“6. Leading Collaboratively” in “Principles of Blended Learning”
Chapter 6 | Leading Collaboratively
Collaborative leadership pulls together leaders at all levels of the institution. It means encouraging input and creating ownership through collaboratively developing a vision and plan as well as sharing responsibility for the outcomes.
—(Garrison, 2016, p. 146)
As educational institutions face tremendous winds of change, their traditional hierarchical approach to leadership is proving to be less effective in dealing with those changes. Not only is higher education in need of commitment to change, but also there is a need for a new kind of leadership. It will create structures and processes that engage individuals across the organization. Leading collaboratively creates an organizational culture in which leadership is a shared responsibility (Garrison, 2016). Collaborative inquiry focused on leadership necessitates an investment in the culture of the organization that reflects a climate of trust, shared responsibility, and clear direction.
Fernandez and Shaw (2020) document how the decision to pivot to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic was made swiftly. Moreover, they note that institutions operating with a shared leadership model benefited from a greater degree of agility, innovation, and collaboration. They also highlight three best practices for leadership for navigating unpredictable challenges such as the pandemic. First, they discuss a form of servant leadership that emphasizes empowerment, involvement, and collaboration in which academic leaders place the interests of others above their own. Second, they recommend that academic leaders distribute leadership responsibilities, including a measure of authority to make decisions, to a network of teams throughout the organization to improve the quality of the decisions made in resolving crises. And third, they advocate that leaders communicate clearly and frequently with all stakeholders through a variety of channels. With regard to the third recommendation, Schrage (1995, p. 5) adds that “organizations that attempt to substitute increased communication for increased collaboration will learn the hard way that there is a tremendous difference. Flooding someone with more information doesn’t necessarily make him a better thinker.” This thinking is akin to Freire’s (2018) argument for applying a problem-solving approach (shared discourse), which includes effective two-way communication, rather than a banking model (depositing information) to higher education. In addition, we emphasize that there is an important difference between cooperation and collaboration. Cooperation in an organization too often means that individuals are to do their jobs without concern about the bigger picture. Collaboration means working with others on common problems or innovations such as blended learning (Garrison, 2017). Effective groups are distinguished by “members who communicated a lot, participated equally, and possessed good emotion-reading skills” (Woolley et al., 2015, third last paragraph).
Brown (2021) refers to this as a form of integrated leadership. He suggests that integration is the key driver of digital transformation in higher education. No single unit, not even the president’s office, can accomplish this transformation by itself. Brown believes that such transformation calls for “deep and coordinated shifts within an institution and that coordination implies integration” (p. 43). He states that integration begins with and is propelled by leadership, especially leadership that “sets aside turf battles and instead forms collaborative, cross-institutional partnerships to achieve . . . goals [of digital transformation]” (p. 43).
This concept of integrated leadership aligns closely with Indigenous principles of educational leadership. These principles consist of cultural awareness, collaboration, and capacity building (Morin, 2016). In terms of cultural awareness, Schein (2011, p. 354) indicates that “culture is pervasive; it influences all aspects of how an organization deals with its primary task, its various environments, and its internal operations.” With regard to an Indigenous educational context, leaders need to stand back and observe the community and school culture. Stockdale et al. (2013, p. 99) found that “highly effective First Nations principals take the time to really ‘know’ the community and are comfortable attending community functions.”
Morin (2016) emphasizes the importance of an Indigenous leader’s ability to bring people together and support collaboration with one another. She stresses that leaders need to put their differences aside as they team up with their colleagues to figure out a solution to a problem, such as low school attendance and engagement. Gurr et al. (2006, p. 382) states that effective leaders “clear a pathway for people to be involved and achieve [results] by removing blockages and providing a clear vision serviced by adequate resources.”
In terms of capacity building, Indigenous leadership involves taking risks and making changes (Morin, 2016). A case study by Mulford et al., (2007, p. 22) identified that capacity building consists of a three-stage process through which leaders who supported and encouraged their staff “encouraged others to undertake leadership roles, encouraged staff to accept responsibility for their professional learning, and fostered and supported professional learning for groups (for example, senior staff).”
