Page 152 - Innovative Professional Development Methods and Strategies for STEM Education

Introducing Educational Technology into the Higher Education Environment

During this phase lecturers had to collect the data needed to answer their research questions or to
validate the hypothesis of their research projects. Some of these projects focused on a single interven-
tion, whilst others used data mined throughout the entire course.
The Research Component

One of the most significant components of the Partners@Work programme is the fact that lecturers were
guided through a structured research process. This phase demonstrated the ease with which research
and teaching responsibilities can be integrated meaningfully. Even though research is one of the three
key performance indicators (teaching, research and community service) for educators employed at a
higher education institution, many of the Partners on board have had preciously little previous research
experience. Therefore the mandatory research project in itself significantly contributed to the lecturer’s
professional development as it aimed to strengthen these important skills. This component culminated
in 4 research outputs, namely a research poster, two conference papers, and a scientific journal article.
As part of their exposure to research activities during the first 6 months of the programme the lectur-
ers had to design a research poster. This assignment required the lecturers to reflect on, and then defend
their instructional design decisions during the design and development phase. They may have set out to
design a particular piece of interactive multimedia, and in this poster, the lecturers had to explain what
the learning problem was that they hoped to address and why they had chosen this particular medium
to support both their teaching and the learning of their students.
As a surprising number of the lecturers had never presented papers at research (or practitioner) con-
ferences, the Partners@Work programme included two in-house conferences to serve as a learning and
preparatory experience. In both cases, an open invitation to attend went out to all staff members of the
University, but stakeholders in particular were personally invited to attend. The first in-house confer-
ence, at the end of the design and development phase, was dubbed a ‘mini-conference’. At this occasion,
Partners presented their design decisions that were made based on the original challenges that they
experienced during their courses. They also showcased the technology-enhanced teaching and learning
materials that they designed. The mini-conference mirrored a typical ‘practitioner’-style conference and
created a safe in-house environment in which they could hone their presentation skills and gain experi-
ence at presenting in front of an audience of peers. Many of the Partners reported this as an extremely
worthwhile experience, especially since they had to be prepared to respond to unexpected questions from
the audience, simulating the exposure they were bound to get at national and international conferences.
The second in-house conference was held at the end of the Partners@Work year and was dubbed the
Annual Teaching and Learning with Technology Research Indaba. According to the Free Dictionary
(http://www.thefreedictionary.com/indaba) an ‘Indaba’ is seen as “a council or meeting of indigenous
peoples of southern Africa to discuss an important matter”. The TLT Research Indaba emulated a typi-
cal national conference in order to give Partners exposure to all the processes involved. These ranged
from a call for papers, deadlines, abstracts and full paper submissions, peer reviews, short CVs for the
session chairs, test runs with the equipment in the auditorium, presentation timekeepers, and question
and answer sessions. At this conference, the lecturers had to present their research findings, and as such
a typical national research conference were simulated. The conference was typically held over a period
of two days and lecturers had the opportunity to present their research findings to the broader academic

133