Finding Opportunity in Crisis: How the Pandemic Reshaped Faculty Development Programming at the United States Air Force Academy

The sudden need to shift from a face-to-face delivery mode to an all-online format, necessitated by SARS-CoV-2 (the COVID-19 virus), compelled the Center for Educational Innovation at the United States Air Force Academy to reconsider two key faculty development initiatives: its Course Director Workshop and its New Faculty Orientation. As well as providing faculty the opportunity to be an online participant in what is traditionally a bricks and mortar institution, moving these two programs to an all-online format resulted in deeper and more thoughtful engagement from the participants. In this article, the authors describe their programing changes and observations resulting from this pivot to an all-online delivery format

Innovation in a Time of Crisis: A Networked Approach to Faculty Development

This article explores how one center for teaching and learning (CTL) rapidly designed and launched a Summer 2020 Course Design Institute in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the need to reach a significant num- ber of faculty in a short period of time proved challenging, it also created an opportunity for our CTL to engage with faculty who otherwise might not have worked with us—not only on issues of teaching with technology but also on engagement, inclusion, and other key issues. We relied on a rela- tionships-based cohort model to establish trust and faculty buy-in. Early results suggest that this approach may help spread innovative ideas about teaching and learning

Affective Labor and Faculty Development: COVID-19 and Dealing with the Emotional Fallout

Like most centers for teaching and learning (CTLs) in 2020, ours has been engaged in continual, responsive support during the COVID-19 global pandemic. In addition to offering our rapid, knowledgeable, and evidence- based instructional development approaches during this time, we found affective skills—compassion, empathy, and listening—surfaced as crucial components of educational development during this time and during a time where CTL staff themselves were experiencing many of the same emotions. Our experiences offer a familiar snapshot for many CTLs; our center’s ethos of support not only embodied technical and instructional design expertise but also our institutional Jesuit value, caring for the whole person, needed to be at the forefront of our response in ways not seen before and with breaks few and far between

Supporting Academic Continuity by Building Community: The Work of a Faculty Development Center During COVID-19

In the initial rush to remote instruction during COVID-19, educators focused on technologies to ensure academic continuity and relied on instructional technology teams to teach them how to use them. Soon after, instructors turned to educational development professionals for more comprehensive help to rethink face-to-face pedagogy to fit the affordances and constraints of online teaching. Historically, our Faculty Development Center (FDC) had focused primarily on pedagogical support for face-to-face classes. During the crisis, we needed both to re-envision our work to support remote instruction and distinguish our work from that of our in- structional technology colleagues. We also needed to re-evaluate our work in two other areas of our mission: pedagogical research and assessment of student learning outcomes. We recognized that a key goal of our FDC’s work provided a guiding principle in the new situation: to build faculty community around teaching and learning. Although faculty needed instruction and solutions for teaching online, they also needed a venue to think through the existential change in their teaching practice and the multiple challenges and choices they faced. In this paper, we discuss our three-pronged approach to build a vibrant, virtual faculty community: provide a sense of continuity through our offerings and services; prioritize program content to meet immediate needs; and promote complementarity between our support and that of instructional technology. Our efforts resulted in significantly expanding our reach, renewing the culture of inquiry around teaching among our faculty, and refining and reinforcing our role as complementary to, but distinct from, instructional technology.&nbsp

The Impact of Getting Caught in the Act: Assessing the Institutional Impact of a Teaching Award

This study examined the institutional awareness and impact of a lowstakes teaching award at Augusta University and asked if the perception of the award would vary as a function of teaching context. Faculty members from departments that did or did not include recipients of the “Caught in the Act of Great Teaching” award completed a survey that inquired about their awareness of the award, their perception of how knowing about and receiving the award should affect teaching motivation and performance evaluations for faculty in general and for recipients, and their perception of how much the award should impact interest in attending faculty development events. Survey responses revealed broad awareness of the award and agreement that the award should have positive impact on outcomes for recipients, although few agreed that the award should impact interest in faculty development. Faculty members from the health sciences were somewhat more positive about the award. These findings are consistent with previous research that reported that teaching awards should and do communicate the value of teaching and are affirming for recipients

The Active Learning Institute: Design and Implementation of an Intensive Faculty Development Program

By designing and implementing a long-term faculty development program called the Active Learning Institute, a large research university began shifting the culture of teaching and learning on campus. Faculty across ranks and disciplines are participating in this series of workshops and demonstrating measurable changes to their teaching through the increased use of active learning strategies and the decreased use of lecture. In this article, the author describes the design of the Active Learning Institute and its successful implementation in its first two years

Framing Faculty Development as Workplace Learning

Higher-education faculty, like most workers, develop knowledge and skills for their job mostly through informal learning during work. In contrast, centers for teaching and learning traditionally emphasize formal-learning events to promote learning and development about teaching. Drawing on workplace-learning research and learning-and-development practices in nonacademic organizations, a faculty-development model arises that elevates the importance of strategies and resources that enhance individuals\u27 informal learning where they work. These approaches, when nurtured and resourced by centers, offer the potential to reach faculty who do not attend formal events, enhance transfer of formal learning to teaching practice, and offset dissemination of low-quality practices among peers with variable expertise

Basics and Beyond: Faculty Development as a Professional Learning Journey

This paper describes the implementation of the Basics and Beyond certificate program for faculty that models a learning-centered, task-based approach to active learning. Unique aspects of the program include: flexible entry; a student focused/conceptual change model; a task-based, learning-centered approach (tasks and feedback drive the learning process); and authentic assessment. Throughout this program, tasks and feedback drive the learning process so as to engage faculty in active rather than passive learning. Faculty have immediate opportunities to apply new strategies to their own teaching context and receive feedback. In this way, the journey itself is as important as the destination. A two-year research project assessed the uptake and impact of the program. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of data shows changes in participants’ attitudes and approaches to their teaching. The data suggests that our model promotes deep learning that resulted in attitudinal and behavioral changes in the faculty participating in the Basics and Beyond program. In the paper we describe unique features of our program, the design of the research project, and our findings

"Sitting Down" on Our Programming: A Message From the Editor-in-Chief

CTL workers involved in the martial arts (I’m sure there are more of us than most would guess!) know the expression “sitting down on your punches.” Trainers will often have to remind fighters who employ a lot of footwork that, to assure their punches have any authority, they will need to plant long enough to feel their weight through their feet and legs as they pivot into their blows. I often have used a version of the expression with beginning teachers: “Sit down on your teaching.” I use the phrase in response to course observations where I have seen sophisticated exercises paraded, so to speak, through class sessions seemingly without any regard as to whether students have joined (or even noticed) the spectacle. To sit down on one’s teaching, the instructor needs to encourage, recognize, and assess their students’ engagement with classroom practices

Tooling CTLs: A Message from the Coeditor-in-Chief

A good number of this journal’s readers, I would bet confidently, arrive here already with strong notions of a Center for Teaching and Learning’s (CTL’s) functions—providing programming and consultations that enhance teaching, selecting teaching award winners, coordinating multiple measures of teaching effectiveness, providing grants for teaching-related projects, facilitating the scholarship of teaching and learning, etc. Essays in this issue of JCTL represent new articulations of some of these operations, but they also, to various degrees, highlight artifacts/tools that CTL workers develop to ensure the productive engagement of participants along CTL functions. At the same time, tools that CTL staff members develop shape the CTL itself and the role it might play in its specific institutional context