Initiating and Sustaining Organizational Change
Collaborative or integrative leadership allows organizations to initiate, respond to, and sustain change. As we have documented in this book, the learning experience in higher education is focused increasingly on blending face-to-face and online learning (Pelletier et al., 2021). Although blended learning course redesigns are becoming common in higher education, few are grounded in a strategic institutional initiative with policy and financial support from senior administration. Too often they are seen as “one-off” course projects associated with unwanted technology innovation. For this reason, it is clear that transformation must be framed as an institutional strategy with collaborative and visible leadership.
Garrison and Kanuka (2004, pp. 102–103) offer a list of blended learning course redesign requirements to be sustainable.
- • Create a clear institutional direction and policy.
- • Frame the potential, increase awareness, and commit.
- • Establish a single point of support, quality assurance, and project management.
- • Create an innovation fund to provide the financial support and incentives to faculty and departments to initiate blended learning course transformations.
- • Invest in a reliable and accessible technology infrastructure.
- • Strategically select prototype projects that prove to be exceptionally successful exemplars of effective learning.
- • Develop formal instructional design support available through a blended format.
- • Systematically evaluate satisfaction and success of the teaching, learning, technology, and administration of new courses.
- • Create a task group to address issues, challenges, and opportunities and communicate and recommend new directions to the university community.
Examples of higher education institutions that have followed these guidelines include the University of Ottawa, the University of Central Florida, and the University of Wisconsin—Madison. At the University of Ottawa, the Board of Governors approved an initiative for the implementation of large-scale blended courses in April 2013 led by the vice-provost of teaching and learning. As part of this initiative, the university established the goal of converting 20% of its course offerings, roughly 1,000 courses, into a blended format. This transformation affected 500 professors and close to 25,000 students. An interim report indicated that the University of Ottawa was on track to achieve this goal, and its success was attributed to the collaborative leadership approach by the institution’s Teaching Learning Support Services (2016).
The University of Central Florida began its blended learning initiative in 1996, and the majority of its courses are now offered in a blended format. Similar to the University of Ottawa, the University of Central Florida credits the success of its blended learning initiative to collaborative leadership as well as its Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness team. That team is dedicated to assessing and communicating the impacts of instructional technologies on the learning climate of the university (Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness, 2022).
Another pioneer in the field of blended learning is the University of Wisconsin—Madison. It, too, has developed an overarching collaborative vision of its institutional blended learning initiative, but each school, college, institute, and division has created its own disciplinary vision of blended learning and created its own campus toolkit (University of Wisconsin—Madison, 2022). Such web-based toolkits provide each discipline with a place to share its stories, resources, and events with its community of users.
Faculty Development
Pelletier et al. (2021) indicate that one of the biggest challenges to the successful adoption of blended learning in higher education is effective faculty development programs. Unfortunately, the faculty culture in higher education is experiencing an erosion of collaboration and community (Picciano, 2021). For significant and sustained change in blended teaching and learning, faculty must have opportunities for, and be supported in, working collaboratively as trusted colleagues rather than simply attending a series of “one-off” educational technology workshops (Garrison, 2016; Smadi et al., 2021b). A study by Waghid et al. (2021) demonstrated how a coherent framework such as the Community of Inquiry could be used effectively to guide faculty development for blended and online learning. The findings from this study were echoed by Pischetola (2021), who stressed how important use of the CoI framework was in helping faculty to redesign their courses for blended learning.
The University of Calgary developed a course redesign program for blended learning based upon the CoI framework called the Inquiry through Blended Learning (ITBL) program (Vaughan, 2010). The focus of inquiry in the program was on the connection between one’s teaching practice and student learning. The potential exists in such a professional development program for faculty to make a transformational shift in their approach to teaching from disseminating information to creating learning environments. Students co-construct their knowledge through interactions with the professor, their peers, and the course content. The role of technology shifts from the packaging and distribution of information content to its use as a “toolkit” to enable students to communicate and construct collaboratively their own knowledge. Technology can be used as a catalyst (triggering event) to question one’s curriculum and pedagogy (Sands, 2002).
