Higher Education and Teaching Commons^™

Starting The Journey To Excellence With A College Faculty Onboarding Program, Robin Cooper, Judith Slapak-Barski

HCAS Instructional Design and Pedagogy

The journey to engaged, excellent teaching requires support and preparation for those doing the teaching. In this session, we describe a college Faculty Onboarding Program we developed in 2023 to introduce our new Halmos faculty to NSU (Nova Southeastern University) and to Halmos, and to provide them with the resources and information needed to succeed in their new role—driven by the belief that effective onboarding will lead to higher job satisfaction, better job performance, greater organizational commitment, and reduction in stress. Informed by feedback from recently hired faculty, we identified support strategies to help new faculty thrive by proactively removing …

Steps On Establishing A Faculty Development Curriculum For Health Science Educators In A New Medical School, Beatriz Tapia, Karina Madrigal, Robert Nelson

Research Colloquium

Purpose: New Medical Schools need health science educators, to teach throughout the medical education continuum from basic science to clinical years. The need to establish a defined faculty development curriculum for health science educators will aid in standardizing best teaching practices and build a potential master teacher to move the curriculum toward active learning and innovation. The UTRGV SoM is a distributed campus, to achieve increase outreach we will offer synchronous and asynchronous online faculty development during the pandemic. This poster will share our progress to date.

Methods: A pilot, faculty development program, was established from faculty needs assessment data, …

Designing For Impact: The Center For Teaching And Learning As A Cultivator Of A Faculty Learner-Leader Praxis, Monica Stitt-Bergh, Debra Fowler, Jonan Phillip Donaldson, Ra'sheedah Richardson, Truth Hunter, Clinton A. Patterson

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Centers for teaching and learning (CTLs) address external and internal factors that influence teaching and learning. To accomplish this, often without additional resources, CTLs need an efficient and effective solution. By combining evidence-based practices in faculty development and a distillation of effective practices at three different institutions, the authors developed a sustainable, generative, learner-leader model for CTLs and others in faculty development to employ. The model emerged from an analysis of the authors’ collective and independent professional experiences, is grounded in a community of practice framework, and innovatively addresses the need for faculty leadership development. The authors describe the components …

On Becoming Online Educators: Developing Hybrid Learning-Centered Pedagogy, Rachel Toncelli Edd, Leila Rosa Phd

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Access the online Pressbooks version of this article here.

Recent global events pushed in-person learning to online formats. As K-12 teachers struggled with shifting from in-person to online teaching while adapting and adjusting instruction, and higher education prepared to do the same, two faculty members in a TESOL teacher preparation program joined forces to question assumptions about online teaching, reflect on praxis, and revisit pedagogy and practices through a critical autoethnographic study. Building from adult constructivist learning theory and collegial inquiry, the researchers utilized the pandemic as a stage for innovation and an opportunity to study their own ability, as …

Full Issue: Journal On Empowering Teaching Excellence, Volume 7, Issue 1, Spring 2023

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

The full-length Spring 2023 issue (Volume 7, Issue 1) of the Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Access the online Pressbooks version (with downloadable EPUB format) here.

The Spring 2023 issue presents research and guidance on topics related to student self-reflection, participatory learning, and returning to the in-person learning following the COVID-19 pandemic. The first article takes a critical approach to understanding pedagogy with adult learners by involving students in the creation of course syllabi as a way to challenge ideologies related the roles of instructor and students. The second article blends research and narrative to explore how the experiences of …

A Framework For Creating And Using Teaching Philosophy Statements To Guide Reflective And Inclusive Instruction, Steven D. Taff

Journal of Occupational Therapy Education

A teaching philosophy statement (TPS) is a brief, deeply personal narrative that gives insight into an educator’s perspective on the teaching enterprise. A TPS is typically comprised of a reflection on the educator’s values and beliefs, a description of what happens during the learning process, and statements about how teachers and learners ideally interact. Use of a TPS clarifies the bridge between theory/philosophy and practice which strengthens education as an interactive phenomenon and in so doing evokes an ethical purpose for the teaching-learning dynamic. This article describes the theoretical underpinnings of, and process for, an innovative framework occupational therapy educators …

Student Stories Of Online Learning, Carrie Lewis Miller, Michael Manderfeld

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Access the online Pressbooks version of this article here.

