1966). Toward a Theory of Instruction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Christensen C. M., Horn M. B., Soares L., & L. Caldera. (2011). Disrupting college: How disruptive
innovation can deliver quality and affordability to postsecondary education. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/labor/report/2011/02/08/9034/disrupting- college/
Patterson, K., Grenny, J., & Swizler, A. (2012). Crucial conversations: tools for talking when stakes are high. (2nd ed.). McGraw-Hill New York, NY. ISBN-10: 0071771328
Patterson, K., & Grenny, J. (2013). Influencer: The power to change anything, Second Edition. McGraw-Hill Education. ISBN 0071808868
Piaget, J. (1960). The Psychology of Intelligence. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield Adams & Co.
Piaget, J. (1981). Intelligence and Affectivity. Their Relationship during Child Development. Palo Alto: Annual Reviews.
Siemens, G. (2004). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. [online]. Retrieved Lamar University EDLD 5313 course reading list http://www.itdl.org/journal/jan_05/article01.htm
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design, Expanded 2nd Edition. Pearson. ISBN 0131950843
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8AERdtY0QW9zejGRQ7WrtDh4L9NfPtef