Higher Education Academic Staff: Professional Identity and Sense of
Community as the Key to Enhancing Teaching Quality
The Culture of Sharing Educational Resources in the Catalan University System
Teresa Sancho Vinuesa
1
, M. Rosa Estela Carbonell
2
,
Clàudia Sànchez Bonvehí
3
and Joana Villalonga Pons
1
1
Estudis d'Informàtica, Multimèdia i Telecomunicació, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
2
Dept. Matemàtica Aplicada III, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona Tech, Barcelona, Spain
3
Consorci de Biblioteques Universitàries de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
Keywords: Catalan Universities, CIRAX, Collaboration, Community, Institutional Repositories, Open Educational
Resources, Professional Identity, Teaching Quality.
Abstract: This study presents an analysis of the main features of teaching community of the Catalan university
system, from both the individual activity of professors and the sense of belonging to a community. The basis
of the present study is the meaning and the sense of community: a required factor for collaboration between
professors, sharing and reusing teaching resources and, for ultimately, the success of a teaching and learning
resources repository. Common goals that determine a community of practice can encourage collaboration
through the network. The discussion presented here is based on the analysis of the pilot program
“Col·laboratori Interuniversitari de Recursos d’Aprenentatge en Xarxa” (CIRAX), developed in 2013 in the
field of teaching and learning introductory mathematics in the Catalan university system.
1 INTRODUCTION
In 2013, in the context of the European
Commission's Opening up Education initiative,
“Col·laboratori Interuniversitari de Recursos
d’Aprenentatge en Xarxa” (CIRAX) was born.
CIRAX is an interuniversity program funded by the
Catalan government and its pilot-experience has
been developed by lecturers of introductory
mathematical courses at different Catalan
universities. This project was basically motivated by
three factors:
a) Transverse opening movement (Openness),
which led into the development of ICT.
b) Communities of practice which share knowledge
across the network.
c) Necessity to ensure a qualified Higher Education
to respond the Europe 2020 strategy for smart,
sustainable and inclusive growth.
In order to improve the teaching quality at
university, this project aims to promote and
consolidate a teaching community which should be
active in the creation, updating and sharing
resources, and learning practices. The tool for
achieving this goal is a repository-in-collaboration
where resources could be shared, well-catalogued
and well-managed. It should facilitate a subject
preparation as well as the sharing of proposals and
teaching works. CIRAX pilot experience allows us
to analyse the role of teaching at universities and its
quality, while putting particular emphasis on the
higher education academic staff identity and the
sense of community, as a success factor for
collaboration, sharing and reuse of open educational
resources.
Different sections of this article describe the
different issues surrounding the utilization, sharing
and reutilization of networking resources in the
Higher Education context, in our territorial
framework and within mathematics academic
community.
The first section contextualizes the teaching
activity in Spanish Higher Education. The second
part points out to some basic ideas about the
definition of the sense of community, as well as
some features on professional identity. The third
section focuses on the existence and coexistence of
different online repositories and platforms, as well
as their utilization. Then, it sets down the way in
105
Sancho Vinuesa T., Estela Carbonell M., Sànchez Bonvehí C. and Villalonga Pons J..
Higher Education Academic Staff: Professional Identity and Sense of Community as the Key to Enhancing Teaching Quality - The Culture of Sharing
Educational Resources in the Catalan University System.
DOI: 10.5220/0004956001050110
In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2014), pages 105-110
ISBN: 978-989-758-022-2
Copyright
c
2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
which Catalan university system values teaching
activity at university and, consequently, what is
understood as teaching quality in Higher Education.
Finally, it connects CIRAX experiences with the
previous sections. Thereafter, in the last section we
remark the most important experience outcomes and
show some final thoughts in order to suggest future
lines of action.
