UB’s Educational Design Collaborative Wins Fact2 Award

The EDC is a group of individuals from across the university instructional support community who are dedicated to the advancement and growth of teaching and learning initiatives across UB. Their Mission is to “work collaboratively within individual schools, departments, across the University, and SUNY to help create quality learning experiences.” Their strategic activities are to:

• Offer recommendations to faculty members and units on the growth and promotion of quality learning experiences.
• Serve as a resource for University officials regarding policies, procedures, and implementation of traditional/online/hybrid courses and programs.
• Advocate for innovative pedagogical approaches and the resources that may be needed to support them.
• Plan events that support collaboration and sharing among UB’s Educational Design innovators.

In an effort to learn a little bit more about this group on the heels of this system-level recognition, I recently caught up with EDC members, Jeanne Myers, who is a Learning Designer and Adjunct Faculty in the School of Management, as well as Steven Sturman, who is an Instructional Designer in the School of Social Work.

Jeanne: “This group really provides support for each of us who are working within the individual schools at UB. Pulling together key support personnel from across all academic and administrative units, it is an incredible means of collaboration for all members. Having a core network of professionals, who are focusing on similar issues and problems, has become a vital component in the effective functioning of our instructional support efforts more broadly. This became especially clear after COVID as we began to realize how much we needed to collaborate in order to help faculty transition to remote learning. Having this long-standing community of professionals at the ready to tackle difficult challenges is indicative of why I sought to get involved in the first place.”

Steven: “For me, the EDC goes way back to the early 2000’s. Then, it was just a few of us who formed to help build online learning. We initially worked together to address common issues and to push for support that was needed centrally to really get these early online programs up and running. However, over the last five to six years, the EDC has become much more of a campus wide collaborative effort. The work of the group was really solidified during the pandemic, when it became critical for our members to share their knowledge and experience as we worked to rapidly respond to the university’s instructional support needs. We were also able to share and collaborate in responding to the tasks that each of us were similarly experiencing, thus avoiding duplication of efforts and, in turn, provide an overall better level of support.”

Steven: “The greatest effect that I see is that we all are able to work individually with such a large range of faculty. At the central level, our members work together to provide training, support, and workshops on a variety of topics that faculty need. While our central partners are able to take on a lot of the initial training, we are ultimately trying to address the ongoing needs of faculty in helping them to take their teaching to the next level. At this point, our members who are directly in the units are able to take a much more hands on approach with faculty who are specific to their own schools, and help them navigate very specific problems and issues—often related to education within their respective disciplines. Just one example is that we have worked to get faculty engaged with Quality by Design, a hugely effective course that is now offered throughout SUNY. This course focuses on educators who have been teaching online for 1-2 years and who are interested in further integrating best practices into their online course development and delivery.”

Jeanne: “Because many of us wear different hats—we are learning designers, faculty, alumni, etc.—we are able to comprehensively serve as a conduit between faculty, instructional support staff, and the needs of the university, in relation to various challenges and issues. We are on the front lines, so to speak, providing feedback to partners like CATT and to UBIT on behalf of faculty. As a collective we have the ability to get feedback and address issues and serve as a line of communication to administration about the happenings and instructional needs. This feedback we provide is in real time and is a rapid response approach toward meeting our university’s instructional support needs, thus avoiding duplication of efforts and, in turn, provide an overall better level of support.”

Jeanne: “The big project on the horizon for us all is the university’s transition to a new Learning Management System. We can support this transition by utilizing the same structure that we have been employing to the benefit of all our units. None of us teach on an island and each of us—faculty and support staff—benefit from other educators to lean on as we continuously work to adapt to the needs of our students. One way to do this is to make everything as diverse and inclusive as possible and there are so many new technologies that can help us continue to do this. There is a need for professional development and continuous training on new technologies. We seek to achieve rapid response in these areas and help move all of UB’s schools forward as needs change and evolve.”

Steven: “I would agree that the LMS will be the biggest challenge for us over the next few years. Our group is also going to focus on keeping up-to-date with new technologies and instructional processes to create more engaging environments for our students. We need to focus on the big picture but also keep our eye on specific emerging technologies. For examples, we pay close attention to technologies and learning experiences that offer potential educational benefits such as AR, VR, and Escape Rooms and we are always looking for ways in which advancing technologies and pedagogical tools may be better understood and employed in the classroom. Ultimately, we are interdisciplinary so it’s great to take what’s happening in the different professions—through the engagement of the Collaborative—and bring in techniques that can be shared across disciplines for the benefit of all schools.”

To learn more about the Educational Design Collaborative:

The EDC regularly hosts webinars and training sessions around instructional design and emerging technologies for teaching, such as their summer and winter webinar series: