Engagement, the new frontier. These are the voyages of the Designer’s session. It’s 45 min. mission: to explore innovative design, to seek out engagement, and new faculty training. To boldly go where no designer has gone before. Join us for an interactive session focused on innovative design and engagement in online faculty training. Grab your tech and we’ll see you on the Holodeck.
As a work-in-progress, this research will examine the factors that impact faculty engagement in professional development for online teaching. A common problem for engineering colleges needing to grow online graduate programs are faculty members not interested in training. The focus of this study is to examine the correlation between innovative instructional strategies on faculty engagement. It will answer the question: “How can innovative, differentiated design impact the engagement of online graduate engineering faculty in professional development training?” The purpose of this research was to increase faculty engagement and satisfaction in professional development. An overarching approach of differentiated micro-learning was built through a series of fifteen minute modules consisting of podcasts, scenario-based challenges, a learner-directed dashboard, research-based topical magazines, along with infographics. Mastery was achieved through a 100% proficiency model. A mixed method approach was selected to focus on a comparative analysis involving two variables. Those variables include a (1) qualitative faculty questionnaire and (2) quantitative data on faculty participation in a non-mandatory professional development course. The approach will analyze faculty feedback after they participate in the training. Then, their feedback will be compared to their satisfaction throughout their previous trainings. The anticipated results are that differentiated micro-learning has a greater impact on faculty teaching, memory retention, and satisfaction. These results could significantly impact how innovation in learner-centered faculty training influences the development of online engineering graduate programs. It should indicate that universities attempting to grow online engineering programs need to utilize innovative instructional strategies to drive faculty engagement. Additional research will be needed to identify the implications of faculty engagement on the quality of faculty teaching online.