2 TEACHING ACTIVITY IN
HIGHER EDUCATION
In Spain, university faculty has three tasks: teaching,
research and management. Two of them are not
always easily separable: one linked to the teaching
and learning process and the other one tied to
deepening their own knowledge. For this reason, it is
said that university professors have to deal with a
dual identity: one related to being a specialist in the
field of science, and the other, to be a specialist in
the development of teaching-learning processes in
the same discipline (Fernández, 2011); (Peña Calvo,
2012); (Zabalza, 2009). Despite the fact that these
basic tasks are known, they are not differentiated or
understood as they should be. For that reason,
working with these two identities is not a simply
task.
In the context of Higher Education, professional
identity of academic staff has been analyzed from
multiple perspectives, but not many of them study
the university professors' teaching concepts or their
feelings regarding this activity (Badia, 2011).
Sancho (2001) classifies the characteristic traits
of Spanish academic staff. According to her study, it
is, for example, common to hear about research
teams, it is not so common to hear about teaching
teams. Another characteristic is that teaching at
university is often reduced to be rather private in
nature. In general, most teaching activity remains
between professors and their students and educative
projects are usually accepted without revisions or
external controls.
EHEA’s (European Higher Education Area) aim
is to improve the quality of their programs and
degrees. Its main goal is to ensure the quality of the
education offered, in order to cope with a fast
growing and internationalized higher education
demand.
The problem, then, lies in the definition of a
teaching community at university, its members and
their operational dynamics within the European
Higher Education context.
Marin (2004) argues that relationships formed by
a university professor both with students and
colleagues are probably the elements that most
strongly affect teaching, especially during the period
of induction to professional practice. This is because
these relationships help to determine methodologies,
beliefs and attitudes towards the university in
general, and in particular, in relation to the
development of their work.
In this context, Mas Torelló (2011) indicates that
although university professors work for the highest
level of educational institution that exists, mostly of
them are not trained in teaching. They enter the
university system after learning about their chosen
field of study in higher education institutions,
without receiving any teaching training.
These ideas are summed up by some authors,
like Marín (2005), Show-Gerono (2005) or Zabalza
(2009), who suggest that professional development
of teachers in the new university educational system
requires dialogue and collaborative work, as a
training that enhance not only teaching skills, but
also the whole person, both personally and
professionally.
As Zabalza (2009) pointed out, regarding
teaching “it is imperative that (the people who teach
at university) have to be satisfied with their salary
levels, prospects for promotion and treatment, the
intellectual challenge of research the pleasure of
teaching and emotional quality of communities of
practice in which they work” (Knight, 2005).
Sancho-Vinuesa (2013) claims that a local policy
framework is established and it can help to define
professional identity regarding university teaching.
Nevertheless, an adequate teacher training, a system
of incentives, an appropriate recognition criteria and
values of quality and prestige, would allow to shape
it. Therefore, a definition of various profiles, a
weighted system of incentives and appreciation of
teaching could definitely contribute to the review the
professional identity of university faculty (Sancho-
Vinuesa, 2013). This framework should promote
teamworking, sharing experiences and peer review,
basic elements for the quality of educational system.
3 SENSE OF COMMUNITY
There are different definitions of “community” and
“sense of community”. Rovai (2002) points out that
community dimensions depend on specific context.
Likewise, there are some aspects which are basic for
members of any community: mutual
interdependence, sense of belonging, linking
“relationship”, spirit, trust, interactivity, common
CSEDU2014-6thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation
106
expectations, shared values and goals, and co-lived
stories. Specifically, the same author argues that
members of a group have feelings of belonging,
confidence and have obligations to others and to the
institution. Of course, they have a shared conviction
that the educational needs of all members will be
met through their commitment to shared goals.
King (2003) points out that “professional
identity” is a key element with which analyses the
factors that influence resistance to change in
institutional contexts.
Beyond the factors that explain the involvement
of people in institutional innovation, which has been
analyzed from multiple perspectives (Shaninina,
2003), it is interesting to know the reasons why
some people remain committed to innovation and
sustained change in shape and others are not.
Sharratt (2003) states that sharing knowledge within
a community reflects a moral obligation, which
corresponds to a personal feeling more than other
factors. Consequently, if there is a “community”, the
sharing of knowledge would be stronger when the
sense of community is stronger. Davis (2010)
considers that altruist sharing is not enough by itself
and needs to be accompanied by more pragmatic
selfish motives.
