A unique partnership was created in 2010 between librarians and educational developers at the University of Toronto: Partnership for Academic and Student Success (PASS). This initiative was designed to provide opportunities for librarians and educational developers to collaborate and innovate, with the goal of improving both librarians' pedagogical understanding and skills, to address pedagogical challenges and to integrate the work of librarians and the work of educational developers across all three campuses. The initiative grew out of the discussions between senior leaders within the University of Toronto Libraries and the Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation (CTSI)
Although a robust body of literature exists on the role, construction and efficacy of partnerships between faculty and librarians to support learning in post-secondary environments (Brasley, 2008), particularly with respect to information literacy (Mounce, 2010), comparatively little exists on the topic of aligning and coordinating the work of librarians with educational developers, with noteworthy exceptions (Colosimo, 2012; Nitecki & Rando, 2004).
The goals of the session are: 1) sharing best practices and lessons learned with other institutions interested in developing successful “cross-pollinations” between librarians and educational developers; and 2) promoting critical inquiry and discussion, and obtaining input on the confluence of perspectives and strategies required to transform university teaching and learning practices. In this session, librarians and educational developers who have been involved in the PASS initiative will share observations and best practices regarding program genesis, development, assessment, reporting, and program oversight. As well, they will pose the following key question to participants to generate additional perspectives: What are the key principles that emerge from partnerships like PASS that increase the chances of success, and what insights have you gleaned from your own experiences that would add to these principles?