**8. What are we teaching during professional development?**

In our professional development program IMPACT, and other professional development workshops we offer to instructors, we generally emphasize the applications of SDT principles and specifically the satisfaction of the basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. This allows us to shift our professional development approach from a mostly prescriptive course redesign model philosophy to a more flexible, autonomy-supportive model of professional development. In working with instructors, we also focus on supporting their basic psychological needs, emphasizing autonomy and choice in designing the learning environment and building a relationship of trust where instructors feel like they belong, as we work to transform the learning environment for the students. The community that is created during the professional development program provides a space to regularly exchange ideas, share challenges and successes with other instructors and developers who are experiencing very similar things in their classrooms. This cultivates and fosters an authentic sense of belonging and trust. An additional benefit of this approach is that it allowed us to successfully scale the IMPACT program from 12 courses in 2012 to 60 courses a year and over 600 courses transformed to date and as many instructors involved across all colleges at Purdue who have together reached 91 percent of the students enrolled at Purdue University [42].

In essence and at the core of what we do during professional development with instructors, is to focus on an innovative way of thinking about and approach teaching and learning; to focus on people; *people* teaching and *people* learning. In our work with instructors, we focus on the "why"; why are we engaging in course transformation, instead of focusing on the "what" or the use of tools, models, and technologies. When focusing on the "Why" we emphasize the reasons for our work; we do what we do because of the students. We work to create learning environments that are autonomy-supportive, student-centered, and that will foster motivation, engagement, and learning in our students. Our work is about helping instructors understand the importance of creating autonomy supportive, student-centered learning environments for all students. This is the nature of our work as educators. We need to aim to support all the students entering our classrooms and come along on their learning journey. This does not mean or imply that we become less rigorous or make

*Perspective Chapter: Fostering Students' Learning Experiences in Higher Education – Reflections… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110327*

the curriculum easier or foster grade inflation. It is about nurturing the talent of all students, supporting their motivation for learning by fostering the satisfaction of their basic psychological needs, and in the process fostering the attainment of related motivational and educational outcomes [42].

In contrast, when focusing on the "what" of redesign, and specific models and tools, faculty report feeling restrained, constrained, and limited by the lack of flexibility and the imposition of certain redesign models for their transformation. This is especially true for instructors in the social sciences who tend to make use of narratives and stories to engage students with their experiences as disciplinary experts. When the structure of a professional development program is too constraining, instructors perceive that the value of their work on creative assignments and activities is being diminished in favor of cookie-cutter redesign models. It is experienced as a loss of autonomy and agency. Allowing faculty to explore and sample different tools and strategies and combine them together in a flexible way, under the guidance of our support team of instructional developers, re-establish instructors' autonomy, volition, and agency, therefore supporting their basic psychological needs, which in turn enhances their commitment, engagement, and effort toward professional development. Being more flexible and autonomy supportive with instructors allows them to clarify their own transformation goals while also allowing the support team members to draw from their particular expertise to foster successful transformations.

This approach in working with instructors creates a shift in their way of thinking about their teaching. In supporting instructors' basic psychological needs, it allows them to explore their pedagogical practices deeply, safely, and intentionally. It teaches them a set of habits of mind around teaching and learning, and fosters a process of inquiry and reflection which frequently brings to mind questions like "how can I support my students' basic psychological needs?" and "how will this assignment be perceived by students?" or "will this activity or assignment foster the need for competence while also supporting the students' needs for autonomy and relatedness?" or "am I creating an environment that is autonomy supportive, inclusive, and equitable so all my students can succeed and feel like they belong?" and "which voices are heard in my syllabus, course content, assignments?" It is a sort of metacognitive and "meta-affective" exercise encouraging instructors to think about what will get their students involved by reflecting on the types of environments that contribute to motivation and engagement. When faculty fellows realize and deeply understand that students are humans just like them, and therefore guided by the same motivation principles which contribute to engagement, well-being, and growth, they start to think, feel, and act differently in regard to their teaching [42].

Through this type of professional development, faculty fellows learn to apply teaching and learning principles based in SDT, in new contexts, situations, and courses they are teaching, not only the course they initially intended to redesign. This shift has led instructors to apply and transfer the skills and insights they acquire during the professional development program to hundreds of other courses they are also teaching. We refer to those as "influenced courses". Everyone on the team is involved in a deep process of reflection, applying the principles presented in the sessions to their experiences in the classroom, outside of the classroom, and facilitating the FLC. It also provides a renewed emphasis on student engagement and student-centered learning. Throughout our discussions, we strive to bring it back to the student and the student experience. This emphasis on student engagement and student learning as a primary goal of educators also contributes to enhance the focus on mastery and competency, and de-prioritize grades and DFW rates as the only or most important measure of student success.