By applying the CoI framework to the ITBL program, the focus of the cognitive presence sphere became a process of inquiry into teaching practice (Vaughan & Garrison, 2005). The ability of the community to support and sustain this inquiry formed the social presence. The opportunities for blended (face-to-face and online learning) support were encapsulated within the teaching presence. Figure 6.1 and the box below illustrate how the CoI framework was adapted for a blended faculty development initiative.
Figure 6.1
Blended Faculty Community of Inquiry—Three Presences
Inquiry Process
As discussed in Chapter 1, cognitive presence is the element of the CoI framework most basic to success in higher education. Cognitive processes and outcomes should be the focus of an educational Community of Inquiry, so social presence and even teaching presence are facilitators of that learning process. Garrison and Anderson (2003, p. 55) state that “cognitive presence means facilitating the analysis, construction, and confirmation of meaning and understanding in a community of learners through sustained discourse and reflection.”
To recap, cognitive presence is linked closely to the concept of critical thinking derived from Dewey’s (1933) reflective thinking and Practical Inquiry model. According to Dewey, practical inquiry is grounded in experience and integrates the public and private worlds of the learner. Based upon this definition, Garrison et al. (2000) developed their PI model to guide the analysis of cognitive presence in an educational experience mediated by computer conferencing. The four categories of this model—triggering event, exploration, integration, and resolution—were used to guide the process of inquiry in the ITBL program.
Triggering Event
A triggering event, as described by Garrison et al. (2000, p. 21), is a “state of dissonance or feeling of unease resulting from an experience.” Discussions with faculty indicate that the triggering event for participation in the ITBL program was the motivation to redesign an existing course to improve student learning and faculty satisfaction. This desire presents the opportunity to make one’s implicit assumptions about a particular course design explicit. The ITBL course redesign process was initiated through a formal call for proposals to participate in a blended faculty Community of Inquiry. The application process was designed so that faculty were provided with the CoI framework and the necessary support to begin reflecting on their existing courses and making initial plans for the process of redesigning them.
The ITBL application form consisted of three parts: project detail, project evaluation and sustainability plans, and proposed budget. A series of brown-bag lunches and one-on-one application consultation sessions was also provided to ensure that faculty were clear about the course redesign focus of the program and the expectation that they would become active participants in the blended faculty development Community of Inquiry. Inherent in this process, faculty were encouraged to take a community or team approach to the redesign process in their applications. These teams often consisted of a group of faculty who taught the selected course as well as teaching assistants, graduate students, and others who provided course-related support (e.g., subject area librarians).
Once the successful ITBL applicants were informed of their awards, an initial project meeting was scheduled that included the project team (faculty, teaching assistants, graduate students) and representatives from the institution’s teaching and learning centre, library, and information technology department. The purpose of this meeting was to clarify the project goals, timelines, roles, and responsibilities for those involved in supporting the redesign process. This meeting also helped to identify professional development support needs and requirements for the project team members. This information was then used to shape the activities and resources incorporated into the ITBL program.
As a follow-up to this meeting, the project teams were encouraged to post a summary message to a discussion board on a course website that had been constructed for the ITBL program. The message described the course redesign goals for the project, action plans, and any questions related to the redesign process (triggering events). Besides helping to clarify the course redesign process, the post allowed the other members of the ITBL cohort to begin to learn more about each other’s project. This discussion forum posting process also provided the first hands-on opportunity for the participants to interact as students with the learning management system used in most cases in their own programs.
The first face-to-face ITBL cohort meeting was designed to build upon the initial discussion forum posts to allow the participants to discuss further their course redesign questions and trigger new ideas and perspectives about teaching and learning. This process was facilitated by selectively placing the participants into small groups so that they had opportunities to interact with people from the other project teams. The three questions used to stimulate the discussion were as follows.
