Higher Education Digital Pedagogies For Inclusive Teaching and Learning
A Collaborative Project for Designing Faculty Development in the MENA Region
This project was completed in December 2020. The Project Report will be published in early 2021, and will be made available here.
Faculty are the heart of higher education
Classrooms for the future will be based on a new learning paradigm. Focus will shift from content to pedagogy, with technology and learning analytics playing a key role.” 1
Learn more by watching our previous webinar
This webinar was held June 17, 2020 for educator leaders in Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan
I. PROJECT OVERVIEW and OBJECTIVES
The Center for Learning in Practice at the Carey Institute for Global Good, UNHCR, and the Connected Learning in Crisis Consortium have joined together to strengthen capacity in the MENA region for faculty to understand and effectively use digital pedagogies, with particular consideration for refugees.
Together, we will engage higher education faculty across the region to conduct a situation analysis on faculty skills and faculty development, develop a framework for faculty professional development, and craft a blueprint for action– for delivering inclusive, digitally mediated, pedagogies in the MENA context, with special consideration for refugees.
The project runs from June 17, 2020 through November 30, 2020. It is the hope of the project sponsors to provide an honorarium and/or in-kind support to those selected to become team members.
The Center for Learning in Practice will provide training on conducting, facilitating, and analyzing the online tools and activities used for the project.
In the spirit of collaborative science, the project design will include higher education faculty in targeted countries (including Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and 3 others to be determined), as well as domain experts from both inside and outside the region. Team members will be selected through an application process.
Topics Under Consideration
Reflective Teaching, Online Teaching Experiences, Course Design, Refugee Students, Development and Use of Instructional Designers, Attitudes About Online Education, Faculty Use of Technology, Institutional Support for Online Learning, Assessing Teaching & Learning, Sustainable Learning, Inclusive Practices in Pedagogy and Technology, Discipline/Pedagogy Specific Use of Technology, Others to be determined by Design Team
Country Team Composition
4-8 faculty from each country will form the core leadership team. Each country team will be 50% male and 50% female, cross-disciplinary, and represent different levels of teaching experience.
II. Application and Process
You can apply by completing the application at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CLiPCarey. It should take between 15 and 30 minutes to complete. You will need to upload a brief summary of your resume.
Team Selection
Applicants must be affiliated with tertiary education institutions and/or have domain expertise in one of the targeted topics under consideration. The main requirement is the time required and commitment to the project. Teams MUST be diverse in their makeup as noted above.
Expectations of Team Members
Country Faculty Team Members and Domain Experts including leading higher education faculty, instructional designers, learning analytics researchers and technologist (you may be one of these or become one as well). Team members will:
- Be committed to the project objectives,
- Able to participate approximately 20 hours per month July 2020 through October 2020
- Actively engage in the project work and online communities of practice,
- Be able to write and speak in Arabic and English.
- Willing and able to work in a globally distributed team in an efficient, inclusive and collaborative manner.
- participate in regular team meetings (schedule TBD by team(s))
- participate in data collection by giving feedback on qualitative and quantitative strategies; and facilitating wide distribution in their countries of announcements for participation in scheduled activities
III. COUNTRY TEAM DELIVERABLES
With the Center for Learning in Practice, convene a series of workshops and online engagement initiatives with faculty to understand their current practice, skill gaps, resource needs, and preparation for working with refugee students. Use insights from workshops and online engagement initiatives to design and execute three key deliverables:
-
- a situation analysis,
- a framework for faculty development,
- a blueprint for action.
Online engagement activities include: online surveys, cafes, forums, chats, and the use of innovative digital tools that facilitate engagement and knowledge creation and sharing.
IV. PROJECT DELIVERABLES
Insight gathered from country-specific teams will be organized into country-specific digital reports as well as a single project report. The final report will include:
- Situation Analysis
- Digital Pedagogy Skill Tracker – Identify faculty skills and skill gaps, by location and content area.
- Training Tracker Identify where and what kind of faculty development regarding pedagogy and technology is available.
- Tools, Resources, Expertise Surface resources that can be shared about faculty development for blended/connected teaching and learning for specific content and contexts. Priorities include Open Education Resources (OER) and Arabic language resources.
- Digital Pedagogy Skill Tracker – Identify faculty skills and skill gaps, by location and content area.
- Conceptual Framework for Faculty Professional Development in the MENA Region
- Examples of Conceptual Frameworks
- Examples of Conceptual Frameworks
- Blueprint for action– for delivering inclusive, digitally mediated, pedagogies in the MENA context
V. WHY APPLY?
Throughout the project Country Team Leadership Fellows will:
- Receive online facilitation, instructional design, learning analytics, and instructional technology training
- Lead both in-country and regional engagement activities in English and Arabic
- Named as a contributing author on publications generated as part of the project
- Eligibility for fellowship stipend based on levels of project engagement and deliverables
VI. PROJECT TIMELINE
VII. PROJECT BACKGROUND
OECD 2 research finds that quality teaching requires continuous upgrading in pedagogy, use of technologies, assessment models aligned with student-centered learning, creating innovative learning platforms, assessing impacts and documenting effectiveness of the teaching delivered.
Digitally literate faculty are better teachers because they are empowered to engage and arm students with digital tools. 3
Currently, most faculty are underprepared and under-resourced to effectively deploy digital pedagogies in their teaching.
The MENA region, like much of the world, is challenged to deliver the highest caliber of teaching as a consequence of insufficient quality faculty professional development. The challenge is amplified by the number of refugee students in the region, whose needs are uniquely complex.
The CORONA 19 Pandemic has further highlighted and exacerbated the weaknesses in the broader education ecosystem. The delivery of higher education is dangerously undermined, while faculty desperately seek to support their student’s learning they lack the resources and skills to do so.
Good Teaching Defined
Subject Matter Knowledge– knowledge of the ideas, facts, and theories of a subject, the relative validity and centrality of different ideas or perspectives, the major disagreements within the field (in the past as well as current), how claims are justified and validated, what is entailed in doing and engaging in the discourse of the field. 4
General pedagogical knowledge is knowledge that is broadly applicable to all teachers in all subjects—about approaches to managing class time, involving students equitably in class discussions, developing clear and inviting course syllabi, gaining and holding students’ attention, managing student group work, and using varied instructional technologies. 5
Pedagogical Content Knowledge refers to knowledge that teachers have of how students go about learning a particular subject—for example, knowing that all students bring distinctive prior knowledge to their classrooms, and that this knowledge shapes student learning in powerful ways; being aware of the common mistakes that students make in engaging with discipline-specific ideas; and understanding the distinctive ways of thinking through a particular discipline’s ideas. 6
Digital Literacy/Fluency using digital tools to solve problems across disciplines, training students in digital skills that develop soft skills such as creative problem-solving, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity. The American Library Association (ALA) defines digital literacy as “the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills.
