Coordination of Professional Development Microlearning for Best Practices in Online Teaching

Faculty Seminars in Online Teaching standalone seminars are offered periodically for collegial dialogue around best practices in online teaching. They are co-presented by the Center for Distributed Learning and members of the UCF teaching faculty. While this series is designed with online faculty in mind as an ongoing follow-up to IDL6543, CDL’s award-winning faculty development course, all members of the UCF community with an interest in online teaching are invited to participate. Often, individuals from outside of the UCF community view or participate in the live sessions as well.

To flexibly meet the needs of our diverse community, Faculty Seminars in Online Teaching are highly focused (i.e., 30 minutes for presentation and discussion), include numerous "takeaway" resources, and are recorded for later review. A full comprehensive listing of past seminars is available on the UCF Center for Distributed Learning website for viewing by both members of the UCF community and interested external individuals. Each session’s web page includes a video (with audio) recording of the seminar as well as supporting materials, further readings, and other additional resources. Faculty and other members of the UCF community are welcome to suggest topics for future seminars, or express interest in co-presenting a seminar.

Although recorded and archived on the CDL website, each Faculty Seminars in Online Teaching session is delivered live, allowing audience members to participate live. UCF faculty members have the option of attending the live session on-site (face-to-face), while the session is streamed via YouTube Live to additional members of the UCF community or those who may be external to UCF. Both on-site and online, live interactions include question and answer as well as poll questions. Online participants can also take part in a moderated online chat throughout the session. Additionally, participants from both the live on-site audience and the online audience are encouraged to complete a brief feedback survey after attending each seminar.

The dual audiences of Faculty Seminars in Online Teaching are one aspect that makes it unique. For coordination purposes, both audiences must be kept in mind throughout all stages of design, development, and delivery. Throughout design and development of the Seminar, the coordinator ensures that the presenters consider both on-site and online participants when developing their presentation and activities. Additionally, the coordinator provides a template for the presentation (i.e., Microsoft PowerPoint template) and coaches the presenters along the way on what information and perspectives to include. Presenters are also provided with an opportunity to practice their presentation through a coordinated “dress rehearsal,” which occurs prior to the actual Seminar delivery. Furthermore, the coordinator of Faculty Seminars in Online Teaching is responsible for ensuring smooth delivery of the seminar. Through use of written introduction and closing scripts, as well as time signals (e.g., “5 minutes remaining” sign), the presenters are kept on time, which also ensures that there is adequate time left at the end of the session for both on-site and online attendees to participate in a valuable Q&A session. For the online audience, an online moderator encourages discussion during the presentation and questions for the Q&A session. The coordinator ensures that the Seminar session runs smoothly for both audiences.

Simultaneously throughout the design, development, and delivery process, the coordinator also uses various methods to promote the event to a wide audience including Eventbrite, the CDL website, campus-wide emails to all UCF faculty, printed flyers, and social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter. Because Faculty Seminars reaches an international audience, the Center for Distributed Learning ensures a top-notch, quality faculty development series. To enhance the quality of the process, a deployment chart outlines the activities on a timeline to complete during each phase of the coordination.  

Participants’ feedback is an important component of Faculty Seminars. Those attending the session receive a feedback survey right after the session and then again in the initial follow-up email thanking attendees for their participation. This Qualtrics feedback survey contains items to assess participants overall satisfaction with the session components and an item for participants to vote on the upcoming Seminar topic. With this survey, participants receive a micro-learning asset related to the topic. Another follow-up survey assessing participants’ application and configuration of the Faculty Seminars topic is sent after participants have had a chance to use the information presented in the sesion. Again, a micro-learning asset is sent to participants with with the survey. Feedback from both surveys provide guidance to enhance future sessions. These quality efforts both assess and provide opportunity for faculty to glean applicable, valuable information to enhance their online or hybrid courses, ultimately, for students’ learning.

The presenters will:

• Explain what Faculty Seminars in Online Teaching achieves
• Demonstrate techniques employed to effectively, efficiently coordinate these simultaneously online and face-to-face Seminars
• Discuss the effectiveness and applicability of professional development microlearning
• Discuss how professional development microlearning can be applied within other institutions

After attending this Discovery Session, participants will be able to:

• Identify what Faculty Seminars in Online Teaching is
• Recognize the effectiveness and applicability of professional development microlearning
• Apply similar professional development microlearning within their institution