One for all, and all for one: A nationwide vision of inter-institutional faculty development
Guest post by Manuel João Costa (University of Minho) and Sandra Soares (University of Aveiro), Portugal
When it comes to faculty development in Higher Education, the world is not flat. The assumptions, values and beliefs by which countries and institutions emphasise the importance of faculty development vary immensely. In Europe, for example, faculty development in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) is mandatory in some countries (e.g. UK, Switzerland or Sweden), as required by national laws or accreditation agencies, whereas in others this is a dimension entirely dependent on the motivation and will of institutional leaders. This is the case of Portugal, where HEIs generally do not formally integrate teaching and learning centres in their structure. As such, there is limited support for the teaching community. Developing learning and teaching in such contexts demands a lot of determination. Strong leadership, support, creativity and strategic insight become key ingredients to succeed.
The first steps
After some years of experimenting with faculty development internally, the Universities of Minho and Aveiro opted for a strategic partnership to strengthen their efforts to transform their institutional cultures with regard to learning and teaching. These institutions engaged in an informal partnership, with the impetus of scaling up the impact of single-institutional initiatives and the vision of nurturing a multi-institutional community through peer learning.
There was a fortunate ignition point for what next led to a nationwide initiative: a two-and-a-half-day retreat organised by the rectorate of the two universities, which brought together approximately 30–40 teachers from each institution in July 2019. The retreat required participants to deliver a “transforming project of the pedagogy of a course”. This turned out to be a huge success and facilitated extensive networking both within and across institutions. Initiatives with the same inspiration were re-edited four times so far, including three online events during the pandemic. The teaching community was eager for support during these times and the inter-institutional initiative attracted several hundreds of teachers from both institutions.
Time to scale up
The positive message spread quickly, to the point that teachers from other Higher Education Institutions started to inquire about how they could take part. As this was not possible due to the high numbers of in-house applicants, it led to the decision to devise another initiative bringing together more institutions. The resulting vision was an online program collecting offers from different institutions, which was considered a good addition to the existing faculty development landscape in Portugal. This was the basis for the “Inter-institutional Seminar on Pedagogical Development”. It began in September 2020, with the most recent edition occurring in September 2021 and the sixth edition planned for January 2022. The (rather informal) organisation includes the following features:
- It is a menu of training sessions created by pooling together quality training offered by the contributing institutions;
- It brings together the two Portuguese HE sub-systems: universities and polytechnics;
- Ideally, each contributor leads two sessions in each edition; there is no predefined menu for topics and there are no expectations that a single edition will be comprehensive;
- The sessions are not discipline-specific, but should focus on teaching and learning in general;
- Typically, the sessions are interactive, with each session lasting between 120 and180 minutes, offered to at least 30 participants.
A website was developed for external dissemination. Operationally, the two leading universities run the website and coordinate the program development. Since the second edition, participating institutions take turns in managing registration and technical support.
Each edition goes through a cycle of co-construction (decision on dates, co-organisers, program development), delivery and evaluation. The evaluation has been very important in bringing together institutional leaders to discuss improvements, share visions and debate the future of the initiative. Most importantly, such a cycle helps to create shared trust between leaders, thus contributing to a virtuous cycle, which is key for the sustainability of the initiative.
Reflections and lessons learned
The journey since the first edition has been very gratifying. The number of contributing institutions grew steadily from nine to seventeen. There are now eleven universities (one private) and six polytechnic HEIs taking part. In the first edition, there were 729 places offered and a total of 1438 registrations. In total, the five editions received 9998 entries for the 5156 available places.
It is our strong conviction that the collaborative nature of these initiatives was key to developing momentum in the beginning and remains key to inducing sustainable transformations in institutional cultures. Shared authorship and co-development generated an atmosphere of trust and commitment to sharing. We are witnessing the growth of a fabric covering a significant part of Portugal, in which the culture of teaching is changing from a solitary to a collaborative endeavour. The HEIs landscape now offers spaces to come together to experiment new approaches to teaching. The inter-institutional collaboration facilitates peer learning and support. We believe this will be become the new praxis that is here to stay in the post-pandemic life of our institutions.
Faculty development proved to be a powerful area to bring institutions together. There is a stronger sense of belonging to a learning and teaching institutional community, with identical challenges but with shared solutions.
At the macro level, there is now a sense of existence of a teaching and learning space in the Portuguese Higher Education system, in strong contrast to the previous absence of a collaborative culture. Many of the participating institutions are convinced that this has been a unique initiative in many ways, in particular due to the participation of the two sub-systems. For all institutions, the constant availability of training sessions is a permanent reward.
At the level of the individual teacher, the initiative conveys the message that learning and teaching challenges are common across courses and institutions and, like all important research issues, can be best tackled through sharing and collaboration.
What about the future?
The “Interinstitutional Seminar on Pedagogical Development” in Portugal so far consists of a buffet of online sessions, and we believe this model may continue to attract participants in the long run. However, it is very important to develop this initiative further to allow sharing of best practices and lessons learned. In the near future, we anticipate the importance of embedding a face-to-face element, to enhance the relational component at each institution. A hybrid format might strengthen professional networks and enhance the transformational power. Yet, flexibility is also key, especially in the current context of Higher Education when teachers are faced with a myriad of demands. Therefore exploring the affordances of the two formats should be seriously considered.
Regarding participants’ motivation, we believe that the perceived practical value of the sessions to help teachers in preparing their courses continues to be important for the sustainability of the initiative. However, a recognition system accepted at national level would be of great importance to consolidate the current success. Strong leadership with a strategic vision on investing in teaching and learning is one of the most powerful drivers of a real transformative and sustainable culture change in this area.
Manuel João Costa is Associate Professor in the School of Medicine at the University of Minho (UMinho). He is currently the Pro-Rector for Student Affairs and Innovations in Teaching and Learning at UMinho. He has been involved in faculty development since 2003 and was a co-founder in 2017 and current supervisor of UMinho’s Teaching and Learning Centre, IDEA-Uminho (@IdeaUminho). His research interests include approaches to teaching and learning, student success and faculty development in Higher Education. You can find Manuel on Twitter @mmcosta1969.
Sandra Soares is Assistant Professor in the Department of Education and Psychology at the University of Aveiro. She is currently a Pro-Rector at the University of Aveiro, with responsibilities in pedagogical innovation and internationalisation. The main objectives of her mandate are to promote the diversification of academic offerings, to reinvent learning spaces, to improve teaching practices, to encourage engaged learning and to foster interculturalism, interdisciplinarity, innovation and social accountability. She is involved in several European projects that aim to foster innovations in teaching and learning in Higher Education, namely the European Universities initiative.
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.
