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The IDFS & the
The Instructional Design & Faculty Support Community of Practice
The Instructional Design & Faculty Support Community of Practice
The IDFS is a community of practice for UC instructional designers and consultants that has been meeting since 2010. The group is managed by two co-chairs (in 2023-2024: Margaret Merrill, UCD and Janet DiVincenzo, UCI). Monthly meetings are held via Zoom and, pandemic aside, the community meets face-to-face on a different UC campus in the summer of each year.
The IDFS maintains a private google share drive, a Slack workspace and a google groups listserv for in-group communication. The monthly meeting agendas are arranged around working group reports, discussion of updates and trends related to ID work from the campuses, plus there is always the opportunity to share up-coming conference details, useful ID resources, and advertised ID positions.
A “monthly highlight” presentation (a working group report, the showcasing of a new tool, or a campus project outline, for example) by a member from one of the UC campuses, typically produces animated conversation and more sharing of ID practice.
The IDFS DEI Working Group
The IDFS DEI Working Group
In the summer of 2020, a number of instructional designers in the IDFS community had started to consider DEI and instructional technology on local campuses. In meetings around that time, the group decided it wanted to share or contribute something of use to support faculty, instructors and TAs on the ten campuses of the UC. We agreed to focus on gathering and developing new resources related to DEI to support the review and creation of blended and online courses. At the August 2020 meeting, the IDFS community formed a DEI Working Group.
At its first meeting in October 2020, the DEI working group discussed communal goals for sharing DEI resources and knowledge across the UC system, and our DEI-focused personal/professional development. The group discussion concentrated on first creating some DEI artifacts, and possibilities included: sharable modules, videos, awareness-building activities, a dedicated IDFS meeting with examples and sample work. This discussion and these efforts were reported back to colleagues working in online education in the central UC Office of the President and, within a week or two, we were (t)asked by the Office to work on some DEI guidelines or a rubric focused on online course design and teaching that could be used across the UC system.
The DEI working group is open to all IDFS instructional designers. Current active membership includes:
Bo Choi (UCI)
Sarah Bushman (UCB)
Kim DeBacco (UCLA)
Samantha Eastman (UCR)
Brandy Jenner (UCLA)
Melinda Livas (UCD)
Nick Mattos (UCSD)
Margaret Merrill (UCD)
Julie Moss (UCB)
Alan Roper (UCLA)
Michelle Ruiz (UCB)
(Shu Fen) Fannie Tsai (UCI)
Past contributors:
Cecilia Gomez (formerly UCD)
Kailey Baez (formerly UCI)
Presenting about the DEI Rubric at EDUCAUSE-ELI, June 2021, San Diego.
From left to right: Nick Mattos (UCSD), Kim DeBacco (UCLA), Fannie (ShuFen) Tsai (UCI), Bo Choi (UCI), Samantha Eastman (UCR).
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