Instructional designers at a Midwest university piloted a survey based on the Quality Matters general standards asking students about their online course experience prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Students were asked to indicate whether they experienced a specific course design element and whether they considered that element to be important to their learning experience. Follow-up interviews with some participants were also held. Data from the survey indicated students perceive their online course experience to be good based on course design elements they encountered. Implications for providing additional faculty development programming based …

Full Issue: Journal On Empowering Teaching Excellence, Volume 6, Issue 2, Fall 2022

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

The full-length Fall 2022 issue (Volume 6, Issue 2) of the Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Access the online Pressbooks version (with downloadable EPUB format) here.

The Fall 2022 issue presents research and guidance on topics related to reflective practice and learning. The first article examines the impact of the SOAP Notes tool on teaching, learning, and instructor reflection. The second article provides guidance for faculty on how to collect, explain, and showcase their efforts in a teaching portfolio. Article three shares the findings of a student survey to identify students' experience with the design elements found in the Quality …

Transforming Departmental Culture: Empowering A Department Through Appreciative Inquiry, Symphony D. Oxendine, Kerry K. Robinson, Michele A. Parker

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This article outlines an appreciative inquiry (AI) into a departmental professional development process and describes the resulting implementation of an appreciative peer evaluation meeting as one part of the new professional development process. Using AI, a departmental faculty development committee sought to re-envision the professional development process. Also, the authors discuss how using AI can result in positive impacts for culture change and how the model for peer evaluation can promote both individual and collective development of faculty.

Centering Black Women Faculty: Magnifying Powerful Voices, Christen Priddie, Dajanae Palmer, Samantha Silberstein, Allison Brckalorenz

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

While much of the quantitative research on Black women faculty has taken a comparative approach to understanding their experiences, this study provides a counternarrative, centering their experiences as faculty. This large-scale, multi-institution glance at Black women faculty helps to give us an overview of these women across the country, looking at who they are, where they are, how they spend their time, and what they value in undergraduate education. This study allows us to strengthen various arguments made in qualitative studies of Black women faculty and amplify their perspectives and experiences. Furthermore, it reaffirms and reinvigorates the need for educational …

Building Resilience In Ctls: Reflections On Practice, Lisa J. Hatfield, Julie Maxson, Jennifer Marshall Shinaberger, Hanna E. Norton, Cynthia (Cia) H. Demartino, Annette Finley-Crosswhite, Gigi Gokcek

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

What are the qualities of the “now” that make teaching and learning an urgent, if not a moral, imperative? A group of faculty, administrators, and educational developers respond to this question with individual narratives bound together by a common theme of reflective practice in times of crises to help faculty become more resilient in preparing for ongoing upheavals and unexpected crises while pursuing more inclusive communities. Our personal narratives reflect on the subjects of flexibility in the face of crises, technology and ethics, study abroad exposure to ethical challenges, students’ growing anxiety and mental health, modeling metacognition with peers and …

What Happens When You Close The Door On Remote Proctoring? Moving Toward Authentic Assessments With A People-Centered Approach, Sarah Silverman, Autumn Caines, Christopher Casey, Belen Garcia De Hurtado, Jessica Riviere, Alfonso Sintjago, Carla Vecchiola

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The COVID-19 pandemic made traditionally proctored in-person exams impossible. This article provides a summary of the arguments against institutional adoption of remote proctoring services with a focus on equity, an account of the decision to avoid remote proctoring on the University of Michigan–Dearborn campus, and conclusions and suggestions for other teaching and learning professionals who would like to take a similar approach. Remote proctoring services require access to technology that not all students are guaranteed to have, can constitute an invasion of privacy for students, and can discriminate against students of color and disabled students. Administrators and teaching and learning …

The Value Of Instructor Interactivity In The Online Classroom, Greg Lucas, Gary Cao, Shaunna Waltemeyer, B. Jean Mandernach, Helen G. Hammond

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

As the number of faculty teaching online continues to grow, so has the interest in and understanding of the role of instructor interaction in the online classroom. Online education provides a unique platform in which course design and teaching are independent factors. Understanding faculty and student perceptions about the shifting role of instructor interaction in the online classroom can provide insight on policies and procedures that can support student learning through student-instructor interaction. Participants included faculty and students responding to an anonymous online survey who indicated “online” as their primary mode of teaching. Three key “value” themes emerged as significantly …

Full Issue: Journal On Empowering Teaching Excellence, Volume 5, Issue 1, Spring 2021

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

The full Spring 2021 issue (Volume 5, Issue 1) of the Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Pandemic Pivot: A Faculty Development Program For Enhanced Remote Teaching, Heather J. Leslie Dba, Alejandra Lizardo Ma, Ashley Kovacs Ma