In this context, on the one hand, we wonder
whether a definition of a community and
professional identity of university professors in the
sense of teaching and learning process is possible.
On the other hand, we think that advantages of
sharing need to be integrated by the community in
its day-to-day teaching practices, in order to
reinforce a sense of community belonging and
motivate exchange and dialogue between members.
4 REPOSITORIES AND
SHARING ENVIRONMENTS
The introduction of ICTs has had a very direct effect
on the format of educational resources and the way
that they are stored and distributed.
Governments and educational institutions have
devoted much effort in the development and
implementation of institutional repositories, but not
much in assessment in relation to the participation of
teachers. There are some recent studies (Davis and
Connolly, 2007); (Davis, 2010) that have analyzed
the low usage in terms of content and participation
in the service offered from university libraries. It is a
fact that this poor use of institutional repositories is
not only a local concern, but there are some
questions that are valid, wherever the learning
repository is: institutional, local or global, thematic
or by discipline. In this section we identify the
factors that influence in the participation and
resource sharing in the Catalan university system,
focusing on the variety of repository strategies,
professors’ behaviour and organisational structures.
While there is a widespread use of educational
platforms, preservation strategies of teaching
materials are diverse, and rarely both environments
have been joined or integrated to facilitate
exchanges between the repository and the virtual
classroom or platform. In this sense, we realise that
there are two environments managed by different
actors and focused on different aims. Learning
management systems are managed by lecturers
themselves in order to connect resources and
students, and repositories are managed by librarians
and serve preservation and informational needs.
According to different authors (Davis, 2007);
(Bueno de la Fuente, 2011), the success of projects
such as educational repositories often involve
different strategies, both human and cultural. The
review conducted by Bueno de la Fuente and
Hernandez (2011) exposes different factors that
determine the success of an institutional repository
with learning resources: conceptual and pedagogical,
human and cultural, political and organizational,
legal and technological. Repositories that can be
divided by collections need not only allow
depositing resources, but provide a favourable
environment to enhance dialogue and
communication.
This explains why in the framework of projects
which promote the sharing of open educational
resources, different models of organisation have
been described. While the technological tool could
be similar, attitude and its integrative dynamics can
produce organizations that differ according to the
presence of a collaborative goal. On the one hand,
the social network becomes a meeting and exhibition
space for its users. On the other hand, the
community of practice goes beyond coexistence in
space and is characterized by collaborative and
common goals of its members (McAvinia and
Maguire, 2011). Both phenomena are interrelated or
lived separately.
In addition, these communities of practice among
teachers become stronger when they are based on a
specific theme or built from personal relationships
(EdRene, 2010). In other words, a criterion is needed
that groups the actors in the community and acts as a
common goal, in order to increase the perception of
belonging. Some open educational resource projects
also include a community coordinator who also has
HigherEducationAcademicStaff:ProfessionalIdentityandSenseofCommunityastheKeytoEnhancingTeaching
Quality-TheCultureofSharingEducationalResourcesintheCatalanUniversitySystem
107
expert insight into the discipline. Other projects let
librarians lead communication tasks and stimulate
collaboration.
In our study, we consider the fact and the
desirability of sharing resources and teaching
experiences. The next section will show how
organizational and institutional factors take part in
sharing culture, and show how they may influence
teaching quality.
5 TEACHING QUALITY
In general, management, participation or
membership innovation teaching groups or projects
is viewed favourably for Catalan universities
1
.
However, aspects of collaboration or cooperation
between the members of these groups or projects are
not specially valued in most of them. The situation is
the same regarding the publication of educational
resources in the institutional repository, which is not
mandatory for most of Catalan universities.
Creation of teaching materials, developing
specific experience with teaching methods or be the
author of teaching-learning process documents is
recognised by Catalan universities, but not in the
same way in all institutions. For example, only one
of these universities clearly sets out the creation of
multimedia resources, another university appreciates
the use of own resources and only one university
takes into account the fact that resources can be
shared or reused in some sense.
