Talking Point – Flexible Targeted Online Staff Development that Works

Anne Campbell

doi:10.5334/jime.395

Abstract

The UK Open University has a large, highly distributed workforce, particularly within its part-time teaching staff who work mainly from home and who live across the UK and Ireland. In these circumstances it is a challenge to provide professional development which allows for situated learning, peer interaction and community building. In this paper we describe a case study of an online initiative which allows distance staff easily to participate in one-day professional development events focussing on specific topics of relevance to particular groups. Event design incorporates a combination of near-synchronous sessions, synchronous sessions and web-based content. The short duration of the event enhances a sense of presence and can help to create an intense and stimulating development experience. A particular advantage of the design is in providing space which can be used to encourage informal situated learning, peer interaction and community building. The format also can easily bring together a diverse range of colleagues across geographic or subject boundaries. We describe and evaluate three different types of event which have run in this space, showing that the online format encouraged attendance, and the design afforded opportunities for peer engagement, reflection and social learning. The main drawback was the large message base in the event forum, which we mitigated by providing summaries of the discussion topics.

Highlights

The Open University context The UK Open University (OU) is the largest university in the UK and is a world leader in flexible distance learning, with just under 200,000 part-time students
Part-time tutoring staff who work at a distance, as in the OU, often miss out both on face to face workshops, because they have to travel to such events, and on the informal learning that takes place for staff in a workplace during a normal working day
Our work has demonstrated that professional development in the online environment can be very successful when the opportunity to reflect together with a community of peers is included, so that it can play a central role in building confidence and inspiring new ideas for practice (Campbell and Macdonald, 2011)

Summary

Anne Campbell*

The UK Open University has a large, highly distributed workforce, within its part-time teaching staff who work mainly from home and who live across the UK and Ireland. In these circumstances it is a challenge to provide professional development which allows for situated learning, peer interaction and community building. A particular advantage of the design is in providing space which can be used to encourage informal situated learning, peer interaction and community building. We describe and evaluate three different types of event which have run in this space, showing that the online format encouraged attendance, and the design afforded opportunities for peer engagement, reflection and social learning.

Introduction

Discussion and Conclusion