D and D Membership Meeting Notes from 2008 Conference
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008Annual Membership Meeting Notes; Design and Development Division
Orlando, AECT Conference; Thursday, November 6, 2009 1:00 p.m.
Introductions
Monica welcomed all present to the D and D Membership Meeting. Board/leadership introductions – Atsusi (2C) Hirumi, Tiffany Koszalka, Elizabeth Boling, Brian Beatty
Tiffany Koszalka presented a summary of the membership survey:
• Purpose – how to engage members more
• 200 responses
• Four main trends in survey results were: interest in Professional Development, continuing activity beyond the Conference, improving Communication among members and between membership and leadership team, and supporting ongoing Research and Publication.
Breakout groups were formed in each of these four areas of interest. Notes from each group follow.
The Creation of P3 (Professional Development for Design and Development) (2C led this discussion)
Survey said:
• 79.3 percent want to engage in D&D for Professional development
A. Look for 5-10 rallying themes – questions – from survey (monthly – 5-6 month period). These could be presented in some manner over a 5-6 month period beginning early in the calendar year and ending before the next annual conference.
For example, one topic could be “How to teach ID course?” (Many members teach a course such as this)
Three resources could be created for each topic: an ongoing (asynchronous) discussion, shared resource materials, and a live webinar (invited presentation)
B. Establish a mentoring program – (one professional development topic might be “What’s a good mentor?”); once established, publish list to D&D membership.
What would it take to start this?
This could be an open system; available across AECT (or perhaps the world?)
Process: Implementation of these ideas requires a committee of members to create topics and invite speakers with a graduate student in technology to implement communication system.
D&D: Beyond the Conference (Kelly, Nandita led this discussion)
Survey said:
• 55.6 respondents attend the conference and that is the extent of their engagement with D&D
Ideas to involve members beyond the conference include:
• Discuss a monthly topic – open discussion/webinar format – synchronous to simplify interaction
• Create an interactive blog; send email reminders every 2-3 weeks about ongoing discussions
• Invitations to mentors/experts to “drop in” to courses (taught by members in their home institutions) for guest appearances
• Create a database of research ideas and interests; demographic overlaps (students, practitioners, faculty); collaboration; make successful collaborations public (monthly spotlights!)
• Data from surveys list D&D Member areas of interest and will be used.
• Establish local, regional meetings (face-to-face) – (local AECT chapter by-laws may provide guidance) – open participation could lead to more AECT members, more D&D members
Communication (Brian Beatty led this discussion)
Survey said:
• 47.4 stated they have not engaged, 54.9 want to engage more and don’t know how
• Publish with others
• Cross institutions research projects
• Journal: Journal focusing on practices, hints, concept papers, etc.
For members in academic programs, we should improve both faculty and student involvement with D&D. Perhaps the channel to communicate to graduate students is primarily through the faculty/department; could their be an advocate in each program? A local champion?
Is AECT for MA students as well as doctoral students? If so, communication might be different for these students – channels, messages, etc.
For members not in academic programs –
Use and organized listerv (scannable digest - index and author) – periodic (monthly?)
Communicate through the D&D blog with substantive comments – make it easy to find from AECT main page (need to make aectnow.org the main page)
Communications, discussions must be scannable – useful in 5-10 minute time blocks – so that a person working in a business climate can fit this into an already over-booked workday.
Research and Publication (MJ Bishop led this session)
There is a proposal at AECT for a new journal – the International Journal of Design Cases - a new outlet for practitioners to publish applied cases; open to the design fields, online, multimedia – A question that has to be answered is “What counts as rigor?” The journal should be starting in the next 12-24 months.
Help faculty with list of outlets for publishing; many faculty do this on their own – can it become compiled for general use? How to evaluate venues?
Generate a list of professional conferences? Same aspects of listing, evaluation, etc.
Listing member information for collaborations – AECT membership database, for example, could be expanded to include more fields. (Research interests, collaboration interests)
Other Business/Comments/Questions:
Call for volunteers to implement some of these great ideas. A paper was passed around for members to sign up to help put some of these ideas into practice over the next year.
Adjournment