Each Catalan university has its own virtual
platform that professors can use for their teaching
activities. Although some universities encourage
professors to use them, only one of the universities
considers and consequently positively values the fact
that resources stored on these platforms can be
shared, used for collaboration or reused.
Few Catalan universities recognize the worth of
openness and accessibility of teaching material to
others via a virtual space and only one university
contemplates the idea that this material could be
shared. Moreover, the system of assessment of some
universities does not value the use of educational
platforms as a repository of educational material or
for outreach publications.
It is clear that the common aim of sharing and re-
use of resources such as teaching materials, and
collaboration between professors to enhance them
goes beyond what professors and departments can
achieve themselves. The resources, designed and
used by professors, are the common point of
collaboration. University establishes the common
structure of a course and a specific team teaches the
lectures. All of these entities would have to go in
one direction and recognize the same practices.
6 CIRAX EXPERIENCES
Through the CIRAX pilot experience, which
involved 150 people (lecturers, librarians and IT
staff) we confirm and justify several of the ideas
discussed above. They allow us to think that a sense
of professional identity and a sense of community is
the key to collaboration among university professors
and, consequently, to enhance the quality of teaching
in the European High Educational context.
According to Academic Library Consortium of
Catalonia (CBUC) librarians, most professors have
been reusing teaching and learning resources in a
spontaneous and uncontrolled way. This perception
is shared by professors, who recognised that they
have generally shared materials among department
colleagues, and above all, colleagues of the specific
course. Both, librarians and professors, assume that
in general professors have a strong sense of
ownership of their own teaching resources.
Moreover, it is claimed that educational materials
differ from scientific publications because the first
one is alive and is never closed. These facts confirm
that cultural factors can play an important role in
enhancing or inhibiting sharing.
The diffused information through CIRAX that
sparked more interest in professors was related with
the announcement of new resources hold in CIRAX
and related with the recognition for the material hold
in CIRAX which caused more expectation during
the pilot experience. These facts allow us to think:
a) Professors are interested in knowing possible
new resources for their teaching activity and they
are grateful for an easy way to finding them out.
b) Recognition for teaching work, in terms of
developing or sharing teaching resources
encourage lecturers to create, use, reuse, modify
or collaborate on teaching materials.
Most of professors involved in the CIRAX
experience complained that they do have not enough
time to explore new platforms or resources. For this
reason, they would appreciate more transversal
teaching resources, which will make research easier
and faster. To achieve information retrieval, it is
necessary to have a system that is both robust and
flexible, but in the pilot, professors claimed that
thematic classification is crucial.
From interviews to professors carried out during
the project and from a final questionnaire, professors
CSEDU2014-6thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation
108
involved in the CIRAX experience emphasise that
teaching resources should remain bounded in a
specific and reduced context around the topics of
their courses of subjects. They require a small
environment for colleagues that share the same
interests and work on similar topics.
As stated above, in Spain, teaching resources are
not revised in the same manner as research papers.
In relation to this, through the CIRAX pilot, we
detected that professors who wish to reuse materials
require a teaching guarantee of shared resources.
However, during the I CIRAX Day final roundtable
a great number of authors of materials claimed that
revision of this material is not necessary. Autocratic
and self-revision could be useful instead, as well as
simple exposure to maths community. Thus, in order
for all professors to share and collaborate, focusing
on enhancing materials, an agreement regarding this
will be necessary.
7 CONCLUSIONS
Open Educational Resources and Teaching Practices
in Europe 2013 show that in the European Higher
Education context, collaboration and sharing are
fundamental practices. They allow the enhancement
of teaching activity and, therefore, the learning
process and professional development.
After the CIRAX pilot, we realised that despite
the fact that these practices are accepted by most of
the higher education staff, there are some barriers,
mostly cultural, which do not facilitate the
collaboration and sharing to take place. Nowadays it
is still difficult for university staff to share or reuse
teaching resources and, consequently, collaborate
with each other, especially when they come from
different institutions.
