Building a Collaborative Culture of Teaching and Learning: Creating centralized educator support within a decentralized institution

When a large, decentralized university with no history of a dedicated service unit to support teaching and learning professional development declares such a unit will now exist, there is specific and critical work to be done. This interactive Symposium will share three scaffolded components of educator support at Michigan State University—building a digital educator learning community; launching a peer-recognition initiative; and establishing the Center for Teaching and Learning Innovation (CTLI). Participants will engage in some of the activities we employed to drive this change.

Our first mini-case is the #iteachmsu Commons, an educator-driven space for sharing ideas and resources, connecting across disciplines and roles, and growing in practice. We deliberately define "educators" broadly: anyone who supports the university's teaching and learning, student success, and/or outreach missions. The Commons is a digital site, iteach.msu.edu, meant to be a centralized, community-driven resource.

Our second example is the Thank an Educator initiative (TaE). Residing on the #iteachmsu Commons, TaE is a peer recognition program to elevate educators' impactful contributions. While we serve a "wide educator community," our definition is intentionally more inclusive than those historically common in higher education. TaE is designed to: demonstrate the diversity of educator roles; celebrate our colleagues' work; and help individuals embrace their educator role(s).

While the above examples predate the CTLI, our work to support educators both continued and was transformed as we became a teaching center. In 2022 we held a "Kick-Off Summit" to get feedback from campus stakeholders. We brought together over 35 colleagues representing decentralized educator development in our university ecosystem, and looked to build on those efforts through listening, collaboration, and relationship building. We describe how the insights we gained inspired further stages of building the center, including a faculty survey, focus groups, and benchmarking the Big10.