This session is a detailed case study focusing on the faculty development strategies and the Faculty Commons model at Fuller Theological Seminary. This workshop will include aspects of training, communication, professional development, faculty care, and course quality improvement. We will discuss strategies to support faculty development through teaching cohorts, faculty trainings, and localized teaching grants. We will also discuss our unique instructional design methodology and how it supports faculty for success in their online, hybrid, videoconference and face-to-face courses. Finally, we will discuss faculty care and resourcing through our Faculty Commons model.
Long Abstract: As higher education continues to face increased challenges and obstacles in the digital age, rethinking how we approach faculty and teacher development becomes all the more important. Faculty are too often hired for a job that they have little to no experience in. They are asked to teach without any training or resourcing, and they are often assessed by invisible or vague rules with minimal explanation. This session aims to detail our faculty development models and to highlight strategies to support a growing, vibrant, and collaborative faculty culture. We will also discuss our instructional design method and how it has helped to change a faculty culture of teacher education and support expansive learning modalities with traditional, online, and hybrid course contexts.
Relevance: The strategies and approaches taken by our team are completely transferable to other schools and faculty development teams. The strength of our methodology is that it relies on local faculty to empower it and invest in it. We will demonstrate this through our own case study, mapping out our approach, cautioning against our blunders, and encouraging others through our successes.
Session Detail: In order to effectively engage the audience, the session will open a brief game of True or False, present session case study methodologies, and close with divide into small group discussion and sharing. Our main learning outcomes for this presentation are to communicate our experiences and provide a foundation for future development in the area of faculty support and instructional design in higher education. By modeling our process and allowing the audience to directly engage, this presentation will provide not only conceptual framing but tangible ideas to expand their own instructional design and faculty development programs.
Who might benefit from this presentation: This session is designed to provide educators and administrators with practical applications for supporting and developing faculty as well as creative instructional design paradigms. As one of the strongest institutions of higher education engaging with diverse modalities through creative instructional design, Fuller Theological Seminary provides a cutting edge model that other schools can learn and benefit from.