Collaboration requires a specific and well-
defined community to succeed, where each member
has a clear idea about his or her professional
identity. What faculty have to do in order to be an
excellent professional? Regarding to this, the
recognition and value of teaching practice as well as
the definition of a professional career in a Higher
education institution becomes a key factor. To
incorporate mechanisms for the evaluation of
teaching (relatively standardized through
universities from Catalan system) as well as
incentives, not only economical, but in prestigious
sense for teachers in their daily dedication in
teaching, and encourage teamwork like in scientific
field. These strategies could support professional
identity and enhance community collaboration.
Altruism, recognition and prestige are basic
elements for collaboration, but they are not possible
without a main element. This is the identity, the
feeling to be part of a (specific) community.
Achieving this objective goes further than only a
feeling. Sharing and reusing requires a stronger link
than just to have common goals. It requires a
stronger level of support and help. In addition,
evidence from this pilot study points out that
professors’ engagement does not happen on its own.
Diffusion and communication activities are elements
that reinforce this engagement, like a Community
Manager in other social networks.
In a nutshell, two factors are identified in order
to guarantee a real collaborative work among
academic staff: a) the definition of a professional
identity in the case of faculty members; b) the
existence of a specific community which share
knowledge, values, expectations and goals. If
professors know that teaching activity will be
assessed and recognized, and they belong to an
active teaching community in a specific area, there
will be the basis for a teaching which follows the
quality standards on research activity: peer review,
openness and teamworking.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The project described here was funded by the
Catalan Government and carried out by an
interdisciplinary and interuniversity team of faculty
and specialists in the development of technological
tools for learning. We would like to express our
most sincere gratitude to all people who have taken
part in the project at any level.
REFERENCES
Badia, A., Monereo, A., Meneses, J., 2011. El profesor
universitario: identidad profesional, concepciones y
sentimientos sobre la enseñanza. In VI Congreso
Internacional de Psicología y Educación: Educación,
aprendizaje y desarrollo en una sociedad
multicultural. Valladolid (Spain).
Bueno de la Fuente, G., 2010. Modelo de repositorio
institucional de contenido educativo (RICE): la
gestión de materiales digitales de docencia y
aprendizaje en la biblioteca universitaria. Ph.D.
Thesis Universitat Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento
de Biblioteconomía y documentación.
Bueno de la Fuente, G., Hernández Pérez, T., 2011.
Estrategias para el éxito de los repositorios
institucionales de contenido educativo en las
HigherEducationAcademicStaff:ProfessionalIdentityandSenseofCommunityastheKeytoEnhancingTeaching
Quality-TheCultureofSharingEducationalResourcesintheCatalanUniversitySystem
109
bibliotecas digitales universitarias. In BiD: textos
universitaris de biblioteconomia i documentació, juny,
núm. 26. http://bid.ub.edu/26/bueno2.htm [2013/10].
Bueno de la Fuente, G., Martínez, D., 2011. Informe de
resultados de la prueba piloto: cuestionario sobre los
hábitos de los profesores universitarios para compartir,
intercambiar y reutilizar materiales didácticos en un
entorno digital: el uso de los repositorios.
Departamento de Biblioteconomía y Documentación,
Universidado Carlos III, Madrid. http://e-
archivo.uc3m.es/handle/10016/16004 [2013/10]
CIRAX, 2013. Col·laboratori interuniversitari de recursos
d'aprenentatge en xarxa http://www.cirax.cat/
[2013/12]
Davis, H., Leslie Carr., Hey, J., Howard, Y., Millard, D.,
Morris, D., White, S. 2010. Bootstrapping a Culture of
Sharing to facilitate Open Educational Resources. In
IEEE Transaction on Learning Technologies, Vol. 3,
N.2, April-June 2010.
Davis, P., Connolly, M., 2007. Evaluating the Reasons for
Non-use of Cornell University’s Installation of
DSpace. In D-Lib Magazine, Març-Abril. Vol. 13, N
3,4.
Tommy Byskov, L. et al., 2010. Engaging users and
producers. Thematic synthesis report. EdReNe, 22 p.
http://edrene.org/results/deliverables/EdReNeD5.4TS
R_Engaging_users.pdf.
