Creation of faculty development programs is often a lengthy process and programs may be limited to small enrollment. However, the pandemic created the need for preparing large amounts of faculty for online teaching in a short time. This session will discuss how an institution's burgeoning quality initiative scaffolded a new faculty development experience and how it will inform future faculty development.
Introduction
The design, development, and implementation of new faculty development programs is often a detailed and lengthy process, requiring much planning and time, as well as many resources. Additionally, many faculty development courses may be limited in the number of participants they can accommodate. So what do you do when you must quickly design, develop, and implement a new faculty development course in a mere few weeks, for hundreds of faculty members, while maintaining quality?
Background
During the COVID-19 pandemic last summer (2020), we could not deliver our standard faculty development offering which prepares faculty members to teach fully online and partially online (blended) courses because the course itself is blended, and is designed to involve face-to-face sessions. Additionally, our standard course is designed to accommodate approximately 40 participants per cohort (one cohort per semester), and we had over 350 faculty members that suddenly needed to be taught how to design, develop, and deliver their own quality online courses as soon as possible. It was clear that our standard course would not accommodate our immediate needs and that we needed to create something new. Thus, a team of instructional designers collaborated to quickly design, develop, and implement a new faculty development course that could accommodate a large enrollment without sacrificing quality.
Session Details
In this session, we will discuss how we leveraged our institution's burgeoning initiative for quality online courses to create a new faculty development experience. The presenters will focus on how the quality course initiative drove the design of the faculty development course itself, as well as how it was ingrained throughout the course for the faculty participants and the development of their own courses. Additionally, we will discuss how the end product went better than expected, both for the preparation of our faculty members, as well as the advancement of our institution's quality initiative. Finally, the presenters will discuss how this experience will continue to inform future faculty development courses and faculty preparation. Participants will be engaged via discussion, Q&A, and interactive polls.