“Around the world” podcast
Episode 2- Online Learning Toolkit (OLT)
Hello faculty development community! Welcome back and have a great start into the new Academic Year. To ease you into it, today we are making a new stop on our journey around the world, as I invite you to listen to the second episode of the “Educationalist: Around the World” podcast.
In this episode you will meet my two lovely guests- Judith Dutill and Melissa Wehler, co-creators of the Online Learning Toolkit. The Online Learning Toolkit facilitates joyful, purposeful, strengths-based professional development for higher educators. The Online Learning Toolkit proudly facilitates the OLT Community of Practice, a global network of caring, passionate, creative, and curious educators who provide support, share resources, and explore new frontiers in teaching and learning, together. More information about the OLT and their upcoming projects is available at onlinelearningtoolkit.com. You can also follow them on Twitter: @oltoolkit, @judithdutill & @profwehler.
In this podcast we talk about the approach to faculty development and support that OLT is providing, with a great focus on creating a community. We also touch upon the impact Covid-19 had on their work and how they adapted to the new and increasing needs for support in designing and implementing online learning. Judith and Melissa generously provide some tips on what we can focus on to make our efforts (regardless of the recources we have available) worthwhile:
- be proactive: while it’s important to react to faculty needs, taking initiative and creating opportunities is incredibly valuable;
- think of it as a journey: the goal is not to turn faculty into experts in online learning, but rather to incrementally develop one’s teaching practice;
- focus on community: create and cultivate connections, they will turn up to be an invaluable resource.
To learn more from these two inspiring educators and faculty developers I invite you to take some time and listen to the podcast.
Disclaimer: As this podcast was recorded before the summer, some of the information on the programmes mentioned is no longer up-to-date. That’s why I encourage you to check out the current OLT offer here if you want to become part of their community. Also, I need to apologise for the not optimal sound quality; I am still in the beginning of my podcasting career and I really hope this will not take too much away from the great conversation we had.
You can catch up with our previous stories here:
- A group-based approach to online course design, by Kate Mitchell, University of Melbourne, Australia;
- From solo artists to jazz ensembles: Peer support as a tool for teacher development, by Sanna Eronen, University of Vaasa, Finland;
- Sharing stories and practices of assessment in emergency remote teaching, by Sukaina Walji, University of Cape Town, South Africa;
- Inter-institutional partnerships in faculty development: A crowdsourced list with examples form around the world;
- “Around the world” podcast, episode 1: Jessamyn Neuhaus.
This post is part of the “Around the world” series on faculty development. Watch this space in the coming months for more inspiration on professional development approaches in Higher Education from around the globe.