Incorporating Contextual Knowledge in Faculty Professional Development for Online Teaching

Online learning has become an important component of the higher education landscape in the United States. However, faculty are often either ill-prepared in using cutting-edge educational technologies in the classroom or have reservations about online teaching. Mishra and Koehler’s (2006) Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) model, often used in K-12 settings to describe the role of technology in the pedagogical process, can be adapted to meet the professional development needs of faculty. The model we propose, TPACK-ConK, adds another layer of knowledge, context knowledge, to the model in order to account for the specific professional development needs of faculty in higher education. TPACK-ConK can be used by Centers for Teaching and Learning to better construct professional development for faculty engaged in online teaching

Approaching the Holy Grail of Faculty Development: Evolving a CTL from a Service-Oriented Organization to a Learning-Assessment Unit

The Holy Grail of faculty development has always been for a Center of Teaching & Learning (CTL) to demonstrate that its programming brings about a change in faculty learning that, in turn, results in increased or deep student learning. Our CTL’s journey has taken us through three of the distinct “Ages” as labelled by Beach, Sorcinelli, and Austin (2016), wherein we encountered and overcame various perils. Ultimately, we arrived at a solution for faculty development programming, DEEP, an online system of courses that is accessible by all faculty at all times and, most importantly, offers a glimmer that the Grail of improved learning by faculty first and then students is within our grasp

Educational Developer Professional Development Map (EDPDM): A Tool for Educational Developers to Articulate Their Mentoring Network

To optimize their success and effectiveness, educational developers benefit from identifying and cultivating a constellation of collaborators, resources, and mentors. This article describes the development of the Educational Developer Professional Development Map (EDPDM), a tool to help educational developers identify, articulate, and visualize their own mentoring networks. The authors discuss strategies educational developers in various career stages and institutional contexts can use to examine and evaluate their mentoring networks. Reflection questions are offered to promote further personal observation and future action to strengthen the mentoring network

Special Feature: Documenting and Assessing the Work of the CTL

Given Todd’s extensive experience in faculty development for over 20 years in a variety of types of institutions, regions, and faculty served, we have asked him to write a series on essential issues needed by directors of faculty development efforts. This series is designed to suggest areas for faculty developers to consider along with tips and techniques Todd has found to be helpful along the way. In this issue, Todd focuses on assessing and documenting faculty development efforts. Possible future topics will include bringing outside experts to campus and strategic planning. If there is a topic you would like to see covered, contact JCTL’s Coeditor-in-Chief at [email protected]

The Heating CTL: A Message From the Editor-in-Chief

Just as Paulo Freire (1968/1990) informs us in Pedagogy of the Oppressed that “only through communication can human life hold meaning. The teacher’s thinking is authenticated only by the authenticity of the students’ thinking” (pp. 63-64), faculty development garners its meaning only in tandem with the engagement of teachers it serves. CTLs aim, then, to pulse through their institutions, to operate in a dynamic rather than, as Freire would warn “in ivory tower isolation,” emerging only to impose their thoughts (or someone else’s thoughts) on teachers (p. 64). Any CTL worker who has stared at the empty chairs facing a guest speaker or who has had to extend due dates for teaching awards in response to a dearth of applicants has wondered how their CTL might integrate more with the life’s blood of its school. At the same time, CTL workers must wonder always what faculty will find most relevant to their work and how a CTL might not only inform but also be informed by this sense of relevance. Faculty developers discern that relevance in communication with teachers, in a dialogue that is, above all, concerned with their reality and not what a CTL might predetermine to be their reality

New Adjunct Faculty Outreach: Making a Connection

All areas of education, faculty development included, are required to demonstrate their impact on learning. The Rothwell Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence-Worldwide (CTLE-W) provides resources to support new faculty; however, participation and utilization of these resources varies. This causal-comparative study sought to determine if targeted communication from CTLE-W to adjunct faculty during their first term teaching would increase utilization of CTLE-W resources. Results from this study showed that new adjunct faculty are more likely to continue seeking assistance from CTLE-W to ensure they are providing the best learning experience possible if they are contacted during their first term

The Craft of Infusing Critical Thinking Skills: A Mixed-Method Research on Implementation and Student Outcome

Despite the widespread recognition that educators, employers, and governing agencies view critical thinking (CT) as one of the most desired outcomes of higher education, research findings indicate that a majority of professors are not teaching it effectively. Employing a mixed methods explanatory sequential design, this study identified seven teaching strategies employed by faculty members to infuse preselected thinking skills into class content and their positive effect on students’ higher order thinking abilities. The target population for the study was faculty members who participated in a CT development program to employ the infusion method to foster the thinking skills. Quantitatively, the study utilized extant data from the interviewed faculty members’ respective students’ CT application-focused recallbased pretest and posttests scores. Dependent t-tests were conducted, and the data were analyzed to examine whether students’ (n = 133) scores were statistically and practically significant from the beginning to the end of the semester. Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews with seven faculty members. Seven strategies for the infusion of the thinking skills emanated from a qualitative, systematic, thematic analysis of the interview transcripts: explicit teaching, intentional implementation, systematic practice, class discussions, teaching for transfer, modeling the skills, and fostering reflection. Data obtained through analyzing the extant pretest and posttest scores revealed noteworthy advancement in the students’ CT skills with significant effect sizes

Utilizing Foundation Professors as a Resource to Enhance Faculty Development

By organizing faculty who have attained the new rank of Foundation Professor into a society, a Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at a regional comprehensive university was able to utilize the group as a valuable resource to enhance the institution’s faculty development program in numerous meaningful ways. As Foundation Professors have attained excellence in teaching and scholarship at our institution, these outstanding faculty members are in an ideal position to share their experience, expertise, and knowledge to develop faculty at all levels. In this article, the authors share their experience designing CTL programming that enlisted the expertise of these excellent faculty

"Relevance," the Agora, and Directing a Center for Teaching and Learning

The role of a director of a Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) is complex, requiring multidimensional skills in a context unencumbered by the governance of any one academic unit but in service to all. This narrative essay delineates how one director navigated the role guided by the concept of relevance and the goal of fostering a collective agora to build community. Toward this agora, the director expanded the CTL’s patronage to include events relevant to senior faculty and administrators, enacted new models of teaching support, engaged in research on teaching with junior faculty, and established a publication for scholarly debate. Reflection reveals that the directorship had relevance to the author’s later roles as teacher and administrator through the interpersonal skills, relationships, and collaborative leadership skills cultivated

Reaching Those Faculty Not Easily Reached: How CTLs Can Improve Participation in Faculty Programming Through Faculty Innovators and Online Instruction

Though not often discussed in the field, a deep-seated problem exists in higher-education faculty development: the low percentage of discrete faculty participation (DFP). To raise the DFP, a Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at a regional comprehensive university with severe personnel limitations developed two inter-related solutions, a Faculty Innovator program and an online system of phased professional development called Developing Excellence in Eastern’s Professors (DEEP)