Advancing the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Large Enrolment Courses: Lessons Learned from an Online Community of Practice

Lorelei Anselmo; Alysia Wright; Anastasiia Stepanchuk

doi:10.29173/isotl613

Authors

Lorelei Anselmo University of Calgary
Alysia Wright University of Calgary
Anastasiia Stepanchuk University of Calgary

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29173/isotl613

Keywords:

blended and online, community of practice, faculty development, scholarship of teaching and learning

Abstract

In these conference proceedings, we describe how the COVID-19 pandemic presented the higher education community with an opportunity to explore and expand best practices in blended and online teaching through a Large Enrolment Community of Practice. We expand on Wenger-Traynor and Wenger-Traynor's (2015) description of a community of practice (CoP) as a “living curriculum” (p.4) to include an online perspective based on Hoadley (2012) and Xue and colleagues’ (2021) considerations of content, process, and context. The benefits of the online CoP to faculty development and the scholarship of teaching and learning, specifically through collaboration, interdisciplinarity, innovation, and validation are then explained. The conclusion contains a current birds’ eye view of the OCoP and summary of learning from the first year of implementation.

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Author Biographies

Lorelei Anselmo, University of Calgary

Lorelei Anselmo (lanselmo@ucalgary.ca) is a learning and instructional design specialist at the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning at the University of Calgary. In addition to course design, Lorelei’s interests include blended and online learning, communities of practice, equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility, and universal design for learning.

Alysia Wright, University of Calgary

Alysia Wright, PhD Candidate (acwright@ucalgary.ca), is an educational development consultant at the University of Calgary and a sessional instructor with the Faculty of Social Work. Alysia is currently the academic lead for a three-year blended and online learning initiative focusing on pedagogy and practice to promote student-centred learning.

Anastasiia Stepanchuk, University of Calgary

Anastasiia Stepanchuk (anastasiia.stepanchu@ucalgary.ca) is a PhD candidate in Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Calgary and a sessional instructor at Simon Fraser University. She has experience teaching university-level courses and is committed to continuous improvement of the quality of education across all levels.

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