This paper presents and discusses a staff development program for
faculty staff being carried at the University of Aveiro, aiming at providing
academics with essential skills in areas such as teaching best practices,
student-centered curriculum design, collaborative learning and the adoption of
ICT/Internet technologies

Costa, Nilza

Huet, Isabel

Ramos, Fernando

Tavares, José

This paper presents and discusses a faculty development program being carried out at the University of Aveiro, aiming at providing academics with essential skills in areas such as teaching best practices, student-centered curriculum design, collaborative learning and the adoption of ICT/Internet technologies.Education for the 21 st century - impact of ICT and Digital Resources ConferenceRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

El Servicio de Difusión de la Creación Intelectual

  
  
A Staff Development Program for 
Promoting Change in Higher Education 
Teaching and Learning Practices 
Fernando Ramos, Nilza Costa, José Tavares and Isabel Huet 
Universidade de Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal 
 
Abstract: This paper presents and discusses a faculty development program 
being carried out at the University of Aveiro, aiming at providing academics 
with essential skills in areas such as teaching best practices, student-centered 
curriculum design, collaborative learning and the adoption of ICT/Internet 
technologies.  
1 Background 
Founded in 1973, the University of Aveiro is one of the youngest Portuguese 
Universities, with a staff of more than 900 in 2006, including senior and junior 
members.  The traditional model of teaching has been centred on the teacher with the 
predominance of information-passing style in lectures.  However, new technological 
innovations, the globalisation of our society and culture, and new lifestyles will bring 
a demand for a different type of education.  The role of the teacher as well as the 
student has been changing in the past years due to the new demands of the 
information society.  Faculty cannot be focused only on the delivery of knowledge 
but also on how that knowledge is acquired by students and the resources they use to 
make the information more accessible [1]. 
From that early stage in 1998 up to today, the adoption of the Internet has 
soared.  At the present the university owns a Blackboard Academic Suite™, which 
includes an LMS and a Content Manager.  More than 90 per cent of the 12.000 
students and over than 80 per cent of more than 800 staff members use Internet-
based ICT to support their daily teaching and learning activities.  
Continuous professional development (CPD) programs for faculty members at 
universities have never been a priority in Portuguese higher education institutions.  
Neither the rules for academic career progression nor the institutional authorities 
stimulate the personal and institutional investment in the development of 
2 Fernando Ramos, Nilza Costa, José Tavares and Isabel Huet 
 
pedagogical and didactic skills, except for a minor part of self-stimulated staff 
members or educational experts. 
However, our own and others’ experience is providing evidence that the use of 
Internet-based ICT promotes a set of benefits not only to students but also to 
teachers, providing means to enrich student-centred learning experiences.  Many 
arguments may be used to explain this effect, but a relevant one is that the use of 
Internet-based ICT may lead a teacher to organize learning as a set of activities that 
will engage learners in pre-established tasks that require their own effort to be 
accomplished.  This leads to a direct involvement of learners, improving the chances 
of meaningful learning experiences, thus resulting in the acquisition of new 
knowledge. 
Taking advantage of the reorganization of higher education in Europe towards 
the creation of a common higher education space, as defined by the Bologna 
declaration, the University of Aveiro has decided to organize a CPD program 
running in 2005 and 2006.  This initiative aims to help faculty members to get a 
better understanding of the power of Internet-based ICT in the promotion of their 
teaching and learning skills. 
2 The staff development program 
Technologies are tools to help build solutions.  So is the case in education: 
technologies, namely Internet-based ICT, are tools to help build and deploy learning 
solutions.  But technologies are not the solution by themselves.  Technologies can 
even be a problem if not properly used.  For example, if they are not used as a way to 
achieve a required result, but just as an easy way to create funny gadgets. 
That is why the initial of the three modules that compose the staff development 
program covers the basic concepts and strategies relating to pedagogy and 
curriculum design in higher education.  The second module provides an in-depth 
view of the power of Internet-based ICT in education, and addresses the most 
relevant issues concerning the current status of standardization and available 
products for the creation and management of learning solutions using Internet-based 
ICT.  Finally, the third module addresses the practical issues related to building and 
managing distributed learning communities. 
The next section provides a description of the general organisation of the 
program and a short syllabus of each of the three modules. 
2.1 General organization 
Each module of the staff development program runs for 2 months with a 50-hour 
workload and is organised on a blended-learning approach, thus comprising face-to-
face (f2f) and Internet-supported distance activities. 
In each module there are three one-day f2f moments.  The first happens at the 
end of the first week of the module.  During the first days of this week some distance 
activities are proposed, namely a couple of ice breaking social activities and some 
initial readings.  This first f2f activity is very important because it enables students to 
build a common understanding of the learning outcomes to be achieved and of the 
work strategies to be used during the following weeks.  It is, also, the moment for 
A staff development program for promoting change in higher education   3 
 
