Introduction - Henk Huijser

I have worked in the tertiary education sector since I completed my Bachelor of Arts degree in 1997. The following year I decided to move cities and began an Honours degree at Waikato University in Hamilton, New Zealand. This was also the first time I began teaching (or tutoring to be more specific). As I arrived a little late in Hamilton, I had already missed the tutor training the other tutors had received, so I was handed some training materials to read at home, and I would start the following week. I went into my first class well-prepared with various discussion topics that would be appropriate for an introductory course of Screen and Media Studies, or so I thought. The reality was very different and this was a classic case of being thrown into the deep end, but I had to think very quickly on my feet and eventually got through the first session. My (misguided) expectation was that students would simply be active and engaged if you asked them an interesting question. What I have learned since is that student engagement is intimately related to the design of learning activities, as well as to a whole range of other factors. Needless to say, the next session was a lot better. This little vignette illustrates a way of learning (learning by doing, and problem-based learning), which has subsequently become a key theme in my practice.

I have gone through a number of different stages in my career, which have shaped and refined my approaches to, and understandings of, learning and teaching, and continue to do so. The first part of my teaching experience was firmly faculty based, and it included teaching large introductory units with hundreds of students in them. I greatly value this experience, because it has given me both a strong understanding of the conditions under which many university teachers operate, as well as an ability to empathise with the context in which they teach. However, it has also made me more determined to always look for innovative ways to enhance the student experience as well as the teacher experience, as I firmly believe that the two are closely linked.  

The fact that this portfolio is organised around the UK Professional Standards Framework is very useful for me, as it allows me to further build on the idea of a learning ecology, in which many different factors contribute to the learning environment, not all of which are under our control (Kek & Huijser, forthcoming). The UKPSF has five areas of activity, and this portfolio is organised around those areas. However, these areas both impact on and are impacted by both Core Knowledge and by Professional Values. While all of these are specifically linked to a formal higher education context, they do allow for an inclusive conceptualisation of the learning environment. 

A key turning point in my career came in 2005, when I took up a full-time position as Lecturer Learning and Teaching Enhancement in a Learning and Teaching Support Unit. This shifted my focus towards Educational Development. While I was initially mostly engaged in the development of academic learning skills, which was mostly student-facing, the Unit I worked in was both student- and staff-facing, so I gradually become more and more involved in educational development targeted at academic staff. However, the experience of working directly with students was invaluable as it informed (and continues to inform) my practice. In other words, the ultimate focus is always on student learning outcomes. This combined experience also confirmed my overall commitment to 'constructive alignment' (Biggs & Tang, 2011) as a key principle for learning and teaching in higher education. 

I have been in my current role of Educational Developer at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) in Suzhou, China, only for one year, so I will focus in this portfolio on my current position, but also on my previous three positions, and in particular my last two positions at Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, in the Northern Territory of Australia, and Bahrain Polytechnic, in the Arabian Gulf.

While my time at USQ allowed me to hone my skills as an Educational Developer, it was at Bahrain Polytechic, Batchelor Institute, and now at XJTLU that I have begun to show leadership in educational development in a number of different areas, and on a number of different projects. These will therefore be the focus of this portfolio, and the claims I make will be supported by a range of evidence. The key areas of my educational leadership relate to the following professional responsibilities, achievements, and projects:

• Development of academic learning skills, and their integration in curricula (Huijser, Kimmins & Galligan, 2008; Star & Hammer, 2008).
• Development of online learning and teaching environments (Hunt, Huijser & Sankey, 2011).
• Development of peer assisted learning programs (Huijser, Kimmins & Evans, 2008). 
• Development of institutional strategy and implementation of Problem-based Learning (PBL), including professional development (Coutts, Huijser, & Almulla, 2012; Huijser & Hasan, 2012).
• Development of institutional strategy and implementation of blended learning in an Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander context, including professional development  (Huijser & Bronnimann, 2014).
• Development of a blended version of Certificate IV in Training and Assessment, specifically targeting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learners, and based around a 4MAT approach (Willis, Willis, & Huijser, 2015)
• Coordination and further development of Batchelor Institute's higher degrees by research programme
• Development of a national (Australian) framework and set of resources for the application of Learning Analytics in student retention, including presentation of the findings at a national forum (West, Heath, & Huijser, 2016; Huijser, West, & Heath, 2016).
• Development of a learning and teaching focused professional development strategy based around Communities of Practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, Trayner, & de Laat, 2011). This included a role in helping to organise a visit to XJTLU by Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner and developing resource materials around their visit to XJTLU's annual Learning and teaching Colloquium in 2016.

