You work hard to create a workshop and only three faculty show up. And a little part of you dies inside. What to do? We created Design Time, a monthly faculty development webinar promoted and delivered like a radio show. And guess what? It worked! Come find out how.
We’ve all been there. You set up a schedule of faculty development workshops for the year, you’ve sent email invites, you’ve put up flyers, you’ve even bought food. You work hard to create a fun, interactive presentation so they won’t fall asleep, and on the day of the event you walk into the workshop and there are three eager faculty waiting for you. And a little part of you dies inside. You were hoping for a full house….or at least 5 people. So you do your best, the three engaged individuals love you and you are happy. However, when you leave you find yourself asking, how do I reach more people? You work hard to find the right time that works for most, you even feed them!! And they still don’t come.
This is exactly how we have felt over and over, so one day we got creative and IT WORKED!!! We created Design Time, a monthly faculty development webinar promoted and delivered like a radio show. The show is presented live in WebEx, and recorded for all to view at their leisure. And guess what; they’re viewing them. We have reached more faculty in the last year via our Radio Show than the last 3 years combined!
So what does this look like?
On the first Wednesday of every month we host a Design Time Radio Show. The hosts are the Instructional Designers for our college design team. We host the Radio Show on WebEx, we invite anyone interested to come in live but we also record it and make it available for anyone who could not attend. We are very strict in that we promise we will introduce the subject and do a demonstration in 15 minutes; we will then open the discussion to the audience to ask anything they wish, and it doesn’t have to be about what was presented. The 15 minutes is important and really acts as a foundation for the success of this model. We promise faculty that we won’t waste their time, we will be concise, stay on topic, and give them what they need. Our team has a YouTube Channel where we make these videos available to faculty, we link to them in our bi-monthly newsletter, and we push it out to social media (Facebook and Twitter).
To give some examples of the types of subjects we cover; here is last year’s schedule:
June 2015 - Episode 1: Life after the May 7, 2015 Blackboard update
July 2015- Episode 2: Textbox Editor: It’s More Than You Think
August 2015 - Episode 3: Where Does My Stuff Go? Exploring Blackboard’s Content Collection
September 2015 - Episode 4: Hassle Free Online Lectures: Kaltura Capture Space
October 2015 - Episode 5: Stand Out from the Crowd: Course Banners
November 2015 - Episode 6: Rinse and Repeat: Course Copy in Blackboard
December 2015 - Episode 7: Wrap it Up: Exporting Grades
January 2016 - Episode 8: Getting Started Right: The Retention Center in Bb
February 2016 - Episode 9: I Missed the Test…Now What? Adding Test Exceptions in Bb
March 2016 - Episode 10: Getting the Conversation Started: Discussion Board Settings
April 2016 - Episode 11: Grade Smarter, Not Harder: Inline Grading
May 2016 - Episode 12: Up Your Game - Learning Objects in Your course
Word on the Street and Reach
Design Time has been a topic of conversation at our college. We have had people ask us about the next Design Time; they look forward to them. They’re curious about the next topic and offer us ideas for future topics. Analytics show us that people are not only watching, they’re also sharing episodes with others. They have been mentioned specifically in surveys sent out by the college as a success with great tips. Additionally, Design Time has extended our reach. Fulltime faculty are typically more able to take advantage of professional development, while adjunct faculty are too busy running to their next class or back to their fulltime job. The Design Time Radio Show meets the needs of all faculty by bringing the content to them in manageable chunks that is available anytime.
We as educators know that faculty development not only supports teachers in building their skill set and mastering their craft, but it also has an effect on increasing student outcomes. A recent article in Inside Higher Ed, discusses a recent study that spoke directly to this. “Independent ratings of students’ learning outcomes demonstrate that when faculty learn and apply better ways of addressing desirable student learning outcomes, they translate their learning into course materials and assignments that actually do positively influence students’ learning,” the book says. “That result, in the end, constitutes a successful case, and that kind of design produces long-range outcomes” (Flaherty, 2016).
We need to continue to think creatively and find ways to reach our faculty and not always ask them to come to us. If we value the importance of teaching and technology, we will reach our faculty where they are and support them.
This presentation
In this presentation we would like to share our story of Faculty Development success. We will also be performing a live Design Time Radio Show Episode with colleagues at the University of Cincinnati so the audience can see and experience the show.
Wrapping it up
It is our intention to:
- Showcase the success of the Radio Show as a Faculty Development success by discussing the analytics associated with the show.
- Demonstrate through a live show how we implement the Radio Show.
- Discuss challenges, success, and things we learned in the process.
- Discuss the future of Design Time.
- Provide participants with an opportunity to experience the show.
Participants in this session will leave with a greater understanding of how to creatively use media to extend professional development opportunities to greater numbers of faculty.
Resources
Flaherty, C. (2016, February 10). New study suggests that faculty development has a demonstrable impact on student learning. Retrieved May 18, 2016, from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/02/10/new-study-suggests-faculty-development-has-demonstrable-impact-student-learning