each person to get acquainted with the other participants and to understand the 
possible scientific, professional and personal bridges that students may be interested 
in establishing with each other, namely for the work to be carried out throughout the 
module. 
The second f2f session is held at the end of the fourth week, and is used to share 
the work that each group has developed after the first f2f meeting and to (re) 
organise the work for the last part of the module.  Each module ends with the third 
f2f session comprising final presentations and discussions.  The completion of an 
online portfolio of the reports highlights the work carried out throughout the module.  
This final activity is strongly recommended since it will stimulate the reuse and 
dissemination of the knowledge acquired by the participants. 
2.2 The pedagogy and curriculum development module 
Today, we acknowledge a growing concern of the faculty members about the 
issues of pedagogy and academic success.  It is clearly a turning point in the 
traditional conception of teaching and learning in higher education [2].  
Bearing in mind the continuous transformation of higher education (HE) systems 
all over Europe, we believe that more than ever, academics need to reflect upon 
issues such as university pedagogy and curriculum development.  Furthermore, 
continuous professional development of university teachers will create more 
qualified teachers in the area of didactics and educational sciences.   
  In order to achieve this purpose, this module is build on three premises: i) the 
acquired knowledge of pedagogy and curriculum design in HE, ii) best teaching 
practices, and iii) professional experience of the participants.  The activities 
developed throughout the module comprise f2f or on-line debates about a specific 
issue of the program.  These debates will lead to a set of written reports that will 
culminate in a final portfolio.  
 At the end of the module, participants should be able to achieve a number of 
competences, such as i) critical analyses of the challenges of HE in the context of the 
Bologna declaration, ii) critical thought, with a strong theoretical emphasis, 
regarding the curriculum design and the process of teaching and learning in HE, and 
iii) ability to monitor their practices as a way of modifying and improving their daily 
teaching activities.  
2.3 The ICT module 
The main objectives of the ICT module are to familiarize academics with the 
current status of the power of Internet-based ICT in education and to provide a 
comprehensive view of the status of standardisation.  
Learners are encouraged to read reference texts covering the main areas of 
application of technologies: content delivery, individual and group interaction 
through asynchronous and synchronous communication, and assessment, among 
others.  Furthermore, the need and advantages of using a comprehensive 
management environment is discussed, leading to the familiarisation with the typical 
functionalities currently available in Learning Management Systems (LMS), 
Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS) and Learning Activities 
Management Systems (LAMS).  
4 Fernando Ramos, Nilza Costa, José Tavares and Isabel Huet 
 
As far as standardization is concerned, learners are introduced to the most 
relevant standardization organizations (e.g. ADL, IMS, IEEE) and an overview of 
current standard specifications is provided.  Special attention is given to the SCORM 
model and to the IMS Learning Design specification, and discussions are carried out 
concerning concepts such as re-usability, content granularity and its interdependence. 
During the first f2f session of this module, a general presentation of the main 
topics is provided.  However, most of the time is reserved for practical exercises 
concerning the creation and organisation of work areas in an LMS and the creation 
of SCORM-compliant learning objects and their integration under the LMS.  For this 
last purpose the eXe™ authoring tool is used, which provides a very easy and user-
friendly tool.  For the organisation of the learning objects content the use of the IMS 
Learning Design concepts and paradigm is encouraged, leading the way for an 
activity oriented learning strategy.  
The work plan adopted in this module provides a complete and comprehensive 
view of the steps regarding the creation and maintenance of learning contents in 
LMS/LCMS/LAMS and, also, of the main technological paradigms and options that 
faculty members have to face when designing a course. 
2.4 The collaborative teaching and learning module 
Collaborative teaching and learning in higher education is certainly the secret for 
the academic success of students, academic staff, curriculum and institutions [3].  
But the big question is how to effectively mobilize the actors of the process for 
contributing to the new teaching and learning paradigm.  In fact, recent trends and 
meta-trends in educational theory and practice in higher education emphasise 
collaborative teaching and learning for students and academic staff construction or 
co-construction of knowledge and pedagogical and technological innovations in 
teacher education systems [4].  This point is very important for different actors, 
mainly to the students and academic staff.  One important issue that we should focus 
our attention on deals with the following question: how do lecturers and students 
manage the different problems these learning situations pose and what do they 
actually do and must they do in the future?  In this context, the learning communities 
assume a relevant importance.  Recently, there is a growing attention to the 
development of on-line learning environments, which easily allow “partnerships 
between academics across faculties and disciplines; partnerships across multiple 
campuses; and partnerships online regardless of location” [5]. 
Thus, the aim of this module is to promote the development of learning 
partnerships inside the University of Aveiro and in the near future across countries.  
Following this main purpose it is our objective: 
 
