Build, buy, or rent? A systems view of faculty design work in the digital learning era
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Build, buy, or rent? A systems view of faculty design work in the digital learning era Laura Lohman1 Accepted: 10 November 2020 © Association for Educational Communications and Technology 2020
Abstract To suggest sound practices in obtaining the faculty design talent needed to rapidly deploy or scale up digital learning, this paper adopts a systems view of the findings and implications of “The Process of Designing for Learning: Understanding University Teachers’ Design Work” by Bennett et al. (Educational Technology Research and Development 65(1), 125–145, 2017). Bennett et al.’s article makes an important contribution to our growing understanding of faculty capacity for and approaches to course design. Their work establishes faculty roles as designers, which is an essential consideration as institutions seek digital design talent. Nevertheless, important limitations of their research are limited detail about faculty design skills and an emphasis on how faculty design resembles others’ design approaches. This paper suggests specific ways that institutions can apply and extend insights from Bennett et al.’s research to cultivate faculty design talents in nimble responses to large-scale or rapid shifts to digital learning through practices of professional development and strategic faculty hiring. Keywords Course design · Instructional design · Faculty development · Faculty hiring · Systems thinking Bennett et al.’s (2017) research on faculty design offers valuable insights for universities seeking digital design talent. Faculty design was questioned when Oblinger and Hawkins (2006) asked if institutions should spend costly faculty assets on responsibilities for which faculty were untrained, including instructional design. Many universities responded accordingly to the COVID-19 pandemic, hiring or contracting instructional designers in buy and rent approaches to a talent gap. Others used professional development to build internal faculty design talent. Bennett et al.’s findings have important implications for such institutional talent questions amid digital learning; to highlight them, this paper uses a systems-thinking perspective that views human resources processes as fundamental mechanisms to improve course quality and design (Lohman 2020c). Rather than discounting faculty ability to tackle digital design, institutions can apply and extend insights from Bennett
* Laura Lohman [email protected] 1
Queens University of Charlotte, 1900 Selwyn Ave, MSC 1383, Charlotte, NC 28274, USA
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et al.’s research to cultivate faculty design talent for digital learning through practices of professional development and strategic faculty hiring.
Summary Bennett et al. establish that faculty are not merely subject matter experts but rather learning professionals capable of designing, developing, and delivering courses thoughtfully. Describing iterative faculty design efforts as “possibly never truly complete” (2017, p. 138), they underscore design’s prevalence in faculty work and compleme
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