Fernández, R., 2011. La Universidad tiene dos almas
inseparables y que le dan sentido último: la docencia y
la investigación. In Noticia: Entrevista, La
Vanguardia. 22 November 2011. http://
noticias.universia.es/en-portada/noticia/2011/11/22/
890154/roberto-fernandez-universidad-tiene-dos-
almas-inseparables-dan-sentido-ultimo-docencia-
investigacion.html [2013-10]
King, N., 2003. Involvement in innovation: The role of
identity. In London: LV Shaninina (ed), The
international handbook on innovation Elsevier
Science, pp 619–30.
Knight, P. T., 2005. El profesorado de Educación
Superior. Formación para la excelencia. Madrid:
Narcea.
Marín Díaz, V., 2004. El conocimiento y la formación del
profesorado universitario. http://rabida.uhu.es/dspace/
bitstream/handle/10272/6646/Conocimiento_y_formac
ion_profesorado.pdf?sequence=2 [2013/10]
Marín Díaz, V., 2005. El desarrollo profesional del
docente universitario a debate: factores que lo
determinan. http://pedagogia.fcep.urv.cat/revistaut/
revistes/desembre06aniversari/article02.pdf [2013/10]
Mas Torelló, O., 2011. El profesor universitario: sus
competencias y formación. In Profesorado. Revista de
currículum y formación del profesorado. VOl 15, 3.
http://www.ugr.es/~recfpro/rev153COL1.pdf
[2013/10]
McAvinia, C., Maguire, T., 2011. Evaluating The National
Digital Learning Repository: New Models of
Communities of Practice. In The National University
of Ireland Maynooth i Institute of Technologie,
Tallaght. Aishe-J, Volum 3, N. 1.
Peña Calvo, J.V., 2012. Desarrollo profesional del docente
universitario. In Histodidáctica. Enseñanza de la
historia / Didáctica de las ciencias sociales.
2012/03/09. http://www.ub.edu/histodidactica/
index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=60:
desarrollo-profesional-del-docente-
universitario&catid=15&Itemid=103 [2013/10]
Rovai, A. P., 2002. Building Sense of Community at a
Distance. In The International review of research in
open and Distance Learning, Vol. 3, No.1).
http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/viewFile
/79/153. [2013/12]
Sancho Gil, J. M., 2001. Docencia e investigación en la
universidad: una profesión, dos mundos. In Educar
num. 28, 2001 p. 41-60 http://dialnet.unirioja.es/
servlet/articulo?codigo=276693 [2013/10]
Sancho-Vinuesa, T., 2013. Espacios virtuales de
compartición y colaboración entre docentes: Un
camino hacia la mejora de la calidad docente. In
Congreso Iberoamericano de Aprendizaje Mediado
por Tecnología (CIAMTE) 2013.
Sharratt, M. Usoro, A., 2003. Understanding Knowledge-
Sharing in Online Communities of Practice. In
Electronic Journal on Knowledge Management.
Volume 1 Issue 2 (2003) 187-196 www.ejkm.com
©Academic Conferences Limited 2003.
Shaninina, L. V., 2003. Understanding innovation:
Introduction to some important issues, London: LV
Shaninina (ed). In The international handbook on
innovation Elsevier Science, pp 3–14.
Snow-Gerono, J., 2005. Professional development in a
culture of inquiry: PDS identity the benefits of
professional learning communities. In Teaching and
Teacher Educaction, 21. Pág. 241-256.
Zabalza, M. A., 2009. Ser profesor universitario hoy. In
La Cuestión Universitaria, 5. 2009, pp. 69-81. ISSN
1988-236x. http://www.lacuestionuniversitaria.upm.es/
web/grafica/articulos/imgs_boletin_5/pdfs/LCU5-
7.pdf [11/2013]
APPENDIX
1
Each Catalan University has its own Manual
d’Avaluació Docent (MAD) that specifies which
teaching activities are recognized. The Agencia per a
la Qualitat del Sistema Universitari de Catalunya is
responsible to set up common criterion and validate
each MAD.
CSEDU2014-6thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation
110