To identify new forms of learning and their implications for the future of 
teaching and learning in higher education. 
To describe learning partnerships in the context of lifelong learning. 
To describe on-line learning environments and to explain the advantages of some 
e-learning platforms such as Blackboard. 
To reflect about best teaching practices and new forms of teacher training. 
 
A staff development program for promoting change in higher education   5 
 
The tasks are planned to engage actively the participants of the module with the 
broader objective to establish learning partnerships inside the work group.  
Furthermore, some of theses activities will imply the discussion of some topics in the 
f2f sections as well as in the discussion forums using the ICT teaching-learning tool: 
Blackboard.  
3 Conclusions 
The main project aims targeted the development of specific intervention 
strategies for academics to improve their knowledge of topics such as curriculum 
design and collaborative learning by using an ICT teaching-learning tool 
(Blackboard). 
Faculty members acknowledge this staff development program with a lot of 
interest, and all the available places (more than 150 for the three modules) were 
filled. 
The courses are currently being run, and preliminary evaluation based on 
informal questionnaires and case studies developed by trainees show that the 
program helped academics develop their methodological and technological skills and 
also their perception about the adequate role of ICT as an enhancement factor to 
improve higher education teaching and learning practices. 
References 
1. J. Tavares, A. Cabral, I. Huet, R. Carvalho, A. Pereira, L. Isabel, et al., Internet-based 
learning tools: development and learning psychology (DLP) experience, Journal of 
Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, 1(6), (2003). 
2. M. Robertson, Changing perceptions on university teaching, International Journal of 
University Teaching & Learning, 1(1), (1998). 
3. L. Null, TQM and collaborative learning: a perfect match, presented at the 1997 
ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Pittsburgh, PA. (1997). 
4. K. Smith, D. Johnson,  R. Johnson, Cooperative learning and positive change in Higher 
Education, in: Collaborative Learning: A Sourcebook for Higher Education, edited by M. 
M. A. Goodsell, V. Tinto, B.L. Smith, & J. MacGregor, (1992), pp. 34-36. 
5. S. Soo, Y. Tan, P. Jamieson, Developing learning partnerships across cultures and online: 
how off-shore academics experience a flexible staff development program. presented at 
the HERDSA, Australia (2001), pp 2. 
 
6 Fernando Ramos, Nilza Costa, José Tavares and Isabel Huet 
 
 
 


English

A staff development program for promoting change in higher education teaching and learning practices

