Working for the future

Just a few more months and four years of Acceleration Plan will be over. Our gaze slowly starts to shift towards the future. However, right now the Acceleration Plan still deserves our attention. Because if we take stock now, we can make good use of the next impulse.

As far as I’m concerned, the Acceleration Plan has delivered a great deal. For three years, I have been involved in the Facilitating professional development for lecturers zone as their connector. We started off somewhat uncomfortably, with two team leaders, myself, and a mixed and critical group of almost twenty zone members (“yes, but your institution is very different to mine”). A close-knit team soon developed, a network of like-minded people who together work on the goals of ‘our’ zone. Under the leadership of the leaders, we formed a vision of the needs of lecturers in the field of educational innovation with technology, and developed many concrete products to realise that vision.

And, and I personally find this one of the biggest gains. We didn’t only develop products, but also looked at how they could best be used within our institutions. This wasn’t easy. You may recognise it: “Very nice, and important, but…. [fill in random argument]”.

The key, we learned, is in giving space to the professionals that’ll work with your products. In making semi-finished products that can be used by colleagues at institutions in a way that suits the local approach.

I can see within my own institution this is the right approach. Within Avans, various products from both our and other zones, are used in various different ways. Not always visibly in the same form as they were published, but nevertheless recognisable, and each of these products have their own impact. I am proud of that!

I hope that we’ll be able to maintain this approach in the future: remain part of a network that we use to build together, and work on results that can be adjusted to the local flavour. I wish everyone good luck with this!

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash