Join us as we discuss and dissect our approach to prioritizing pedagogy in a pandemic. We will highlight our 4 week facilitated bootcamp for faculty across two campuses, lessons learned, and next steps for scalable, continued professional development opportunities grounded in evidence-based practices.
COVID-19, shelter in place, and the quick shift to remote and online teaching threw us all for a loop. It is no secret that higher education institutions are often mismatched in the number of instructional design staff to the number of courses and faculty teaching online, and this discrepancy was emphasized during the pandemic. We were faced with the immediate challenge of promoting pedagogy for the following semesters in a time when many faculty new to online teaching were relying on long Zoom sessions to substitute for the in-class education experience.
In shifting to meet the needs presented by the pandemic, we leveraged and analyzed our existing 8-week professional development course to create a 4-week pedagogically focused bootcamp. Following best practices for teaching accelerated courses, we evaluated the current course and identified which key areas were mission critical to the needs of faculty during this time. Topics in the bootcamp course include the theory and foundation of online pedagogy, creating community in the online classroom, and engaging and motivating students through a variety of strategies. This course, paired with increased technological training offerings and consultations by our instructional consultant colleagues, was a holistic approach to promoting pedagogy and sound course design without ignoring faculty’s technological needs.
The bootcamp follows our approach to the instructional design process with faculty, which is unique and based in partnership and collaboration. Honoring and valuing the expertise of both faculty and instructional designers allows us to collaborate and design courses in a scalable and meaningful way. We believe that empowering faculty to develop their own courses, with consultations from instructional designers and instructional consultants, promotes ownership and teaching presence in their online courses.
We will open the session with a poll on measures used to support faculty in the transition to online and include round table discussions on best approaches for prioritizing online pedagogy in situations requiring quick turn around times. We will also share data collected from the post-course survey for the May and July iterations of the bootcamp.
Presentation materials, including resources to integrate the Community of Inquiry framework, will be provided during the presentation for future use.