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Encouraging Faculty Attendance At Professional Development Events, Dakin Burdick, Tim Doherty, Naomi Schoenfeld

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

For faculty development events to have the greatest impact on campus practice, faculty developers need to attract and include as many faculty members as possible at their events. This article describes the testing of a checklist regarding faculty attendance at professional development events through a survey of 238 faculty members at small colleges in the United States. The results demonstrate the influence of social relationships upon faculty attendance at teaching and learning events, the difficulties of scheduling such events, and motivational differences between full-time and adjunct faculty. The use of food as a motivator for attendance is also appraised. The …