Universities around the world are now working with external online programme management companies to help them scale their online and hybrid teaching. In the second part of our series offering advice on strategies for making a success of these learning design partnerships, we focus on synchronous communication that helps streamline cross-team collaboration.
The advice is based on the experience of the University of Pittsburgh School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences in collaborating with edtech firm Construct Education to assist its design team with online course development. After two previously unsuccessful design partnerships, university and edtech team leaders formed a new model for collaboration. Here we share some of the practical strategies deployed to lay the foundation for a strong design partnership.
Synchronous communication strategies
1. Scheduling team lead meetings
The two teams must establish a regular standing meeting schedule for team leads to align the needs and resources required for the development of online courses. In our case, team leads included the edtech project manager, edtech and university learning strategists, and the university director of online learning. The first weekly meeting that included all team leads was dedicated to discussing timelines, blockers, updates and escalations. Team leads also initially created a RACI chart with defined roles and responsibilities to provide all members with clear boundaries for their workflows, which was necessary as the team grew. The second weekly meeting was reserved for the edtech and university learning strategists to streamline communication, as course developments required discussion at a more granular level. This meeting between learning leads allowed for establishing “norms”, addressing urgent matters, and collegial exchange.
Top tips
- Compartmentalise project manager and learning lead meetings (high-level v granular content).
- Schedule team lead meetings early in the week to set the tone for success and timely tackling of potential blockers.
- Ensure recurring meetings are set in the calendar for at least one semester.
2. Scheduling full team meetings
The learning leads established a weekly full team meeting for all learning designers and technologists, from both the edtech provider and university. The purpose of this meeting was to facilitate knowledge-sharing, accelerate the exchange of institutional knowledge, and address questions related to course design in an open forum. Learning designers and technologists benefited from crowdsourced answers to challenging design and tech issues, fostering a mutual sense of responsibility and ownership of the course development. This meeting was crucial for team-building, harnessing the strengths of individual team members, and establishing agreed design processes across both design teams.
Top tips
- Allow team members to add talking points and questions to the agenda in advance of the meeting.
- Encourage team-teaching of tools and design cases among peers.
- Schedule full team meetings later in the week to evenly distribute the meeting load and provide space for reflective practice.
3. Scheduling social meetings
To foster a sense of belonging and strengthen collegial relationships across teams, learning leads instituted an optional biweekly social get-together. This gathering enabled teammates to get to know one another and create mutual understanding across different cultures, languages, institutions, and continents in the remote work environment. With the end goal of improving communication and shifting the focus from the task-driven course development, the edtech and university teams met every other Friday for “Fridate.” Fridate was scheduled at the end of the work week to allow team members to wind down through a relaxed, fun activity and social interaction guided by a no-work discussion policy. The role of activity-planning for Fridate was rotated across all team members to develop leadership and facilitation skills. Activities were based on holiday themes and included games, quizzes, and icebreakers that added a human element and personalised the remote workplace.
Top tips:
- Focus on relationship building.
- Implement a no-work discussion policy.
- Rotate the planner or facilitator across edtech and university team members.
4. Co-hosting faculty meetings
To present a unified collaboration, faculty training events were co-hosted. These events varied from course development kick-offs to technology tool training sessions and were led by any member of the joint team best positioned to conduct the session. In this way, the team leveraged their collective expertise to provide a means of just-in-time training.
Top tips
- Allow all design team members to participate in signature course development events (eg. training).
- Schedule major events in advance to ensure full team participation, including faculty.
These four approaches to managing synchronous communication required both the university and edtech provider to adopt novel ways of thinking to ensure a successful programme launch and ongoing collaboration. Construct decided to function as an extension of the university team, resulting in mutual compromises and the unification of both design teams. These communication strategies can be applied to many contexts where team-building is essential and optimising collaboration is key.
Rae Mancilla is assistant director of online learning at the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Pittsburgh.
Nadine Hamman is a former learning strategist at Construct and is currently a senior project coordinator and learning designer at the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching, University of Cape Town.
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