Repositório Institucional da Universidade de Aveiro

  A staff development program for promoting change in Higher Education teaching and learning practices Fernando Ramos, Nilza Costa, José Tavares and Isabel Huet Universidade de Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal  Abstract: This paper presents and discusses a staff development program for faculty staff being carried at the University of Aveiro, aiming at providing academics with essential skills in areas such as teaching best practices, student-centered curriculum design, collaborative learning and the adoption of ICT/Internet technologies.  1 Background Founded in 1973, the University of Aveiro is one of the youngest Portuguese Universities with a staff of more than 900 in 2006, including senior and junior members.  The traditional model of teaching has been centred on the teacher with the predominance of information passing style in lectures. However, new technological innovations, the globalisation of our society and culture, and new lifestyles will bring a demand for a different type of education. The role of the teacher as well as the student has been changing in the past years due to the new demands of the information society. Faculty cannot only be focused on the delivery of knowledge but how that knowledge is acquired by students and the resources they use to make the information more accessible [1]. From that early stage, in 1998, up to today, the adoption of Internet has soared. At the present the University owns a Blackboard Academic Suite™, which includes a LMS and a Content Manager. More than 90 per cent of the 12.000 students and over than 80 per cent of more than 800 staff members use Internet based ICT to support their daily teaching and learning activities.  Continuous professional development (CPD) programmes for faculty members at Universities have never been a priority in Portuguese Higher Education institutions. Neither the rules for academic career progression nor the institutional authorities stimulate the personal and institutional investment in the development of 2 Fernando Ramos, Nilza Costa, José Tavares and Isabel Huet  pedagogical and didactics skills, except for a minor part of self stimulated staff members or educational experts. However, our own and other’s experience is providing evidence that the use of Internet based ICT promotes a set of benefits to students but also to teachers, providing means for enrich student-centred learning experiences. Many arguments may be used to explain this effect, but a relevant one is that the use of Internet based ICT may lead teacher to organize learning as a set of activities that will engage learners in pre-established tasks that require their own effort to be accomplished. This leads to a direct involvement of learners, improving the chances of meaningful learning experiences, thus resulting in the acquisition of new knowledge. Taking advantage of the reorganization of Higher Education in Europe towards the creation of a common Higher Education space, as defined by the Bologna declaration, the University of Aveiro has decided to organize a CPD program running in 2005 and 2006. This initiative aims to help faculty members to get a better understanding of the power of Internet based ICT in the promotion of their teaching and learning skills. 2 The staff development program Technologies are tools to help build solutions. So is the case in education: technologies, namely Internet based ICT, are tools to help build and deploy learning solutions. But technologies are not the solution by itself. Technologies can even be a problem if not properly used. For example, if they are not used as a way to achieve a required result, but just as an easy way to create funny gadgets. That is why the initial of the three modules that compose the staff development program covers the basic concepts and strategies relating to pedagogy and curriculum design in Higher Education. The second module provides an in-depth view of the power of Internet based ICT in education, and addresses the most relevant issues concerning the current status of standardization and available products for the creation and management of learning solutions using Internet based ICT. Finally, the third module addresses the practical issues related to building and managing distributed learning communities. The next sections provide a description of the general organisation of the program and a short syllabus of each of the three modules. 2.1 General organization Each module of the staff development program runs for 2 months with 50-hour workload and is organised on a blended-learning approach, thus comprising face-to-face (f2f) and Internet supported distance activities. In each module there are three 1-day f2f moments. The first happens at the end of the first week of the module. During the first days of this week some distance activities are proposed, namely a couple of ice breaking social activities and some initial readings. This first f2f activity is very important because it enables to build a common understanding of the learning outcomes to be achieved and of the work A staff development program for promoting change in Higher Education teaching and learning practices3 strategies to be used during the following weeks. It is, also, the moment for each person to get acquainted with the other participants and to understand the possible scientific, professional and personal bridges that may be interested to establish with each other, namely for the work to be carried out throughout the module. The second f2f session is held at the end of the fourth week, and is used to share the work that each group has developed after the first f2f meeting and to (re) organise the work for the last part of the module. Each module ends with the third f2f session comprising final presentations and discussions. The edition of an online portfolio of the reports highlights the work carried out throughout the module. This final activity is strongly recommended since it will stimulate the reuse and dissemination of the knowledge acquired by the participants. 2.2. The Pedagogy and Curriculum Development module Today, we acknowledge a growing concern of the faculty members about the issues of pedagogy and academic success. It is clearly a turning point on the traditional conception of teaching and learning in Higher Education [2].  Bearing in mind the continuous transformation of Higher Education (HE) Systems all over Europe, we believe that, more than ever, academics need to reflect upon issues such as university pedagogy and curriculum development. Furthermore, continuous professional development of university teachers will create more qualified teachers in the area of didactics and educational sciences.     In order to achieve this purpose, this module is build under three premises: i) the acquired knowledge on pedagogy and curriculum design in HE, ii) best teaching practices, and iii) professional experience of the participants. The activities developed throughout the module comprise f2f or on-line debates about a specific issue of the program. These debates will lead to a set of written reports that will culminate in a final portfolio.   