Dataset Information

Through the Eyes of Faculty: Using Personas as a Tool for Learner-Centered Professional Development.

ABSTRACT: College science instructors need continuous professional development (PD) to meet the call to evidence-based practice. New PD efforts need to focus on the nuanced blend of factors that influence instructors' teaching practices. We used persona methodology to describe the diversity among instructors who were participating in a long-term PD initiative. Persona methodology originates from ethnography. It takes data from product users and compiles those data in the form of fictional characters. Personas facilitate user-centered design. We identified four personas among our participants: Emma the Expert views herself as the subject-matter expert in the classroom and values her hard-earned excellence in lecturing. Ray the Relater relates to students and focuses on their points of view about innovative pedagogies. Carmen the Coach coaches her students by setting goals for them and helping them develop skill in scientific practices. Beth the Burdened owns the responsibility for her students' learning and feels overwhelmed that students still struggle despite her use of evidence-based practice. Each persona needs unique PD. We suggest ways that PD facilitators can use our personas as a reflection tool to determine how to approach the learners in their PD. We also suggest further avenues of research on learner-centered PD.

SUBMITTER: Zagallo P

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6889841 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Through the Eyes of Faculty: Using Personas as a Tool for Learner-Centered Professional Development.

Zagallo Patricia P McCourt Jill J Idsardi Robert R Smith Michelle K MK Urban-Lurain Mark M Andrews Tessa C TC Haudek Kevin K Knight Jennifer K JK Merrill John J Nehm Ross R Prevost Luanna B LB Lemons Paula P PP

CBE life sciences education 20191201 4

College science instructors need continuous professional development (PD) to meet the call to evidence-based practice. New PD efforts need to focus on the nuanced blend of factors that influence instructors' teaching practices. We used persona methodology to describe the diversity among instructors who were participating in a long-term PD initiative. Persona methodology originates from ethnography. It takes data from product users and compiles those data in the form of fictional characters. Pers ...[more]

PMID: 31755820

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundEducation is an important part of the work of most doctors. Clinical preceptors act as role models and supervisors. Preceptors' quality of supervision strongly influences the learning quality of clinical interns (Bartlett et al. BMC Med Educ 20:165, 2020). To ensure a consistent approach to every preceptorship experience, the competency of clinical preceptors should be assessed to ensure that the desired outcomes are achieved. This study aims to evaluate clinical preceptors' competency in learner-centered teaching, to provide constructive feedback to develop the preceptors' competency and improve supervisory skills and internship quality at Kunming Medical University (KMU) in Kunming of China.MethodsThis is a cross-sectional study with a quantitative self-administered online questionnaire. The convenience sampling technique was employed. In the undergraduate internship stage of KMU, clinical preceptors (N = 340) and interns (N = 487) were invited to use the augmented Stanford Faculty Development Program questionnaire (SFDPQ) (Stalmeijer et al. Med Teach 30:e272-e277, 2008), to (self-) assess the preceptor's competency of learner-centered teaching on a five-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree).ResultsTwo hundred twenty-eight preceptors and two hundred thirty-six interns completed the questionnaire correctly. Overall, the assessment was positive, but the preceptors' self-assessment significantly higher than the interns' (p < 0.00). The overall mean of each category of preceptors' self-assessment was greater than 4.5, with no difference based on educational qualification. Male preceptors scored significantly higher in two categories than female preceptors. Preceptors under 30 years of age with less than 5 years of teaching experience rated "Teacher's knowledge and attitude" lower than those over 40 years of age with more than 5 years of experience (p < 0.05). There were statistically significant differences in the four categories across disciplines (p < 0.05). Undergraduate interns rated "Teachers' knowledge" as the highest category and "Learning climate" as the lowest, and interns of different genders are evaluated without distinction in all categories of SFDPQ.ConclusionsEmploying the augmented SFDPQ to evaluate learner-centered teaching competency of clinical preceptors, offers potentially useful information for delivering constructive feedback. Combining self-evaluations with learner evaluation data can contribute to exploring preceptor competency development framework to guide them in targeted learner-centered teaching skill and acquisition and improvement, finally improving the overall quality of internships.

Project description:BackgroundEven though student-centered instruction leads to positive student outcomes, direct instruction methods are still prevalent. Multiple barriers prevent faculty from further adopting evidence-based student-centered practices and holistic approaches to faculty support are necessary to promote faculty change. The Collaborative for Institutionalizing Scientific Learning (CISL) is an HHMI-funded program to reform undergraduate science and mathematics education at a large Hispanic-Serving public research university. The program has established a Faculty Scholar support model to impact the number of science and mathematics faculty using evidence-based practices in their classrooms. Through this program, Scholars are selected to undertake a transformation of a course of their choice and conduct an assessment of the impact of the reform on students-while receiving multiple supports including summer salary, undergraduate Learning Assistants, professional development, course assessment and education research support, and opportunities to develop manuscripts on their course transformations.ResultsCISL has supported over 40 Faculty Scholars in the transformation of both introductory and upper division biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics courses. Faculty are motivated to transform a course due to factors related to their own experiences and beliefs, their students' needs, the course structure, and/or departmental elements. Quantitative analysis of the impact of the project on student success show that, overall, students in CISL-supported courses have higher passing rates compared to students in traditional classrooms. Survey and interviews of Faculty Scholars identified that the most valuable elements of the program were the personnel support from undergraduate Learning Assistants during reform implementation and guidance from the program's Assistant Director during design, implementation and evaluation.ConclusionsThe CISL program provides an example of significant effort sustained over several years to systematically improve the quality and culture of undergraduate education in a large research-intensive Hispanic Serving Institution. The program has had an overall positive impact on the professional development of Faculty Scholars and led to an increase in the number of STEM courses implementing evidence-based teaching practices, thus, taking a step towards solidifying a culture of evidence-based instructional strategies in STEM departments.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40594-022-00353-z.

Dataset Information

Through the Eyes of Faculty: Using Personas as a Tool for Learner-Centered Professional Development.

Publications

Through the Eyes of Faculty: Using Personas as a Tool for Learner-Centered Professional Development.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets