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- Align Faculty Development Program objectives with Distance Education goals from the institution's strategic plan.
- Collaborate with Deans and Department Chairs to establish department-specific goals for faculty development.
- Determine what specific skills the Dean or Chair wants faculty members to acquire.
- Ensure that concrete recognition is proffered by department Chair or Dean for faculty who learn new skills related to departmental and/or institutional goals.
- Plan to assess the adequacy of faculty office computing equipment for designated Faculty Development Program goals.
- Negotiate with administration to establish a system for upgrading or replacing faculty computing equipment as needed.
2. Develop an institution-wide core curriculum for the Faculty Development Program.
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- Inductive processes: faculty needs for knowledge and skills development based on findings of a valid and reliable institutional research project.
- Deductive processes: faculty needs for knowledge and skills derived from expert analysis of institutional and departmental goals.
3. Design the content materials and instructional strategies for core curriculum areas.
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- Is there a necessary or desirable sequence of content to be covered that will optimize efficiency in knowledge/skills development?
- For each content area:
- Identify the institution's experts.
- Negotiate with administration for workload time for experts to plan content, determine instructional strategies, and create materials.
- Ensure that funds are encumbered for production of trainers' notes, handouts, examples, and other teaching aids.
- Define the learning objectives for each content area.
- Performance standards
- Activities or behaviors: write, create, make, send . . .
- Measurement criteria: accuracy, speed, frequency, quantity, quality
- Identify education specialists to consult with content experts, ensuring that principles of adult learning are applied.
- Provide program evaluation questionnaires for all participants in the Faculty Development Program: trainers, faculty, administrators.
4. Select program providers/trainers for the Faculty Development Project.
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- Identify trainers who are recognized by faculty as being role models with expert, informational, or referent authority.
- Ensure trainer competence with specific content area to be taught.
- Ensure trainer understanding of principles of adult learning:
- Just in time skills training most effective.
- Begin with what learner already knows.
- Expert learners may be temporarily dependent in unfamiliar content areas.
- Telling is not teaching.
- Roles include motivating, coaching, facilitating, consulting.
- Confirm trainer communication skills
- Group process mediator/facilitator
- Verbal communication skills
- Non-verbal communication skills (attentive, empathic, non-judgmental)
- Patience
- Flexibility
5. Publicize and market the Faculty Development Program.
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- Institutional level dissemination of information
- Announcements of program inception from the President and other senior administrators in regularly scheduled publications, including the significance of the program in terms of mission and strategic plan.
- Introduction and subsequent updates at meetings and convocations of the faculty.
- Departmental level dissemination of information
- Announcements from Deans and Chairs via newsletters and memoranda to the faculty, stressing the relationship of the Faculty Development Program to the department's strategic plan and the individual benefits available for participation.
- Inclusion of the Faculty Development Program as an agenda item for faculty meetings in all departments, with overview given by the chief administrator and a Program provider on hand to answer questions during discussion period.
- Program level dissemination of information
- Send regular program announcements and updates to administrators, asking for inclusion in university-wide and departmental publications.
- Publish a semester schedule of workshops available and send hard copy to all faculty members, including a response form for reservations.
- Send a monthly direct campus mail program announcement concerning core curriculum areas available, with emphasis on service to individual faculty at their convenience.
- Establish a central scheduling office where faculty members can call, send email, or send response forms requesting individual sessions or workshop reservations.
6. Schedule training sessions with faculty members.
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- Schedule according to requests of faculty members for individual instruction in their offices or in computer laboratory settings.
- Identify content areas that might be introduced to small groups of faculty members.
- Clarify the rationale for participant selection or self-selection into groups.
- Confirm with individual faculty the rationale for the participant list and content to be covered in the workshop.
7. Present the Faculty Development Program to participants.
- Prepare carefully, in advance, for each session.
- Confirm installation of needed hardware and software on computers to be used.
- Ensure that needed electronic documents are available from the server.
- Assemble printed materials.
- Conduct each session with careful attention to the psychosocial concerns of participants.
- Review and confirm objectives for each session with participants.
- Establish a comfortable, relaxed atmosphere to reduce anxiety.
- Stress trust and mutual respect in the teaching-learning relationship to reduce fears of negative competency evaluations.
- Emphasize the professional status of faculty participants to reduce anxiety related to systems and hierarchical issues.
- Address participants by academic titles until explicitly asked to be less formal.
- Enroll faculty with similar academic positions in shared group learning sessions.
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- Present content systematically to facilitate knowledge and skills acquisition for expert learners.
- Provide an introduction that shows the context and relevance of new software to be learned.
- Give a brief overview of the plan for this session.
- Begin with a quick task/skill demonstration, without dialogue.
- Discuss how the program is used, including attention to the educational context in which the new software is useful.
- Demonstrate the use of the new software, with step-by-step explanations for actions.
- Engage participants in practice sessions with 1:1 coaching to facilitate decision-making and encourage experimentation.
- Conclude by reviewing written instructions for independent use of the program.
- Make an appointment for the first follow-up session.
- Follow-up sessions
- Monitor progress
- Solve problems
- Suggest new applications for acquired skills
8. Evaluate Faculty Development Program outcomes.
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- Elicit feedback on training processes at regular intervals and on termination of service to individual participants.
- Measure results against performance standards and objectives.
- Modify aspects of the program on the basis of feedback as an ongoing process.
Copyright © P. Cravener, 2002