The importance of multiple pathways for engagement: a longitudinal study of educators going public with educational development

There is limited evidence of wide-reaching impact of educational development projects, and although initiatives often emphasise dissemination to increase their reach, previous work has indicated that the impact is often restricted to the immediate context. This article presents the case of a Norwegian Centre for Excellence in Education and explores to what extent the educators in the broader community engaged in educational development using SoTL approaches. Using records spanning 10 years we investigated which educators engaged in publicly sharing teaching and learning development, to which target audiences, and how this developed over time. We find an increasing diversity and number of educators going public, showing that educators did engage beyond the core team, spreading pedagogical development that could otherwise have stayed within a small network. However, this development only become evident as we look at longitudinal data, underlining the temporal aspect of change. The SoTL approach strengthened the involvement of educators as developers and disseminators, and enabled educators to be informed agents in educational development. We conclude that providing multiple pathways to engagement, through sustained initiatives, may be necessary to achieve the impact that many educational development projects aim for.