A history of COED’s formation
After many years meeting annually as “Instructional Development Officers” the group of teaching centre directors, staff, and independent consultants from the tertiary education sector in Ontario had grown to a steady number that was no longer small enough to chat informally.
As a result, a Working Group was formed in November 2007 at the request of several parties during our Ontario ID meeting at Ryerson University. Initially, the group was charged with finding better ways to share resources amongst ourselves than the now-unwieldy roundtable at Ryerson each Fall. At the same time, the working group was tasked with coming up with an answer to the question of “Affiliate status” within the Ontario Council of Academic Vice-Presidents, or OCAV.
With the 2008 arrival of the “University Undergraduate Degree Level Expectations” or UUDLEs as part of every Undergraduate Program Review in Ontario the Ontario Council of Academic Vice-Presidents was seeking to cooperate with the Educational Developers from each University in Ontario. It was to our mutual benefit to formalize what has been for decades now an informal group. Where appropriate, the intent was to support the work of COU and OCAV, and reciprocally, have these groups be able to hear about our efforts.
Carole Dence and Trevor Holmes began some of the work in December 2007 with the drafting of a constitution and launched a wiki in February 2008 to communicate and house archives. At this time Trevor Holmes agreed to lead the exploration of Affiliate Status, which culminated in a COED’s formal creation in June 2008.