Education Focussed Communities of Practice: Online Interdisciplinary Learning Communities to Improve the Student Experience
Associate Professor Louise Lutze-Mann, Ms Jamie-Lee Burgess, Mr Collins Fleischner, Dr Iwan Kelaiah, Ms Tuhina Pandey, Dr Joshua Swift Office of PVC Education
Higher Education institutions house a wealth of knowledge on learning and teaching strategies that are often siloed into disciplines( Backmore and Kandiko 2010). Although disciplines are important for knowledge creation and organisational structures, they can inhibit innovative practices and the transfer of knowledge across fields( MacKinnon et al. 2010). The interdisciplinary Education Focussed( EF) led Communities of Practice( CoPs) at UNSW provide a method to generate, maintain and disseminate innovative practices that result from collaboration among academics and professionals focussing on educational initiatives.
CoPs possess three key attributes, namely domain, community and practice( Cater-Steel et al. 2017). The ten EF CoPs comprise different domains, with each focusing on an element of learning and teaching such as Student Wellbeing, Digital Assessment and Student Feedback. Community is fostered within each CoP through regular fortnightly or monthly meetings and ongoing online collaboration using Microsoft Teams. The CoPs demonstrate impact through practice, positively influencing courses as a result of knowledge shared and generated in the CoPs. The EF CoPs cultivate domain, community and practice to positively impact education at UNSW.
The EF CoPs benefit the learning and teaching community at UNSW. The development of blended learning communities advances academic and professional staff capability by transferring tacit knowledge from one member to another, providing frequent formal and informal professional development opportunities, and increasing collaboration between UNSW’ s student-centred services( including Nura Gili, UNSW Health Services etc.) and academics. These benefits, deliberate in construction, result in the development of innovative practices and resources that benefit the wider education community.
Key features that have contributed to the success of these communities include support and opportunity. Support is provided to the CoPs through Academic Leads, a funded Project Officer and the EF Team. Opportunities include leadership roles, assistance with scholarly output, access to a wider audience, and frequent interdisciplinary collaborative experiences. Success will ultimately be measured by impact on the student experience.
Noting the significance of the student perspective, efforts are being made to increase student input in the CoPs. To date, real-time student consultation has been offered through an open EF forum at Term intervals in 2020. However, with acknowledgement of our current limited student input, the formation of an EF student committee is in process, which we hope will provide a method to inform current learning and teaching practices.
References: Blackmore, P. and Kandiko, C.( 2010),‘ Interdisciplinary Leadership and Learning’, in Davies, M., Devlin, M. and Tight, M. eds.( 2010) Interdisciplinary Higher Education: Perspectives and Practicalities, Bingley: Emerald. Cater-Steel, A., McDonald, J., Albion, P. and Redmon, P.‘ Sustaining the Momentum: A Cross-Institutional Community of Practice for Research Supervisors’, in McDonald, J. and Cater-Steel, A. eds.( 2017) Implementing Communities of Practice in Higher Education, Dreamers and Schemers, Singapore: Springer. MacKinnon, P., Rifkin, W. D., Hine, D. and Barnard, R.( 2010),‘ Chapter 2 Complexity and mastery in shaping interdisciplinarity’, Davies, M., Devlin, M. and Tight, M. eds. Interdisciplinary Higher Education: Perspectives and Practicalities, Bingley: Emerald
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