Centre for Open Learning and Educational Support

Manager, Online Program Design and Educational Development Candidate Public Talk “The Future of Educational Development, Online Learning and Distance Education”

Manager, Online Program Design and Educational Development
Candidate Public Talk
“The Future of Educational Development, Online Learning and Distance Education”

The hiring advisory committee for the Centre for Open Learning and Educational Support’s Manager, Online Program Design and Educational Development will present a candidate to the University community.

Details:
Candidate: Rupert Collister
Date: February 27, 9-10 am
Location: Florence Partridge room (library 384)

Rupert will speak for 30 minutes and then engage questions. The topic of his presentation will be “The Future of Educational Development, Online Learning and Distance Education at the University of Guelph.”

Rupert’s bio is available at the end of this document.

Members of the University community are welcome to attend the presentation and provide written confidential comments to the hiring advisory committee by March 1. Comments may be sent to the committee by mail or by email at peter.wolf@uoguelph.ca.

Hiring Advisory Committee:
Michelle Fach (Associate Director, Centre for Open Learning and Educational Support)
Richard Gorrie (Associate Director, Centre for Open Learning and Educational Support)
Jaellayna Palmer (Distance Learning Specialist, Centre for Open Learning and Educational Support)
Andy Robinson (Chair, Animal and Poultry Science, OAC)
Peter Wolf (Director, Centre for Open Learning and Educational Support)
Janet Wolstenholme (Educational Development Associate)

Dr. Rupert Collister – Bio

Dr. Rupert Collister has worked in the post-compulsory education sector for over fifteen years and his experience reflects the diversity of the sector in its broadest sense, particularly in the areas of distance, face-to-face, and blended learning.

His career includes experience as an instructor and assessor facilitating learning in a broad range of higher learning contexts, including distance, blended, classroom, workplace, educational development. Rupert has deep experience in instructional design at a micro, meso, and macro level as well as in human (and technical) systems and process design, evaluation, and continual improvement. Finally, Rupert has extensive experience in leadership, management and administrative roles.

Rupert has demonstrated expertise in: leading teams whose purpose is the improvement of teaching and learning within an institution, leading and managing policy development both at a departmental and institutional level, leading the implementation of educational technologies and new initiatives, managing the systems and processes which underpin teaching and learning, leading and managing projects, leading and managing organisational change, and leading, managing, and undertaking the professional development of educators associated with such change. Necessarily then, he has extensive experience with information, communication, and educational technologies including a range of LMSs, virtual classrooms, communication tools, as well as with the use of blogs, wikis, and other collaborative and presentation tools.

Rupert’s personal philosophy of teaching and learning is guided by a deep belief in the transformative power of learning and that it is the context within which that learning occurs that determines whether the transformation is positive or not. He believes that it is the role of those who support learning (in any context) to create learning environments that facilitate such a positive transformation. Finally, he believes that the systems and processes which underpin teaching and learning (including technology) should be transparent and should simply be the catalyst for community building including communities of praxis (practice and reflection).

Rupert has a Bachelor of Adult and Vocational Education degree (University of Tasmania, Australia); a Master of Education (Human Relations and Community Education) degree (Australian Catholic University, Australia); and a Doctorate of Philosophy (University of New England, Australia). His first book, ‘A journey in search of wholeness and meaning’, was published in 2010 by Peter Lang Publishers (Switzerland).

A Glance Back as We Move Forward

For those of you who have been following my blog, you are aware of the merger of University of Guelph’s Teaching Support Services (TSS) and the Office of Open Learning (OOL).  As of September 2011, these two units will become one and will be known as the Centre for Open Learning and Educational Support.  For the new visitors (and those who may have not seen my original posting), I am including a portion of one of my earlier posts below, to provide you with some context around the merger, as we approach the next stage of the Centre for Open Learning and Educational Support ‘s evolution.

The rationale for combining these units was simple: to enable the University of Guelph to further enhance teaching and learning by combining mandates and resources already in place. TSS and OOL are already viewed internally and beyond our campuses as key partners, innovators and leaders in our respective fields. The decisions that lead to the current structures, mandates and approaches were developed in the late 1980s and 1990s and those foundational decisions lead to the successes (and some challenges) that we celebrate to this day.

As the University has gone through a ‘re-imagining’ in the last few years, where colleges, faculties, and those in administrative and support functions have gone through a period of reflection and renewal, it was felt that our time for similar processes had come.  As research and practice of educational technologies, higher and continuing education approaches, ESL programming and models of support have evolved, so too must our structures, mandates and approaches.

