Centre for Teaching and Learning Reports

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The Educational Developer’s Portfolio

Jeanette McDonald, Natasha Kenny, Erika Kustra, Debra Dawson, Isabeau Iqbal, Paola Borin, and Judy Chan

Educational Development Guide Series: No. 1.
The Educational Developer’s Portfolio
Learning Outcomes Assessment A Practitioner's Handbook

Lori Goff, Michael K. Potter, Eleanor Pierre, Thomas Carey, Amy Gullage, Erika Kustra, Rebecca Lee, Valerie Lopes, Leslie Marshall, Lynn Martin, Jessica Raffoul, Abeer Siddiqui, and Greg Van Gaste

Ontario’s colleges and universities have made strides in developing learning outcomes, yet effective assessment remains a challenge. Learning Outcomes Assessment A Practitioner's Handbook is a step-by-step resource to help faculty, staff, academic leaders and educational developers design, review and assess program-level learning outcomes.

The handbook explores the theory, principles, reasons for and methods behind developing program-level learning outcomes; emerging developments in assessment; and tips and techniques to build institutional culture, increase faculty involvement and examine curriculum-embedded assessment. It also includes definitions, examples, case studies and recommendations that can be tailored to specific institutional cultures.
Navigating large foundational classes: Providing scalable infrastructure for next generation blended learning classrooms to enhance student learning outcomes, access and choice

Nick Baker

Universities across the Province and around the world are struggling to meet the challenges of supporting a rapidly expanding, diverse, digitally literate, and time - poor student population who view education as a service for which they are paying (Garrison & Kanuka, 2004). As class sizes continue to grow and public funds available for expansion of physical campuses decline, there is an urgent need for universities to seek innovative and efficient approaches to utilisation of their existing spaces, leveraging technological and pedagogical advances to continue to provide high quality learning experiences for increasing numbers of students (Bates and Sangra, 2011; Owston, 2013).
Teaching Culture Indicators: Enhancing Quality Teaching

Erika Kustra, Ken N. Meadows, Debra Dawson, Catharine Dishke Hondzel, Lori Goff, Peter Wolf, Donna Ellis, Jill Grose, Paola Borin, and Sandy E. Hughes

Canadian postsecondary institutions are committed to providing students with high quality teaching and learning experiences. In recent years, provincial and institutional stakeholders have shifted their focus toward better supporting this effort and enhancing an evolving, teaching- and learning-centred institutional culture. As Cox, McIntosh, Reason, and Terenzini (2011) note, a culture with improved teaching quality is likely to lead to improved student engagement and learning. Researchers in the United States, Europe, and Australia have investigated institutional culture and its relationship to high quality teaching over the last 20 years (Aitken & Sorcinelli, 1994; Cox et al., 2011; Hodge, Nadler, Shore, & Taylor, 2011; Gosling, 2013; Harvey & Stensaker, 2008; Kallioinen, 2013; Hunt, 2013, Prosser, 2013); however, to date, there is little, if any, research done in this area in the Canadian context.
Shared Modular Course Development: A Feasibility Study

Alan W. Wright, Beverley Hamilton, Joy Mighty, Elaine Scharfe, Bill Muirhead, and Susan Vail

This project evaluated the viability of shared course development (SCD) and identified the necessary baseline mechanisms, principles, policies, and procedures for future joint course development collaborations.

Although collaborative course design is still relatively new in Ontario, our institutionally-based project teams identified and researched a number of successful examples from Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

These successful models demonstrated the transformative possibilities of blended learning, expanded course variety, maintained or enhanced the breadth of course offerings, and reduced institution-specific development costs while maintaining delivery autonomy. They also focused on enhancing student learning and produced momentum for instructional improvement and course re-design among collaborating institutions. This report concludes that there is considerable value to the development of collaborative institutional cultures in and of itself, and that collaborative capacity will become an increasingly important core competency in the more differentiated and change-oriented university sector that is emerging
The Ontario Universities’ Teaching Evaluation Toolkit: Feasibility Study

Alan W. Wright, Beverley Hamilton, Joy Mighty, Jill Scott, and Bill Muirhead

This feasibility study (the first of three phases) sought to develop a framework for improvement-oriented formative and summative assessment of teaching in Ontario. It is intended to inform future developments in teaching evaluation in the Province, and to offer a well-contextualized understanding of what the goals of teaching evaluation ought to be, what the challenges are, and the kinds of initiatives and infrastructure that would best promote the evolution of a data- informed and inquiry-inspiring approach to evaluating and improving teaching.

Our institutionally-based project teams identified and examined leading teaching evaluation practices in use internationally, compared to those in use in the Ontario context, and identified a range of aggregate data and technical tool elements to be considered when moving forward.
Leading the Leaders: Embedded Educational Leadership Initiatives at the University of Windsor

Alan W. Wright, Beverley Hamilton, Jessica Raffoul, and Peter Marval

This project explored the impact and scope of embedded educational leadership initiatives (EELIs) at the University of Windsor. EELIs are programs through which individual members of the campus community autonomously and often collaboratively develop and pursue educational improvement projects within their own contexts. Such initiatives are quite common at Canadian universities, and can include, for example, small grants schemes, teaching chairs, and peer observation of teaching networks. They serve many needs at universities, and are widely believed to be an effective approach to improving teaching and learning, driving innovation, building leadership capacity, and communicating the value institutions place on quality teaching. There has been comparatively little empirical research on the outcomes of these programs, and infrastructure for their evaluation for improvement of productivity or strategic alignment tends to be limited. Moreover, despite their strong potential, without a coordinated approach, it is hard to capitalize on the expertise created over time, to bring groups together to address joint concerns through collaborative initiatives, or to establish mechanisms to identify and further support projects whose expansion or duplication would be of benefit to other units on campus.