- • What is your definition of blended learning, and how will this concept be operationalized in your course redesign project?
- • What will be the advantages (for both students and professors) of your course redesign?
- • What do you perceive will be some of the challenges that you will encounter with your project?
An instructional design or teaching specialist was placed at each table to help guide the small group discussions and subsequently record the key points. These discussion summaries were then posted on the ITBL website as a resource and “touchstone” to stimulate further online discussion.
Our experience suggests that the initial face-to-face cohort meetings were very important in establishing the blended faculty Community of Inquiry (Vaughan & Garrison, 2006). Through the discussions in these meetings, the community members realized that they were not alone in experiencing a particular course redesign issue or concern. This shared understanding and the physical presence of the meetings quickly led to a sense of “trust and risk taking” in the group.
Exploration
The second phase of the PI model is exploration, characterized by “searching for clarification and attempting to orient one’s attention” (Garrison et al., 2000, p. 21). The exploration phase of the ITBL program consisted of a series of integrated face-to-face and online experiential learning activities that allowed the participants to become immersed in a blended learning environment from a student’s perspective. This process took place over an extended period of time, a minimum of six months, and the activities were developed based upon the feedback from the initial project meetings and in collaboration with the faculty participants of the program. These ITBL program activities were designed to provide participants with experience and expertise in the areas of curriculum design, teaching strategies, and educational technology integration (see Figure 6.2).
The curriculum design sphere involved the creation of a course outline or syllabus for the blended learning course. This document became the “blueprint” for the redesign process. In terms of teaching strategies, the ITBL program provided opportunities for the participants to develop experience and skill with online discussions, group work, and computer-mediated assessment practices. The educational technology integration component involved the acquisition of strategies and skills for managing a course website and troubleshooting basic student technology issues.
Figure 6.2
ITBL Program Outcomes for the Faculty Participants
To achieve these program outcomes, a variety of learning opportunities allowed the participants to share, discuss, and debate their course redesign experiences (Garrison & Vaughan, 2008). In the ITBL program, various information and communication technologies were used to support the exploration phase. For example, Adobe Connect was used to create brief audio presentations to help the participants prepare for upcoming face-to-face sessions, explain online activities, and summarize key course redesign concepts. Faculty research and travel commitments meant that not everyone could attend each regular face-to-face session. To overcome this challenge, a web-based synchronous communication tool similar to Zoom was used to record the face-to-face sessions for future use. A web-based conferencing application was also used to support “virtual” project meetings when team members were off campus.
In addition, faculty mentors (professors with previous blended learning experience) and students were included in the ITBL discussions. The students provided the all-important perspective of the learner (the target audience for the redesigned courses), and the faculty mentors were able to pass on their “lessons learned” from direct experience with inquiry and blended learning courses. Previous participants in the ITBL program also stressed the importance of conducting these discussions in both face-to-face and online formats (Vaughan & Garrison, 2005). The face-to-face sessions, with their physical presence and sense of immediacy, helped to establish the rhythm for the community, and the online discussion forums allowed for reflective thoughts and comments to be captured and archived as project-related resources.
Integration
The third phase is integration, which involves reflecting on how the new information and knowledge discovered can be integrated into a coherent idea or concept (Garrison et al., 2000). A common challenge for the participants involved in the ITBL program was the transition from the exploration phase to the integration phase. Many faculty members were comfortable sharing, discussing, and debating course redesign concepts, but a greater effort often was required to transfer these new ideas into practice. One strategy used in the ITBL program involved getting faculty to present project artifacts regularly, such as their course outline or assessment activity, to the rest of the community. This forced the ITBL participants to make redesign decisions and to create course-related resources. This “show and tell” process also allowed them to get valuable feedback from their peers on the artifacts. In addition, opportunities were provided to pilot portions of the projects with students who could provide insightful comments on the usability and educational value of a learning activity or resource.
