Abstract
This chapter develops a framework for design considerations that can be used to analyze, contrast, and design networked professional development (NPD) in higher education (HE) contexts. The framework was developed after reflecting on three professional development (PD) courses, each with facilitators who are academic developers across the African continent. Using a Collaborative Autoethnographic methodology, the three authors reflect on design considerations for different forms of blended and online PD courses, based on their experiences of designing and/or facilitating these interventions and with PD more broadly. We argue that course designs can be positioned along a range of dimensions, namely open/closed, structured/unstructured, facilitated/unfacilitated, certified/uncertified, with/without date commitments, homogenous versus autonomous learning path, content vs. process centric, serious vs. playful, and individual vs. collaborative. We discuss relationships between dimensions and learning theories (the more open dimensions speak to connectivist, while more structured courses follow social constructivist approaches). We also identify various tensions that arise in the design of NPD, such as between academic developers’ pedagogical advocacy vs. usefulness, need to maintain volunteerism without exploitation of affective labour, and struggle to create spaces for agency within institutional constraints.
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Notes
- 1.
We acknowledge that “development” and “intervention” are contested and normative concepts that imply a deficit when used in the HE context (Quinn, 2012).
- 2.
See http://unboundeq.creativitycourse.org/about and on Twitter @unboundeq #unboundeq
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Pallitt, N., Gachago, D., Bali, M. (2021). No Size Fits All: Design Considerations for Networked Professional Development in Higher Education. In: Dohn, N.B., Hansen, J.J., Hansen, S.B., Ryberg, T., de Laat, M. (eds) Conceptualizing and Innovating Education and Work with Networked Learning. Research in Networked Learning. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85241-2_4
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