Our 2009 Conference theme is Facilitating Change. Are there any among you who can't relate to this theme? We suspect not!
Facilitating change - both organizational and individual - is the meat-and-potatoes work of the role of the Educational Developer in this time of unprecedented transformation in the field of higher education. Whether it is supporting the first steps of new faculty members, stimulating renewed enthusiasm among senior faculty, promoting fresh approaches to learning through the use of technology, or advising on the best outreach methods for a teaching/learning centre, we are almost constantly striving for ways to ensure thoughtful, positive, and successful change.
This important topic is a key theme in the Educational Developers Caucus 5-year plan (2005-2010), as articulated below.
Organizational development/ facilitating change across the career span:
- Facilitating systemic and organizational change: barriers and levers
- Taking a systems perspective
- Working strategically
- Developing listening, brokering, and negotiation skills in an ED context
- Building currency/value among senior administrators
- Seeing the big picture
- Navigating the political environment
- Working with academic administrators to facilitate change
- Applying selected leadership literature in an ED context
- Developing partnerships to enhance advocacy capacity (e.g. libraries)
- Dealing with changes in senior administrators
- Recruiting and rewarding faculty colleagues in ED initiatives
- Appreciative inquiry and facilitating change
- Moderating thoughtful understandings of changes being imposed
We are hopeful that the many interactive concurrent sessions, roundtable discussions, and poster sessions at the conference will help all of us address these challenges by adding to our skills and knowledge, and providing multiple opportunities for us to share resources, learn from one another's experiences, and initiate productive partnerships.
Your host this year, Durham College, itself represents a change - 2009 represents the first time in the history of the EDC that a college alone (i.e. rather than in partnership with a university) has hosted the annual EDC conference. The increasing collaboration among higher education institutions of all kinds across Canada is a sign of our changing times and our mutual desire to offer Canadian postsecondary students many pathways to success.
We look forward to welcoming you to our Oshawa campus!