In each of these initiatives, the scholarship of teaching and learning (Trigwell & Shale, 2004) has been a key strategy in terms of change management, as it often provides good opportunities to build relationships and communities of practice between academic staff and Educational Developers like myself. This is explained in a video I recorded for the South Australian Northern Territory Promoting Excellence Network in 2013.

Overall then, the key thread through my career so far has been the development of learning communities and communities of practice. In my view, this is crucial part of educational development, as it is based on strong social constructivist principles (Moll, 2013) and situated in practice. This is exactly the opposite to more traditional teacher-centred workshop-based professional development programs, which are 'delivered' at the discretion of the teacher and 'pushed' from the center. 

I will revisit the themes mentioned here in more depth throughout this portfolio, as they relate to all five areas of activity in the UKPSF.

References

Biggs, J. & Tang, C. (2011). Teaching for quality learning at university (4^th Ed.). Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.

Coutts, C., Huijser, H. & Almulla, H. (2012). A project management approach to sustainable PBL curriculum design implementation at Bahrain Polytechnic. In: 3rd International PBL Symposium: PBL and the Problematization of Teaching and Learning, 7-9 March 2012, Singapore.

Huijser, H. & Bronnimann, J. (2014). Exploring the opportunities of social media to build knowledge in learner-centered Indigenous learning spaces. In S. Feller & I. Yengin (Eds.). Educating in Dialog: Constructing Meaning and Building Knowledge with Dialogic Technology (pp. 97-110). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Huijser, H. & Hasan, J. (2012). Working towards innovative practitioners: problem-based learning at Bahrain Polytechnic. In: 6th Quality Conference in the Middle East: Innovation-Based Competitiveness and Business Excellence, 30 Jan - 2 Feb 2012, Dubai, UAE.

Huijser, H., Kimmins, L., & Galligan, L. (2008). Evaluating individual teaching on the road to embedding academic skills.  Journal of Academic Language & Learning, 2(1), pp. A23-A38. 

Huijser, H., Kimmins, L. & Evans, P. (2008). Peer assisted learning in fleximode: Developing an online learning community. Australasian Journal of Peer Learning, 1(1), pp. 51-60.

Huijser, H., West, D., & Heath, D. (2016). The potential of learning analytics to systematically address diverse learning needs and improve student retention in higher education. Advances in SoTL, 3(1).

Hunt, L., Huijser, H., & Sankey, M. (2011). Learning spaces for the digital age: Blending space with pedagogy. In M. Keppell, K. Souter & M. Riddle (Eds.). Physical and Virtual Learning Spaces in Higher Education: Concepts for the Modern Learning Environment (pp. 182-197). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Kek, M. & Huijser, H. (forthcoming). Problem-based learning into the future: Imagining an agile PBL ecology for learning. Singapore: Springer.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Moll, L. (2013). L.S. Vygotsky and education. London: Routledge.

Star, C. & Hammer, S. (2008). Teaching generic skills: eroding the higher purpose of universities, or an opportunity for renewal? Oxford Review of Education, 34(2), 237-251.

Trigwell, K. & Shale, S. (2004). Student learning and the scholarship of university teaching. Studies in Higher Education, 29(4), 523-536.

Wenger, E., Trayner, B., & de Laat, M. (2011) Promoting and assessing value creation in communities and networks: a conceptual framework. (Rapport 18). Heerlen: Open University of the Netherlands. Retrieved 26 April 2016 from http://wenger-trayner.com/resources/publications/evaluation-framework/

West, D., Heath, D., & Huijser, H. (2016). Let's talk learning analytics: A framework for implementation in relation to student retention. Online Learning (Special Issue: Learning Analytics), 20(2).

Willis, J., Willis, M., & Huijser, H. (2015). Learning power: Taking learning-centredness seriously in a blended learning environment. In M. Harmes, H. Huijser, & P. Danaher (Eds.). Myths in education, learning and Teaching: Policies, practices, and principles (pp. 19-39). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.