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Centers for Teaching and Learning: Advancing Educational Developers and Learning Mobility

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Mobility in higher education has become an imperative, and faculty acting as educational developers play a large role in providing mobility.

Mobility in a collegiate learning context connotes the physical and virtual movement of learners, courses, programs, and in some instances, institutions. When and where higher education learning occurs—and who assesses, recognizes and asserts it as legitimate—is becoming increasingly complex. At varying degrees, college and university faculty remain the sentries and arbitrators who enable and constrain learning mobility. Principally, faculty learning judgments affect learners’ statuses, pathways and pacing toward degree conferral, certification completion and associated verification of learning outcome achievements and competency attainment.  

Faculty valuation of learning that occurs outside the classroom, such as granting credit for prior learning and work-based learning, can alleviate real and opportunity costs for learners. Expanding the range of educational experiences that faculty legitimate as credit worthy, however, challenges historical assertions that faculty are lone sentinels of college-level curricula. Generally, faculty view the learning process as occurring within the confines of their individual and collective teaching. Faculty collectives of accredited programs tend to double down in this regard, primarily due to real and perceived external pressures. These and other limiting factors notwithstanding, centers for teaching and learning (CTLs) can serve as facilitators and catalysts for change in advancing a faculty-enabled learning mobility imperative. 

Faculty as Educational Developers 

Simply stated, an imperative of this magnitude is an educational development change management endeavor. Educational development is an expansive and elevated growth-related construct that encompasses faculty, instructional and organizational development. Casting faculty development in this larger context facilitates an extension of their consideration and valuation of learning that occurs outside their standard curricular purview. To that end, CTLs and affiliated educational developers are well situated to serve in essential change agent roles, with respect to introducing and cultivating evidence-based practices that support faculty’s creative and intellectual journeys as members of localized learning communities and more far-reaching learning ecosystems.  

The CTLs at many colleges and universities have until recently intensely focused on faculty development and tangentially on learner success. A recent study of more than 1,200 CTLs at U.S. colleges and universities suggests that, in addition to the number of centers being on the rise, more attention is directed to student learning advances that result from more effective teaching [3]. Generally, faculty-informed inputs and resulting outcomes are reflected in faculty development and evaluation processes (e.g., promotion and tenure) and learners’ success (e.g., retention, persistence and completion). The efficacy of a particular CTL approach, however, is institution specific. 

CTLs function at the center and periphery of learning domains, particularly in relation to their positionality and impact with respect to faculty and learner development and success. For example, curricula learning modality (e.g., on-campus, online, hybrid and hybrid flexible) has garnered a lot of attention since higher education’s broad first-order pivot to online delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic. For many institutions, CTL administrators and center-affiliated faculty were the first responders in managing the monumental shift to online curricula delivery and associated support for faculty and learners. A second-order effect of that vital and disruptive change has been faculty’s contingent acceptance of virtual learning and utilitarian recognition of transportable learning, by which the learner is not at a fixed or predetermined location. Rather than having an equalizing effect, virtual and hybrid learning have opened space to consider learners’ mobility conditions and outcomes more intentionally. In that regard, CTLs were thrust into and remain entrenched in critical equity work. 

CTLs bear notable responsibility for helping ensure the realization of more equitable learning mobility, in terms of assisting faculty with determining if, when and how learning outcomes can be differentially achieved. Wright presents four ways by which CTLs achieve their work [3]:  

  1. The prominent hub CTL functions as a centralized connector that promotes and supports dialogue and collaboration between faculty and learners by way of centralized resources.  
  2. The sieve CTL employs evidence-based practices in service of teaching and learning, sifting through, interrogating, discussing, experimenting with and exchanging education strategies and tactics.  
  3. The incubator CTL focuses on faculty development and growth through orientations, one-on-one consultations and innovative programs.  
  4. The temple CTL aims to create and promote space for recognizing and rewarding notable teaching and learning instantiations.  

Fast and Forward Looking: The Mobilizer CTL  

As educational developers, faculty can accelerate the evolution of CTLs by cultivating a complementary learning mobility viewpoint to enrich those units’ work. Furthermore, CTL leaders’ collaboration with and support of faculty to be more intentional, in terms of curricular design and instructional approaches that can accommodate mobile learners’ life circumstances, situate their respective centers to take on a fifth modus operandi of mobilizer. Within the envisioned mobilizer CTL, ideally, faculty will function as educational architects who aim to advance learning mobility by provisioning for greater curricular flexibility to meet postsecondary learners’ contemporary and future needs and expectations—learners whose pursuits of educational credentials are multifaceted.  

For maximum success, an imperative of this nature must be learner centered and consider different teaching and learning approaches. Learners may be motivated or challenged by a particular approach, based on numerous factors that influence their respective learning agency and self-efficacy. Exposing learners to faculty-facilitated learning vs. purely instructor-led teaching can rouse learner confidence and self-advocacy. Arguably, the degree of learners’ self-actualized mindsets may correlate to variant learner expectations and demands of institutions to recognize and immediately grant them credit for demonstrated competencies. This learning mobility hypothesis is worth exploring. 

 

References 

[1] Merriam, S. B., & Baumgartner, L. M. (2020). Learning in adulthood: A comprehensive guide. John Wiley & Sons. 

[2] Kezar, A., DePaola, T., & Scott, D. T. (2019). The gig academy: Mapping labor in the neoliberal university. Johns Hopkins University Press. 

[3] Wright, M. C. (2023). Centers for teaching and learning: The new landscape in higher education. JHU Press.