Faculty Support/Development: Discussing Past and Prospects

1. Faculty Support/Development:Discussing Past and Prospects Steve Gilbert Steve Ehrmann You

2. “Faculty Development”Activities and Resources to Help Improve Teaching and Learning (with Technology) • Most colleges and universities provide a variety of activities and resources to help faculty members improve teaching and learning with technology.  "Faculty Development"  is a widely used term in the United States that includes the full set of these activities and resources offered at a single college or university.

3. "Faculty Development" • FOCUS ON: • Faculty member as teacherTeaching, including class organization, evaluation of students, in-class presentation skills, questioning and all aspects of design and presentation. Also other aspects of teacher/student interaction, such as advising, tutoring, discipline policies and administration • Faculty member as scholar and professional. Career planning, professional development in scholarly skills such as grant writing, publishing, committee work, administrative work, supervisory skills, etc. • Faculty member as person. Wellness management, interpersonal skills, stress and time management, assertiveness development, etc. • Above excerpts provided by Bonnie Mullinix from POD Network Website: http://lamar.colostate.edu/~ckfgill/facd/definit.html  and http://lamar.colostate.edu/~ckfgill/facd/whatis.html

4. Poll/Discussion – Faculty Roles Do you think of the kinds of activities and resources that support faculty members within your own institution as serving their roles primarily as  ("vote for" only 1 or 2) • Teacher • Course designer • Learning activity facilitator • Technology user, innovator • Assessor/evaluator of learning • Scholar and researcher • Administrator and professional • Person • Other? (please type your additional categories into the chat room)

5. Poll/Discussion – Activities, Resources, Approaches, Strategies “Vote for” all of the following activities, resources, approaches, or strategies that are used more than rarely at your institution for faculty development and support: • Workshops – entirely face-to-face; ½ day or longer • Workshops – entirely face-to-face; 1-3 hours • Workshops – entirely face-to-face; less than 1 hour • Workshops – entirely face-to-face; less than 30 minutes • Consultations (one on one, classroom visits, etc.) • Online support (guided demonstrations, online orientations, courses, chat rooms, etc.) • Faculty Learning Communities/Working Groups • Mini-Grants • Idea updates – Newsletters, emails, podcasts, RSS feeds • Other resources (prepared, collected, library, physical or virtual • Other (please enter your additional categories in the chat room)

6. Valuable Faculty Development Activities & Resources- Last 5 Years • During the past five years, what are some faculty development activities and resources provided by your own institution that you would identify as especially useful, valuable?  Why?

7. Valuable (1) Faculty Development Activities & Resources - Last 5 Years • Workshop about making course syllabi and brief readings available to students on the Internet via Web-based Course Management System (e.g., Blackboard) • Training students to provide tech assistance • 1-pager listing a few information resources selected and made available on the Internet by the campus librarians • Low-Threshold Activities/Applications (e.g., Charles Ansorge, TLT Group) • Moving from just IT training to including education for faculty about improving teaching with IT

8. Valuable (2) Faculty Development Activities & Resources - Last 5 Years • Trading equipment to faculty members for their participation in training (e.g., Va. Tech) • Embedding tech support staff in academic departments (e.g., Stanford) • 5-minute workshops (e.g., Todd Zakrajsek, CMU) • Diverse group provides advice about faculty development, policy, budget, etc. related to improving teaching and learning with technology (e.g., TLT Roundtable) • Usually includes representatives from faculty, library, tech support, academic support services, administration, etc. • Not necessarily a “committee” • Advisory to CAO, CIO, et al.

9. Valuable (3) Faculty Development Activities & Resources - Last 5 Years • ????

10. Disappointing, Unwanted, or Missing Faculty Development Activities & Resources - Last 5 Years • During the past five years, what are some of these activities and resources provided by your own institution that you would identify as especially disappointing?  Why?  • Were there some that you would have preferred that your own institution had omitted?  Why?  • Were there some missing entirely that you had expected or hoped for?

