Summary
The Learning and Teaching community, set up in 2020, is an online space on Teams for staff and teaching practitioners to come together and share knowledge around digital practice. After four years and growing to 500+ members,an evaluation was carried out. Survey responses were generally positive, highlighting benefits like peer learning and staying updated on developments. Future suggested themes involve focusing on inclusive digital practices, as well as AI, assessment alternatives, and student induction. The community is actively working to improve and adapt to members' needs.
Learning and Teaching community on Teams-where to next?
In 2020 the Learning and Teaching community was set up in Teams to foster a collaborative approach and build a community of practice (Lave & amp; Wenger, 1998). Professional staff and teaching practitioners came together to share their experiences by participating in informal online group sessions called LEaD Light Lunch and discuss the digital tools and approaches they used. After 4 years, and with over 500 members, we have now asked the community to give some feedback about its future. Should it carry on as it is? What can we do together to make it better?
To begin the evaluation process there was a short survey with questions about the community experience. Responses to ‘How have you benefitted from the community?’ were mostly positive and included an appreciation of the opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals:
“It’s been good to connect with others who have similar interests.”, “We share problems and solutions, hear about good practice and research”, “I have learnt from my peers and experts and have been able to fold that learning into my own teaching.” and “It’s nice to see how well the community engage with one another.”
Respondents also highlighted the benefit of keeping up-to-date with developments in their field.
“Digital Learning design and Digital Accessibility in Education have been very helpful for following the conversation and events relevant to these channels”.
“One particular Light Lunch session springs to mind is the recent AI session with an external speaker which opened up lots of things to explore with AI.”
and some even found direct applications for their teaching practice:
“The last session on AI provided me with actionable takeaways for my own practice.”
A key point was how the community provided opportunities to learn across disciplines:
“In such a large organisation with many schools its great to learn from others and get ideas”
and it was mentioned as an efficient way to solve problems:
“I find it always helps to discuss things with peers, and raise questions – it can be much quicker and less formal than an email.”
Of course, a few participants were unsure of any specific benefits or found online communities less helpful, unless they already knew the people well.
The last LEaD Light lunch session of the year was held in June, where over 35 acadmics and professional staff came together to talk about the responses to the survey and set some goals for the new academic year. It was an engaged and lively session and a few polls were run (with some technical wrangling of course).
The first poll was to rank ideas that came through from the survey question ‘What could be done to encourage more participation in the community?’ Participants voted for the top three suggestions (see Fig.1)
So over the summer, some thinking and planning will be going into these ideas. For example, for the ‘establish mentoring opportunities’ idea, the student digital community’s effective ‘member’s story’ feature could be emulated. This monthly pen profile highlights volunteer members’ interests and approaches, maybe allowing others to tag them for questions or ideas, see example below. ( Fig. 2).
Furthermore, this is also an opportunity to focus on aspects of the new Professional Standards Framework (PSF) for teaching and supporting learning. For this online community the PSF could provide a framework to think more about inclusive digital practices, including adaptive teaching approaches in digital environments. A new professional value (V5) as been introduced, which is also very relevant: “Collaborating with others to enhance practice.”
To find out more about the new Professional Standards Framework, see Dr Clare Tyrer’s Learning at City blog
The last poll of the session asked participants ‘What themes would align with your school’s priorities ?’ Specific suggestions included having discussions around assessment such as exploring alternatives to conventional essays as well as digital accessibility and AI. There was also interest in gathering ideas for student induction, which means that we have got a Summer LEaD Light Lunch special on the 25th July at 1pm to talk about induction ideas as well as students’ digital literacy skills, so do come and find out what is going on and tell us what you are up to.
Missed last year’s sessions? LEaD Light Lunch playlist 2023/24
If we have any ideas or anything you would like to share with the community do reach out in the Learning and Teaching community on Teams or contact elisabetta.lando@city.ac.uk
