Case Studies: Educational Technologists — "Identities" of a New Profession

To discuss the main conference topic, specific case studies are offered as a part of the interactive discussion sessions, with the aim:

• to analyze and discuss the present status of educational technologists at Swiss universities,
• their role within the organization,
• their involvement in faculty development programs as well as educational development in general
• and to identify good practice and educational technologists' needs.

The results will be a contribution of the Educational Technology Working Group to the CRUS 2010 report on the state and future of e-learning.

Departure point for discussion will be virtual cases that exemplarily illustrate the following perspectives and related issues:

Professional Role(s): The Role of the Educational Technologist in the Organisation

• How do educational technologists understand their role/identity being a new category of professionals in higher education institutions?
• How is their role/identity supported (if at all) and recognized/accepted by the faculty and management?

Organizational Structure(s): The Role of Educational Technology Units in the Organization

• From an organizational perspective, what arrangements allow for good interfaces among the support units involved with educational development/innovation?
• Is there cooperation/exchange between educational support units in strategic projects like Bologna, faculty development or assessment?

Faculty Development: The Role of E-Competence-Training with Academic Training Programs (Topic 2 on an Operational Level)

• What are "good" strategies to train faculty in the use of educational technologies?
• How to integrate educational technology elements in (traditional) pedagogical training? With this question, we refer to the fact that e-learning courses are no longer provided at certain institutions due to a lack of demand in the faculty.

The scenery of the cases will be at the eduhub University:

"eduhub University is a well established higher education. The Bologna reform has brought many changes in the way teaching and learning are organized. There have been many discussions on what teaching and learning at the university are about. In parallel, at eduhub University there have been a lot of discussions about e-learning. A learning management system has been introduced, some quite interesting e-learning projects have been funded by the Swiss government and many people have been hired to support faculties with their teaching..."

It is planned to have one discussion group per topic with multiple discussion sessions each, twice half an hour during day one and a one-hour session during day two. The aim of the first session (day 1) is to collect a wide variety of perspectives and to discuss "real" cases, related problems and conflicts at our "real" universities. On the second session (day 2) the goal is to identify possible solutions and formulate common needs.

To support the preparations of the case study tables we kindly ask you to fill in the short questionnaire in the registration form. By gaining an impression of your work situation, thoughts and wishes we will be able to prepare the discussion tables accordingly. Thank you!

Following the eduhub days an additional survey is planned to have a more representative data basis for the Educational Technology Working Group input to the CRUS 2010 report