Adriana Briseno-Garzon, Andrea Han, Gulnur Birol
Considerable institutional efforts have been implemented in Canadian post secondary institutions aiming at promoting and sustaining a culture for learning based on teaching excellence. The University of British Columbia (UBC), for instance, introduced the rank of Professor of Teaching into the Educational Leadership stream in July of 2011 with the goal of reinforcing the University’s “commitment to provide educational leadership, outstanding teaching, and curriculum development, and to recognize and reward it when it happens” (UBC, 2016). In 2013, the Flexible Learning Initiative aimed at promoting “evidence-based, technology-enabled teaching methods that improve the learning experience for a broader student community”. The new institutional Strategic Plan includes “transformative learning” as a core element to reach the goal of “enhancing the quality and impact of teaching for all students” (UBC, 2018).
Despite these big pushes to direct the institution towards a culture that promotes meaningful teaching and learning across departments and programs, it is difficult to discern the impact that such initiatives are having in faculty’s teaching and learning practices, attitudes about teaching or their perceptions of institutional value for teaching.
In this poster we will explore longitudinal change in a large research-intensive university’s teaching culture through a multi-year study on faculty teaching practices and perceptions. Faculty’s and others with teaching responsibilities’ responses to an online survey were collected in Fall of 2014 and Spring of 2018. The campus-wide survey explores teaching practices in large enrolment courses, attitudes toward specific teaching practices, faculty perceptions of the teaching climate at our institution. Faculty feedback has also been collected about the biggest challenges for teaching and the factors that have improved their teaching.
In this poster we will share our methodology and a summary of relevant findings in relation to institutional shift in teaching and learning culture in the 2014-2018 time period. We will also discuss with the audience connections to existing research (Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, & Norman, 2010; Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, & Whitt, 2005) and the bearing and implications of our findings for their institutional contexts
