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I asked this question as a Twitter poll, and I am just going to post the results here real quick and reflect on the results a bit (77% said very important and 19% somewhat important, so it is obvious what my 361 respondents thought):
Question to those who teach. How important is it that folks in your teaching & learning center have teaching experience, or have themselves tried innovative pedagogies they talk about in workshops and consultations?
— Maha Bali, PhD مها بالي 🌵 (@Bali_Maha) September 30, 2021
Some of the more nuanced responses that you won’t see if you just look at the poll include:
- Institutional policies sometimes mean faculty developers aren’t allowed to teach, whether they are considered academic or admin staff. So it s not always in their hands. However, I hope this poll helps policymakers realize it is important
- Matt Crosslin made a really important point that stayed with me: if we are designing learner-centerd courses, then perhaps what is more valuable for us as faculty developers is to continue to have LEARNING experience. This one is golden imho. I think my experiences as an online learner are probably more valuable than my experiences as an online teacher when I support people in developing online courses. Not even my experience as a researcher comes close to the value of having experienced it as a learner.
- It is understandable that our experiences as teachers will always be limited. No one has taught Engineering AND literature AND history AND journalism AND sociology. So there is value in what a faculty developer brings from the experiences of others. It is also probably the case that the faculty developer is not they typical university teacher. Probably more adventurous and innovative, probably does not teach a full course load, probably does additional research on pedagogy most teachers don’t do. So while having teaching experience helps w credibility, they aren’t directly experiencing what others will experience when they teach (obviously)
Anyway… that’s my brief reflection. Just wanted to keep this one on record! If you have more comments, feel free to add them on Twitter or here in the comments.
“my experiences as an online learner are probably more valuable than my experiences as an online teacher when I support people in developing online courses” – agreed!
I think it’s really useful to be an online student when supporting others in developing online courses because your experience is quite different from that of the teacher, but I’m not convinced it’s ‘more valuable’. I think it’s more valuable than not having taught online or been a student online, but there’s so much that happens in the background of teaching – that those who don’t teach aren’t necessarily aware of – that the experience of teaching is, for me, more valuable than the experience of being a learner.
That’s for this specific scenario of faculty developers support people in developing online courses.
To be an effective online teacher, I think it’s really valuable to have been an online learner at some point. So, for me, each of these perspectives informs the others. It would be interesting for online learners to also have had an opportunity to teach online … we can all grow from seeing things from another’s vantage point.
Good thinking. I did while M.Ed on innovation and pedagogy but the most important experience was the experience…learning by doing. Finding out what was e.g online learning feels like.
I like this. I think that learning developers also have a broader insight into L&T across disciplines than staff who only teach in one. I often spot commonalities even from STEM and Humanities teaching. We should all keep learning and listening to others.
Thanks to your polling, Maha. I was an educational developer with limited teaching experiences. Now I am teaching 3 classes a week, two with > 50 students. I would want to change some of the pedagogical suggestions I gave earlier. More practicality and sustainability are needed.
Two thoughts immediately come to mind – 1) I completely get faculty/academics wanting to feel as though fac devs actually get what teaching is about and aren’t just coming with a theoretical understanding of practice. 2) Very few (if any) fac devs (or learning designers etc) come to this field without some experience in education, even if it isn’t in Higher Ed.
Our biggest challenge is that academics don’t know much about people doing this work and make a bunch of assumptions when they see that someone isn’t part of their ‘tribe’. How does someone convey their relevant experience in teaching to reassure these people?
Other commenters have already made the point that a huge strength of working in this field is the time we spend working with many academics on their specific teaching issues, learning about teaching across disciplines and cohorts. Having that bird’s eye view over teaching often offers insights that teaching a single class (after little to no educational training) can’t provide.
Agreed Colin! There is a part of this that is about assumptions professors make. Academia is such a gatekeeping culture that it penetrates all areas and creates silos. Facdev tend to work across disciplines and gain insights they wouldn’t get from teaching one course or discipline themselves
Secondly, ‘learner’ is key term here. Others have mentioned importance of being one, but colleagues may not always consider themselves learners, often they are looking for a fix & don’t want to learn by doing. We all need to be comfortable with uncomfortable to learn together 2/2
In our Teachers Professionalisation Program we teach in duo’s: a teaching doctor/dentist/scientist with an educationalist.
Such an interesting discussion. Fully agree with all the points raised but wanted to add couple more into the mix. Firstly, *having* teaching experience/qualifications/prof accreditation in the 3rd space does not necessarily mean that academic colleagues recognise it as such 1/2