11. Disappointing, Unwanted, or Missing (1) Faculty Development Activities & Resources - Last 5 Years • Not engaging more faculty in using IT as lever for better teaching, learning • Budgets for faculty development, search for innovation not (yet) treated as core to institution • Number of colleagues not (yet) committed to learning excellence for all students, • Percent of faculty not (yet) aware of, using, or committed to: • Seven Principles of Good Practice for Undergraduate Education • MERLOT • Scholarship of teaching and learning

12. Disappointing, Unwanted, or Missing (2) Faculty Development Activities & Resources - Last 5 Years • Intro workshops for faculty about using Web-based Course Management System (e.g., Blackboard) that did NOT help faculty members to understand how this system might interfere with some of their preferred teaching practices;  that did NOT help faculty use this system to engage students effectively in asynchronous online interaction • Missing:  Training in use of Skype for live audio interaction among distant learners

13. Disappointing, Unwanted, or Missing (3) Faculty Development Activities & Resources - Last 5 Years • ???

14. HopeFor Faculty Development Activities & Resources - Next 2-5 Years • During the next two to five years, what are some of these activities and resources that would be especially useful or valuable for your institution to provide?  Why?

15. Hope (1) For Faculty Development Activities & Resources - Next 2-5 Years • Better support and reward for Compassionate Pioneers and acts of Compassionate Pioneering • Network of faculty from different institutions frequently discussing how to improve teaching the ‘same’ course • Systematic harvesting, distribution of LTAs (Low-Threshold Applications and Activities)

16. Hope (2) For Faculty Development Activities & Resources - Next 2-5 Years • Extension of recent TLT Group work on "Diversity among Learners & Teachers: Using Technology to Identify It, Respond to It, and Take Advantage of It" • Workshops for faculty about how to modify use of Web-based Course Management Systems (e.g., Blackboard) to fit better with various pedagogical preferences of faculty members and with constraints imposed by different subject matter (e.g., need for diagrams, notation, etc.) • More TLT scenarios/cases that can be used to help prepare faculty for challenges, frustrations • Integrate resources and services around key teaching/learning activities (teaching X, assessing X, learning spaces for X, preparing for problems with X, …) • e.g., writing, teaching diverse students,

17. Hope (3) For Faculty Development Activities & Resources - Next 2-5 Years • Large-scale assessment of brief hybrid workshop strategy; SOTL; Use of 7Ps, etc. • Assessment of assessment: Studies that demonstrate how the kinds of assessment being advocated by accreditation organizations are/aren’t having desired impacts on undergraduate learning

18. Hope (4) For Faculty Development Activities & Resources - Next 2-5 Years • ???

19. Planning for the Future • Wide consultation, engagement … • Search for … • Identify, prioritize needs … • Roles for Compassionate Pioneers, Compassionate Pioneering, “Viral” learning/distribution for Faculty Development via: Small groups, large groups, individuals (self-learning) • Small Changes as strategy to move toward universal, lifelong, hybrid Faculty/Professional Development.  Define it, commit to it, figure out how to do it

20. Ask What They Need • Specific student skills (where IT could help)? e.g., writing, discrete mathematics, online research…? • Faculty skills for teaching and publication, e.g., how to include photographs and video clips, and your commentary about them, in your writing? • Techniques for assessing learners, what they're learning, how they're learning, problems that have been hindering their learning, ...? • New technologies? e.g., upgrades to our learning management system, video cameras, iPods, ..) • Preparing for challenges that can occur when IT is used to alter learning?

21. Relative Preference for Mode • Workshops? • Student technology assistants? • Networking with peers? • Online tutorials? • Support for major projects to improve courses? • ?

22. Access to Workshops • Preferred Times? Length? Frequency? • Preferred places? Online?

23. Cross-institutional, cross-country, cross-national Faculty Learning Communities • Help create/facilitate small, mostly online, conversations with colleagues at various institutions - might be discipline-specific, course-specific, interdisciplinary, …Groups meet once a week (or less often) during the term, so that faculty can respond to one another's ideas, experiences, and frustrations • Examples • Faculty who teach the same/similar course, using similar materials, and who have similar concerns about how to improve the course. • Individuals from highly successful/similar local Faculty Learning Communities at various institutions might come together to share/present their findings (public peer outlet for their scholarship) and take their collaborative learning activities to the next level

24. Next Steps for The TLT Group? • Test brief hybrid workshop idea as strategy for engaging, encouraging, enabling [large] numbers of faculty? • Grant for consortial development of faculty support resources (e.g., using online discussion to improve learning? supporting use of IT for diverse courses? Digital writing across the curriculum? …) • What do you suggest?