To support the integration phase further, a series of individual project meetings was conducted outside the regular ITBL cohort activities. These meetings were facilitated by an instructional design or teaching specialist assigned to specific projects based upon areas of expertise that correlate to the predetermined support requirements for the project. The frequency and scope of these meetings depended on the needs of each project. Although the larger cohort meetings provided opportunities for the participants to be exposed to a diversity of ideas, these meetings focused on “getting things done.” Project development work and milestones were reviewed at each meeting, with tasks and “deliverables” assigned for the subsequent meeting.
Application/Resolution
Resolution of the dilemma or problem is the fourth phase of the PI model. Garrison and Anderson (2003, p. 60) suggest that the results from the resolution phase often “raise further questions and issues, triggering new cycles of inquiry, and, thereby, encouraging continuous learning.” The application and resolution phase of the ITBL program involved the implementation and evaluation of the course redesign project. This phase is often overlooked in professional development programs. In many programs, faculty receive support for the design and development of their projects, but the implementation stage takes place after the program has been completed. Thus, faculty are left on their own to struggle through the initial implementation of their course redesign, and in most cases little or no evaluation is conducted to determine the effectiveness of the project from either a student or a faculty perspective.
To overcome these deficiencies, the ITBL cohort was maintained throughout this phase, and the participants intentionally engaged in the process of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). To facilitate this process, a discussion of the SoTL process was conducted in one of the early face-to-face ITBL cohort meetings. These conversations involved ITBL faculty mentors who had experience with the SoTL approach and thus could demonstrate their study processes and results. Faculty were encouraged to engage in the SoTL process from the outset of their ITBL projects. By applying for institutional ethics approval at the beginning of the course redesign process, project teams were able to collect data in the form of surveys, interviews, and focus groups with students, faculty, and teaching assistants who had been involved in past iterations of the course. Several projects also obtained data on student grades and withdrawal/dropout rates for comparison with the traditional sections. The collection and analysis of the data then allowed the project team to make informed course redesign decisions such as the proper selection and integration of face-to-face and online learning activities.
Although each course redesign project had its own specific SoTL needs and research study design, ethics approval was also obtained for the entire ITBL program to collect a common set of data for each of the project implementations. Analysis of the data was used to inform future offerings of the redesigned courses and to create an institutional course redesign inventory that could be used for academic program planning. Two sets of data collection techniques used included an end-of-semester student survey using the CoI questionnaire (Appendix D), described in Chapter 5, and a post-course interview with the faculty and teaching assistants responsible for the redesigned course.
The ITBL program was designed to help faculty define their course goals and expectations, redesign their learning activities and assessment assignments, adapt and develop online learning tools, evaluate course implementations, and disseminate results. This program supported the redesign of over 50 courses, and many of them significantly reduced or eliminated lectures entirely in favour of more engaged learning processes. Skibba and Widmer (2021) replicated our ITBL program at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, and their study findings indicate that a blended faculty Community of Inquiry can transform online teaching perceptions and practices.
Conclusion
There are those who predict the emergence of a blended campus for the post-COVID-19 higher education institution (Picciano, 2021). They indicate that during the pandemic many institutions adopted a mix of face-to-face and online delivery of courses and services, thus creating an opportunity for a more permanent shift to a blended university.
As emphasized in this chapter, Clark et al. (2021) argue that this will occur only through collaborative and visionary leadership. They recommend using the return-to-campus task forces convened during the pandemic to create a shared vision for a blended campus, align resources, and establish a road map to identify what the institution can do and where partnerships are needed. Sá and Serpa (2020) also describe how the pandemic might provide opportunities for innovative approaches to teaching in higher education, such as blended learning, but they indicate that the challenge will be for academic leaders to “stay the course” in order to sustain these types of transformation. In the final chapter, we provide concluding thoughts on future directions for a collaborative constructivist approach to blended learning in higher education.
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