Developing an Innovative Culture in Higher Ed
While reading the book The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-class Agility, Reliability, & Security in Technology Organizations, I started considering how some of the principles discussed in the book might apply to higher education. As a member of my college’s Innovation Council, developing an innovative culture is one of our charges. By the time I finished chapter 4, The Third Way: The Principles of Continual Learning and Experimentation, some ideas started coming together.
Current Innovation Focus
Recently, our college has started offering fellowships to faculty for innovations – the Arthur Teaching Fellowship for graduate course innovations and the Faculty Innovator Fellowships for mentoring other faculty innovations. These are both a step in the right direction, particularly their emphasis on sharing innovations between faculty. As a current Arthur Teaching Fellow, I can speak first hand as to it’s value. Last spring, I was awarded funding to modify my MBA course to use ChatGPT for feedback on case analysis assignments. Over the past year, I have shared my progress in this project with other Arthur Teaching Fellows and in a couple weeks, I’m scheduled to speak to the whole college about what I found.
This format is good in that it encourages experimentation and builds in ways to share the findings with others. Yet, there’s still a strong siloed approach to innovations, with single faculty members doing their own thing. After reading more about continuous learning in organizations and best practices in innovative cultures, I think some changes might make things more effective.
Developing an Innovative Culture
A better approach might be to create “innovation labs”, consisting of decentralized, cross-disciplinary teams experimenting in low-risk settings. Our fellowships offer decentralized individual experiments. But innovation labs could unite multiple faculty members interested in the same genre of innovations into a unit focused on discovering best practices. As I consider how this might work at ECU, I can envision innovation labs for particular technologies or practices – perhaps one on video mastery, another on using AI in the classroom, and another on team projects. Teams of 3-4 faculty from different departments could experiment in this lab, trying to discover best practices and experimenting in their own classes on ways to improve.
If I were to work with a lab on AI in the classroom, we might brainstorm 6 ways to use AI and then systematically test those 6 to determine which were the most effective. By working in teams, we can expand our experiments to multiple classrooms and focus on innovations that are applicable to more faculty members. We also can use other faculty in the lab to check our biases and personal preferences in order to better identify best practices.
The innovation lab could also be a resource center for faculty looking to implement something in that area. Every year, each lab could present their major findings to the college. They could also develop a field guide of best practices or tips for implementing the innovations easily. Want to know more about how to optimize video recordings for consistent quality? The lab on video production can help with that. Want to know more about how to use AI to create quiz questions? The AI lab can help with that. Want to know more about how to get clients for a team-based PBL? The team project lab can help with that.
With a team of faculty involved with each lab, there’s less expectation that one faculty member carry the entire burden of helping others. If one faculty member is sick or busy with research, other faculty in the lab can pick up the slack. And if the lab members are from different departments, there’s also a greater opportunity for cross-pollinating innovative ideas.
The innovation labs could also serve as a resource for department chairs and mentorship programs. Department chairs could refer struggling instructors to particular labs that could help improve the faculty member’s courses. The mentorship programs could invite innovation labs to present on best practices.
Innovation Council
What roles should the innovation council serve? As a member of our council, I certainly see a role for it in the future. The innovation council could define innovation frameworks for the innovation labs, such as design thinking or agile. It could also advise the dean on policies for how to resource the labs or incentivize work in the labs. They can also offer suggestions on how to limit bureaucracy that stifles innovations, searching for the optimal balance between structure and flexibility. They might also scan industry trends to find opportunities of new labs and faculty to serve on them. While certainly, some labs can organically develop from faculty interactions, other labs might be organized by the innovation council as strategic needs arise.
Long term, I envision the innovation council and assurance of learning committees converging as our continuous improvement cycles reinforce our innovations, and vice-versa. As a college, we’re not there yet. But they share the same goal – continuous improvement – so ultimately, that convergence should happen. There might even be synergies with research committee – developing research-oriented innovation labs. But I’ll leave that idea for another day.
