
About California State University Channel Islands
California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI) is a four-year, public university in Camarillo, California. Established in 2002, it is the youngest of 23 campuses in the California State University family with strong ties to the local community and its rich history. CSUCI was the first CSU campus to receive the inaugural Seal of Excelencia, a prestigious certification granted by Excelencia in Education, recognizing a very high level of commitment and effort to serve Latinx students successfully by closing equity gaps. With over 60% of students first in their family to go to college, CSUCI is committed to inclusive excellence, promoting high-quality educational opportunities for all students. CSUCI started working with OneHE in May 2020.
What was the challenge?
More than five years ago, CSUCI recognised that faculty development was in dire need of transformation. Faculty development then looked largely the same as it had twenty years before, with individuals attending face-to-face workshops and consultations in attempts to find new strategies and ideas for improving learning.
The Teaching and Learning Innovations Unit (TLi) at CSUCI knew that faculty development hadn't kept pace, with pedagogy, delivery modes and expectations on educators. They hit on Untethered Faculty Development in response. At its heart, this approach immerses faculty in rich, connected online environments that provide them with the knowledge, skills and support to improve their teaching and student outcomes.
Untethering is fundamentally learner-centered, grounded in the use of online networks to share practices, and does not require faculty to be on campus to learn. It places value on sharing and the relational ties between faculty, as opposed to the number of people in a room at a particular time. And it gives faculty multiple points of access and multiple modes of interaction.
It was as CSUCI was exploring how to implement their strategy that they came across OneHE.
How did OneHE change the game for California State University Channel Islands?
When CSUCI saw OneHE for the first time, they immediately saw its potential to support their untethering strategy. Not only did OneHE offer a bank of expert-led resources available on demand, it had the flexible personalised approach that builds agency and the social learning that provides peer support.
Where next for your partnership with OneHE?
Dr Lorna Gonzalez, Director of Digital Learning, CSUCI said: "As OneHE continues to evolve, we look forward to being partners and participants on this journey. In the short term, we are excited about OneHE's developing skills tree as new, highly relevant content (like Dr Courtney Plotts' Culturally Responsive Teaching course) is added to the platform. Administratively, we look forward to the use of analytics to support the ways we integrate this partnership within the network of our in-house educational development. We also look forward to seeing the impact as faculty across ranks and experience join a global community dedicated to this work."
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