Most every college online learning department in the US sparsely staffed given the tasks they is expected of them. While faculty are experts in their field of study, instructional design is separate field and it cannot be assumed that all faculty have this training. This knowledge is critical for the professional development of the faculty and directly affects the accessibility of online course content as well as adopting best practices in teaching and learning, such as regularly reviewing online courses quality. This become an added burden for understaffed department. Nevertheless, these are necessary are for meeting Middle States Accreditation (Standard III, section 4).
To make this task tractable, a school using a LMS such as
Brightspace, can create a non-termed ‘course’ where faculty can both learn what
it is like to be a student in the system and participate in a self-paced
training to improve the understanding of necessary topics. By creating a communal professional development
space, faculty can autonomous select topics to improve and break down silo’s with
strategic online forums. The shared space can also act as repository of tools
and OER content that faculty can easily access.
In the case of SUNY
Schenectady, a 5 module self-paced course allowed faculty to select between
modules the content they wanted to first focus on. In order to progress, certain requirements were
necessary to advance further in the course.
This allowed modules to provide scaffolded activities. The modules also provided a quantifiable space
that required about the same about of effort to complete while each module
illustrated Universal Design for Learning principles in an attempt to teach by
example.
The true challenge to professional development is getting faculty to participate in the training. To do this we had three incentives:
- Learning outcomes for each module included building assets that the faculty could use in their courses. Often these assets employed strategies that would increase student engagement and reduce faculty effort.
- Gamified modules offered badges for completing sections. By design it encouraged or lead learners to produce more or complete the course
- Certificates
– were set up through an automated system (Awards). Faculty would received personalized and dated
certificates for not only completing the courses, but for completing each module. This would allow for learners to use their
work in each module to generate measured evidence (a certificate). These illustrate a quantifiable amount of
work and the learners can share the certificates
with their supervisors as evidence of the professional development in the
annual review. For those without Adobe PDF Pro, a generic certificate can also work,
Automated Enrollment
Using Intelligent Agents in Brightspace, the system can identify all those with a specific roll, such as Faculty, and enroll them into a class. With a little forethought, the school can enroll all employees in a “Staff” role that can be upgraded to “Faculty” if they teach. This will allow all members of school to have access to the training area to promote topics with ubiquitous applications, such as “Accessibility”. With the two roles, an Intelligent Agent can easily enroll all those working at the campus. Naturally, this can be expanded with new modules and even become a single place for the school’s professional development
