Isn’t it invigorating when one small idea blossoms into a larger initiative that fulfills multiple needs? Come learn about how we are meeting the needs for faculty professional development, online faculty engagement, faculty collaboration, and accreditation standards all with one simple practice we call “Educational Mondays.”
It is invigorating when one small idea blossoms into a larger initiative that encompasses and fulfills multiple needs – much like the old cliché “to hit two birds with one stone.” We want to share our story about how we are meeting the numerous needs of faculty professional development, online faculty engagement, linking classroom observations to development, faculty collaboration, and accreditation standards all with one simple practice we call “Educational Mondays.”
As administrators for a primarily online institution, we often find it difficult to build community with our online faculty, help faculty meet professional development requirements and accreditation standards related to faculty collaboration, and foster faculty development based off of what we are seeing within classroom observations. Little did we know that one little idea on one fateful weekday would flourish and grow into something that would work to alleviate these multiple demands and needs.
The What: Educational Mondays are faculty Professional Development opportunities that are virtually distributed and allow for faculty to discuss and collaborate asynchronously.
The How: Faculty are emailed a professional development topic that includes an article, video, and/or resources that faculty engage with. There are discussion prompts included in the email to inspire discussion. Faculty are able to earn credit towards professional development requirements after responding to the group at-large regarding the content and/or discussion prompts. Faculty are able to view their peers’ responses and thoughts on the various topics/content.
The Why: Faculty are required to meet annual professional development requirements – Educational Monday emails allow for additional and more flexible opportunities for meeting these requirements. Faculty are afforded the opportunity to engage and discuss various best practices, teaching methodologies, higher education topics/issues, etc. Residential, blended, online, as well as cross-disciplinary faculty, are brought together to collaborate within a virtual “Think Tank” space. Non-traditionally structured institutions are able to meet faculty collaboration requirements set by many accrediting bodies. As deans and faculty managers observe and see trends occurring within their faculty classroom observations, they are able to select particular topics and content for Educational Mondays correspondence, accordingly.
Our presentation will show how we have created virtual learning spaces for faculty professional development that are supported by research and learning theory. We will demonstrate how this learning space affords faculty the ability to build community and collaborate across disciplines, modalities, and tenure all while administration is able to connect classroom observations directly back to professional development opportunities as well as meet the accreditation standards for faculty collaboration in online institutions. Our faculty have engaged in strong discourse and discussion surrounding best practices, experiences, and gleaned ideas to combat learning and teaching struggles. Several faculty have expressed gratitude for being connected with peers that they may not have physically met otherwise.
We plan to engage participants in a variety of ways during the 45 minutes allotted for the session. Following our introduction and story behind our Educational Mondays initiative, we will show examples of what Educational Mondays actually look like and show the various ways it is implemented and supported. We will provide information, learning theories, and research that supports the value of creating a virtual learning space for faculty that amplifies professional development and modifies it from being just an “individual sport.” Another way that we plan to interact with the audience is to gather their feedback and additional ideas for implementing a similar practice at their institutions through polling (e.g. Slido). During the session, we will include a time for Q&A from the participants. Finally, no presentation would be complete without sharing actual testimonials from the affected parties.
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
- Understand the need for creating virtual learning spaces for online faculty.
- Identify the purpose for implementing virtual professional development opportunities that incorporate engagement and collaboration between faculty.
- Utilize strategies and methods that have been proven effective to adapt (or create) the practice of learning communities and developing faculty collaboratively at their home institutions.