4^th Meeting of the TLT Group Advisory Council

May 2, 2006  5:00pm EDT

 

Topic:   Universal, Collaborative, Hybrid/Blended Lifelong Professional Development for Higher Education (UCH/BLPD):  

What we’re learning and what we need to learn TOGETHER

 

AGENDA:
1. Hellos/Introductions

2. Explanation of UCH/BLPD – Steve Gilbert

3. Discussion:

• Idea of UCH/BLPD
• What priority exists for UCH/BLPD at your organization NOW?
• What are current Professional Development offerings at your organization?

4. Goals/Next Steps:

• Agree in principle to work with TLT Group and other Advisory Council organizations to develop more UCH/BLPDs
• Agree to work on specific OLI workshop as a step toward UCH/BLPD

 

 

Thoughts to ponder:

 Context for Hope?
Teachers, learners, scholars, researchers, and others are living in times of "too much" after centuries of "too little."   Too much information, too many options.  Most of us have trouble keeping up, deciding what we need to keep up about, and determining when we are doing enough.  Many of us believe we're drowning and falling behind at the same time.

Professional development includes at least keeping up with new information and new choices within one's main areas of professional work - and in important areas of personal interest.

"Lifelong Learning" is no longer an attractive phrase describing a need that we can comfortably apply to "them" but not to ourselves.  Lifelong Professional Development is one kind of Lifelong Learning that we all need, but one that is no longer attainable and sustainable solely through our own independent efforts, and solely through traditional professional development offerings.  Consequently, a cornerstone of the foundation for the future success of education and academic research is Universal, Collaborative, Hybrid/Blended Lifelong Professional Development.

We need universal lifelong professional development programs that include:

1.   Continual collaborative improvement and sharing of tools, strategies, and skills for managing and using information;

2.  Well-organized, useful, but incomplete collections, repositories, and referatories of information and instructional resources;

3.  Effective use of both traditional and emerging educational options - especially including (but not limited to) information technology applications.

Finally, what – if anything - can we do about the wasteful inequities of duplication, access, and distribution of information resources within and across institutional, national, and continental boundaries?

-          Steve Gilbert

See http://www.tltgroup.org/profacdev/keepingup.htm#Resources for complete text and additional resources

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We still have THE OVERLOAD, but NOW there are new options and new tools. Therefore the new challenge is:
1. Use the new tools to cope with the need for professional development, and
2. Recognize that having even these new tools ADDS to the need for professional development because we have more stuff to learn. How to take advantage of them!

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 Examples of current TLT Group Professional Development offerings:

http://www.tltgroup.org/studentcourseeval/workshop.htm
http://www.tltgroup.org/ProFacDev/DangerousDiscussions/StudentCourseEval.htm

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