Learning Design Center: Staff Scholarship

The novel coronavirus COVID-19 has impacted the higher education sector all over the world and has been most disruptive to residential academic institutions that offer mostly, if not wholly, in-person instruction. Of the 1.5 million college faculty members in the United States, about 70% had never taught a virtual course prior to COVID-19 (Hechinger & Lorin, 2020). During spring 2020, colleges had to pivot to remote instruction without much notice for faculty or students to prepare. Some referred to this as “emergency remote teaching” as it did not allow adequate time to thoughtfully plan out a course for a remote …

Implementation Plans For Course Redesigns: An Exploration Of Identified Strategies, Rebecca Campbell, Benjamin Blankenship

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Institutions are redesigning gateway courses—lower-division courses known to create student success bottlenecks—to influence persistence and completion goals. These initiatives, student success course redesigns (SSCR), are specialized versions of course design institutes (CDIs). This investigation into SSCRs uses content analysis to examine the implementation plans created during a SSCR. Results demonstrated that the majority of the strategies planned focused on the Learning key performance indicator (KPI), and the minority of the planned-for strategies focused on the Monitoring Student Performance KPI. A more granular analysis of the Learning strategies revealed five themes: Content, Assessment, Pedagogy, Syllabus, and Student Success. Additional results indicated …

Motivation To “Keep Pushin’”: Insights Into Faculty Development Facilitating Inclusive Pedagogy, Kelly Erby, Melanie Burdick, Sandra Winn Tutwiler, Dan Petersen

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This study focuses on the lived experiences of nine university faculty who were attempting to implement inclusive teaching practices following university-sponsored faculty development. While the participants were each successful in their respective implementations, they all expressed anxiety at the beginning of the semester as well as at the end when they reflected upon the changes they made. This occurred despite deeply held motivations to change their teaching and make a difference for their students. The participants encountered barriers that centered on feelings related to self-confidence, student perception, and peer approval. Findings include descriptions of these anxieties and the supports that …

The Impact Of Teacher Methodology Training For Higher Education Faculty Members, Nicole Baker

Ed.D. Dissertations

Many college programs are designed to graduate individuals who are experts in their field of study, but not necessarily individuals who are trained in how to teach. This quantitative, quasi-experiment study examined college faculty member’s level of training in the area of teaching practices and methodology. The relation to student satisfaction, current course performance, attendance, the belief in the need for training, and faculty member’s sense of efficacy in teaching was explored. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to organize the data using a one-way ANCOVA to analyze the impact the level of training had on …

Motivated Reasoning And Persuading Faculty Change In Teaching, Gary A. Smith

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Many faculty members demonstrate unwavering resistance to adopting research-based instructional strategies. This phenomenon commonly fits with motivated reasoning, whereby a person feels threatened by persuasion to change, leading to overtly defensive and sometimes disruptive behaviors and refusal. Changing away from established practices may challenge one’s self-identity and values as an effective teacher and triggers arguments intended to invalidate research-based alternatives. Faculty who are motivated to reject consensus best practices may impede the implementation of these practices across entire departments or institutions. Motivated reasoning and its underlying cognitive processes are explained by self-determination theory, which leads to predictions of faculty behaviors …

Building A Social Network Around Sotl Through Digital Space, Shannon M. Sipes, Samy L. Minix, Matt Barton

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

In an effort to increase visibility of and access to the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) work on one campus, a collaboration formed between a faculty developer, a librarian, and a media specialist within a center for teaching and learning (CTL). Building on the frameworks of community of practice, professional learning network, and social networking, the authors strategically leveraged digital space to begin building a social network of faculty members interested in SoTL. This article will address the theoretical foundation and practical implementation of five digital strategies: (a) website redesign; (b) social media presence; (c) blog series; (d) filmed …

Assessment Literacy In College Teaching: Empirical Evidence On The Role And Effectiveness Of A Faculty Training Course, Kyle D. Massey, Christopher Deluca, Danielle Lapointe-Mcewan

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This research explores how faculty members’ conceptions of assessment and confidence in assessment change as a result of an instructor training course. Based on a sample of 27 faculty members enrolled in a semester-long instructional development course, this survey-based study provides initial evidence that faculty members can develop confidence in assessment while adopting increasingly complex conceptions of assessment. Based on this study’s findings, we argue that instructional development programs for college faculty have a critical role to play in stimulating faculty learning about assessment of student learning and are an important component in promoting a positive assessment culture.