At the end of the module, participants should be able to achieve a number of competences, such as: i) critical analyses of the challenges of HE in the context of the Bologna declaration, ii) critical thought, with a strong theoretical emphasis, regarding the curriculum design and the process of teaching and learning in HE, and iii) ability to monitor their practices as a way of modifying and improving their daily teaching activities.  2.3. The ICT module The main objectives of the ICT module are to familiarize academics with the current status of the power of Internet based ICT in education and to provide a comprehensive view of the status of standardisation.  Learners are encouraged to read reference texts covering the main areas of application of technologies: content delivery, individual and group interaction through asynchronous and synchronous communication, and assessment, among others. Furthermore, the need and advantages of using a comprehensive management environment is discussed, leading to the familiarisation with the typical functionalities currently available in Learning Management Systems (LMS), 4 Fernando Ramos, Nilza Costa, José Tavares and Isabel Huet  Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS) and Learning Activities Management Systems (LAMS).  As far as standardization is concerned, learners are introduced to the most relevant standardization organizations (e.g. ADL, IMS, IEEE) and an overview of current standard specifications is provided. Special attention is driven to the SCORM model and to the IMS Learning Design specification, and discussions are carried out concerning concepts such as re-usability, content granularity and its interdependence. During the first f2f session of this module, a general presentation of the main topics is provided. However, most of the time is reserved for practical exercises concerning the creation and organisation of work areas in a LMS and the creation of SCORM compliant learning objects and its integration under the LMS. For this last purpose the eXe™ Authoring tool is used, which provides a very easy and user-friendly tool. For the organisation of the learning objects content the use of the IMS Learning Design concepts and paradigm is encouraged, leading the way for an activity oriented learning strategy.  The work plan adopted in this module provides a complete and comprehensive view of the steps regarding the creation and maintenance of learning contents in LMS/LCMS/LAMS and, also, of the main technological paradigms and options that faculty staff has to face when designing a course. 2.4. The Collaborative Teaching and Learning module The collaborative teaching and learning in Higher Education is certainly the secret for the academic success of students, academic staff, curriculum and institutions [3]. But the big question is how to effectively mobilize the actors of the process for contributing to the new teaching and learning paradigm. In fact, recent trends and meta-trends in educational theory and practice in Higher Education emphasise collaborative teaching and learning for students and academic staff construction or co-construction of knowledge, and pedagogical and technological innovations in teacher education systems [4]. This point is very important for different actors, mainly to the students and academic staff. One important issue that we should focus our attention on deals with the following question: how lecturers and students manage the different problems these learning situations pose and what they actually do and must do on the future? In this context, the learning communities assume a relevant importance. Recently, there is a growing attention on the development of on-line learning environments, which easily allow the ‘partnerships between academics across faculties and disciplines; partnerships across multiple campuses; and partnerships online regardless of location’ [5]. Thus, the aim of this module is to promote the development of learning partnerships inside the University of Aveiro and in the near future across countries. Following this main purpose it is our objective:  1. To identify new forms of learning and its implications for the future of teaching and learning in Higher Education. 2. To describe learning partnerships in the context of lifelong learning. 3. To describe on-line learning environments and to explain the advantages of some e-learning platforms such as the Blackboard. A staff development program for promoting change in Higher Education teaching and learning practices5 4. To reflect about best teaching practices and new forms of teaching training.  The tasks are planned to engage actively the participants of the module with the broader objective to establish learning partnerships inside the work group. Furthermore, some of theses activities will imply the discussion of some topics in the f2f sections as well as in the discussion forums at the ICT teaching-learning tool: Blackboard.  3. Conclusions The project main aims targeted the development of specific intervention strategies near academics to improve their knowledge on topics such as curriculum design or collaborative learning by using an ICT teaching-learning tool (Blackboard). Faculty members acknowledge this staff development program with a lot of interest, and all the available places (more than 150 for the three modules) were fulfilled. The courses are currently being run, and preliminary evaluation based on informal questionnaires and case studies developed by trainees show that the program helped academics develop their methodological and technological skills and, also, the perception about the adequate role of ICT as an enhancement factor to improve higher education teaching and learning practices. References 1. J. Tavares, A. Cabral, I. Huet, R. Carvalho, A. Pereira, L. Isabel, et al., Internet-based learning tools: development and learning psychology (DLP) experience, Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, 1(6), (2003). 2. M. Robertson, Changing perceptions on university teaching, International Journal of University Teaching & Learning, 1(1), (1998). 3. L. Null, TQM and collaborative learning: a perfect match, presented at the 1997 ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Pittsburgh, PA. (1997). 4. K. Smith, D. Johnson,  R. Johnson, Cooperative learning and positive change in Higher Education, in: Collaborative Learning: A Sourcebook for Higher Education, edited by M. M. A. Goodsell, V. Tinto, B.L. Smith, & J. MacGregor, (1992), pp. 34-36. 5. S. Soo, Y. Tan, P. Jamieson, Developing learning partnerships across cultures and online: how off-shore academics experience a flexible staff development program. presented at the HERDSA, Australia (2001), pp 2.  

A staff development program for promoting change in Higher Education teaching and learning practices

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A staff development program for promoting change in Higher Education teaching and learning practices

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