Sweet Treats and SWOT: Enriching Educators with Memorable Activities

Since forming an instructional design team at our institution in 2016, we have been building a culture of continuous improvement. We’ve put an emphasis on offering professional development to our diverse faculty and staff beyond the technical skills of using a learning management system or video recording software. We’ve tried out many types, modes, and venues for activities and we would like to share some of the experiences that have been very successful. They’ve been successful because they’ve been memorable!

So, what do sweet treats and SWOT have in common and how do they relate to this presentation? They are fun and memorable analogies for hands-on activities we will use during our workshop to demonstrate and spur conversation about topics such as teaching presence, communication skills, continuous improvement, and building community in online courses. This workshop is for both instructional designers looking to create professional development for faculty and for faculty wanting to improve their teaching.

Our goal for this very hands-on workshop is to have faculty and instructional designers engage in activities and conversation that will create memorable experiences and value to bring back to their home institutions. We will be demonstrating and providing several customizable lessons that instructional designers and faculty can use to engage their peers in the future. For each activity that we cover, participants will be asked to complete the activity and then we will discuss why this activity worked well and how it could be customized to fit the specific needs of your institution. Participants may even discover they can use some of these activities with their students! All of these activities were originally designed to be conducted in person, but we will also cover ideas on how to run them virtually.

More specifically, by the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Discuss how simple interactive activities strengthen teaching presence and build class community.

2. Explain the relationship between the analogies presented and successful teaching methods.

3. Analyze a course for continuous improvement using a proven business analysis technique.

4. Provide faculty and peers with a list of methods and activities they can use to begin meaningful conversations about online teaching.

We will be engaging in six different hands-on activities during this workshop and although we would like to keep them a surprise, here is hint for one that we will be conducting:

According to Persico, Pozzi & Sarti (2010), online teaching presence “is the binding element in cultivating a learning community”. A few years ago, we were challenged to create a two-day workshop for both newer and seasoned faculty on taking their courses to the next level, with a large section specifically focused on teaching presence and thereby creating community. Since this particular group of faculty had an engineering background, we created an activity using 3D pens which proved to be a very fun way to teach them a lesson on communication. 

Although we will not be using 3D pens for our activities, you will be as engaged and delighted as our engineers, and you will be more able to engage and delight your students in their learning.

Note: There will be no formal Q&A session because there will be discussion throughout the entire workshop.

1. Participants complete Activity #1

2. Presenters introduce themselves and the workshop

3. Participants engage in Activity #2 

   1. All engage in discussion about the activity, the activity rationale and how to customize the activity for own institution

4. Revisit Activity #1 (surprise!)

   1. All engage in discussion about the activity, the activity rationale and how to customize the activity for own institution

5. Participants engage in Activity #3 

   1. All engage in discussion about the activity, the activity rationale and how to customize the activity for own institution

6. Participants engage in Activity #4

   1. All engage in discussion about the activity, the activity rationale and how to customize the activity for own institution

7. Participants engage in Activity #5

   1. All engage in discussion about the activity, the activity rationale and how to customize the activity for own institution

8. Participants engage in Activity #6

   1. Participant teams present their product

   2. Participants vote on winner

   3. All engage in discussion about the activity, the activity rationale and how to customize the activity for own institution

9. Conclusion