Broaching Threshold Concepts: The Trouble With “Skills” Language In Defining Student Learning Goals, Angela J. Zito

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This essay argues that description of student learning goals as various “skills” presents a conceptual threshold lying between and connecting routinely dichotomized characterizations of student learning—most notably, “concrete” versus “abstract.” Qualitative analysis of instructor interviews shows that “skills” language tends to conceal abstract (that is, affective) learning goals behind more concrete (that is, cognitive) ones. Ultimately, this essay proposes that cognitive and affective student learning goals might be more clearly articulated using threshold concepts within and across disciplines, and that the recognition of “skills” as both affective and cognitive is itself a threshold concept in educational development.

Seven Voices, Seven Developers, Seven One Things That Guide Our Practice, Frances Kalu, Patti Dyjur, Carol Berenson, Kimberley A. Grant, Cheryl Jeffs, Natasha Kenny, Robin Mueller

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Educational development philosophy statements provide a framework to communicate the values and beliefs that guide the practices and approaches of individual educational developers across various career stages. This paper presents narratives to illustrate how seven educational developers conceptualize the one thing that guides our work through the process of reflecting on the beliefs that we articulate through our educational development philosophy statements. Although each narrative illustrates our diverse backgrounds and philosophies, common themes are revealed relating to reflective practice, scholarly approaches, and facilitating change, which lead to improvements in student learning. This exploration suggests further opportunity to conduct research on …

Invitations And Expeditions, But Hardly Ever Destinations, Tracy W. Smith

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This essay characterizes educational development as an invitation. The author provides a rationale for using Invitational Theory (IT) to guide educational development programming and practice. The five assumptions of IT are included and linked to scholarly literature that grounds educational development. Examples of invitational educational development initiatives or programs are provided for each assumption.

Workshopping A Workshop: Collaborative Design In Educational Development, Eleanor V. H. Vandegrift, Amy B. Mulnix, Jennifer R. Yates, S. Raj Chaudhury

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Working remotely and collaboratively, our interdisciplinary team created an educational development workshop, Thinking Skills for the 21st Century: Teaching for Transfer, in which participants not only experience, apply, and reflect on teaching across educational settings but also connect this work to principles that have been demonstrated by learning science to support the transfer of knowledge. We used backward design to develop the workshop and evidence-based pedagogies in its implementation. We facilitated the workshop at two different national meetings for distinct audiences and also as part of an on-campus faculty development program. Here, we report on the workshop development and revision, …

Publish & Flourish: Helping Scholars Become Better, More Prolific Writers, Tara Gray, Laura Madson, Michelle Jackson

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Some scholars want help from educational developers to become better, more prolific writers. This study examines one such program, Publish & Flourish, that holds participants accountable for writing daily and for receiving weekly feedback from peers on drafts of writing. In this mixed methods study, 95% of participants (N = 93) reported that they improved their writing by making it more organized and reader centered. Participants also reported that they increased their extrapolated average of submissions of scholarly manuscripts per year from about two to almost six. We then compared Publish & Flourish to several other studies of scholarly writing …

Toward Learning And Justice, Through Love, Isis Artze-Vega

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This chapter responds to the call for educational developers to isolate the one perspective that guides our work. It retraces the author’s career steps, seeking the origin of love as a guiding principle, and describes its evolution and application during her career. To do so, the piece includes a theoretical perspective on love and argues that its utility as a characterizing perspective for our profession stems from its significance to learning and justice. It suggests the timeliness and urgency of elevating the role of love in our field, notes associated risks and rewards, and suggests resources for doing so.

Equity-Minded Faculty Development, Aeron Haynie

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

A governing principle of equity-minded faculty development is a commitment to supporting marginalized populations who may feel unwelcome in academia: from minority college students to first-generation graduate students to faculty of color. Faculty development should encourage faculty to notice inequities and not dismiss them as student’s individual failures; to examine institutional data on student, graduate student, and faculty achievement patterns; and to collaborate with other campus partners on interventions. As we work with faculty to develop strategies to ensure all students can succeed, we must also enact the same empowering, strengths- based practices we promote.

The Idea Of Educational Development: An Historical Perspective, Laura Cruz

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This essay examines the idea of educational development, inspired both in content and approach by John Henry Newman’s influential 19th century work on the idea of a university.

A Minimalist Model Of New Faculty Mentoring: Why Asking For Less Gives More, Heather Lobban Viravong, Mark Schneider

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

We describe a research-based mentoring program for new full-time faculty at a small residential college, which emphasizes the empowerment of the new faculty themselves to identify and obtain the resources they need for success. In our model, the mentor takes on a role of primarily providing accountability, easing the burden on mentors, thereby making for a more sustainable program. Our mixed methods assessment of the program suggests that, paradoxically, these lessened expectations foster closer personal relationships between mentor and protégé than might have occurred if that were a programmatic expectation.