…And so the Centre for Open Learning and Educational Support emerges

as the next evolution of our work…

Thankfully, we are evolving from a position of strength, in that all is already in place to continue to move forward. We see, coming out of the merger, an increased capacity to partner in a more comprehensive and sophisticated range of activities. Specifically, the Centre for Open Learning and Educational Support will be able to:

• meet current demands and anticipate future needs
•  provide a broader and more sophisticated  range of educational support to the university community
• create a more sustainable approach to initiatives and activities
• create a more proactive, innovative, flexible and responsive unit
• enhance the visibility and impact of the new unit within the U. of G. community
• provide more interesting work opportunities for the new unit’s staff
• foster the development of a new dynamic culture
• enable internal communities of practice for the members of the new unit

Though at some point we will re-visit the mandates of TSS and OOL and re-frame them in our new context, for the moment, our mandates do not change. That being said, I am happy to report that we have already begun to lay the foundation for the Centre for Open Learning and Educational Support. We have articulated our starting points, though we will be re-visiting these in the near future (2013):

1. Vision Statement
2. Mission Statement
3. Strategies

If you have any questions or comments, please post them here or contact me at peter.wolf@uoguelph.ca or (519) 824-4120 ext. 52468

More on “Heart”

In Michelle’s posting last week, she wrote on the topic of ‘heart’ and how it plays itself out in COLES. Well, I want to second Michelle’s concept of “heart” and to add another component to it. It involves a personal story…

4 years ago, I was lucky enough to visit, amongst other places, Ankgor Wat in the heart of Cambodia. I went with Alice (my partner) and friends of ours, Greg and Catherine. Catherine is a History Professor here at the University of Guelph. While there we hired a tour guide to show us around and give us some historical, social, cultural and political insights. We were totally impressed with her! She spoke English well, was articulate, well-versed in Cambodian history and clearly a critical thinker. She talked about her life growing up in rural Cambodia and the pressures that she felt might inhibit her ability to develop in the directions she would like. By the end of the day, Catherine was so impressed with her that she offered her support to come to the University of Guelph as a graduate student, if possible.

Greg, Alice, Catherine and our tour guide

Read more of this post

Common Thread

I recently read an interesting article titled Customer-Centric Continuous Improvement.  The article highlighted how it is often difficult for organizations to commit to continuous service improvement for a variety of reasons including more focus on performance rather than customer value.  However, the benefits of a customer-focused approach outweigh the effort required. 

The article highlighted several techniques to eliminating barriers to improving customer service and one stood out for me: heart.  The article describes this tool as the ability to “Inspire people to improve customer value – Heart.  Organizations whose people share a clear sense of who they are and the impact they are trying to have on the world can overcome internal barriers to improving customer value.” 

I believe the newly formed COLES is full of heart and this is what truly will make the difference between working in a good environment and working in a great environment. 

My personal experience has been that everyone is committed to enhancing the student experience and will extend themselves beyond their personal boundaries when necessary to achieve this goal.  There are many examples of this that I have witnessed over the past 21 years.  They include providing personalized assistance to students in navigating the complexity of the academic environment, meeting a student at the University on a weekend to provide course materials, meeting with students at off-site locations to provide individualized technical support, visiting international students at home when illness prevents them from coming to class, our combined work on programs such as the Teaching and Learning Innovations Conference and staff financial contributions to the Virginia Gray Memorial Bursary and the Open Learning bursary to support the elimination of barriers to education for those who otherwise could not afford to continue their education.

I believe ‘Heart’ is the distinct quality that makes our work more satisfying and fulfilling.  We live these values everyday as we carry out our work.  It is the common thread that joins the forces of TSS and OOL.  While we are still working our way through the intricacies of the merger, the work that we do and the differences that we each bring to the table, we share one common value.  Our focus remains on the impact that we can have on teaching, learning and the student experience.    And I believe that ‘Heart’ will ensure that we continue to work in an environment that makes a difference and we will be proud of what we accomplish. 

Michelle

COLES Support – Who and How

In this posting I thought I would explore who we support and how we provide that support. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list; rather it is my own exploration of the range of who we support, not from a COLES unit perspective, but from the perspective of our stakeholders. In the following weeks, Michelle Fach and Richard Gorrie, both COLES Associate Directors, will take the following list, edit and adapt it and then drill down to greater levels of specificity and details.

NOTE: You will likely note that I did not include COLES staff as stakeholders though we certainly are. For now, I wanted to focus on the service and support we provide to others. How we support ourselves is a question we are also currently exploring, and will continue to as we develop our first strategic plan.