Freshening Up: Bringing a Fresh Perspective to Online and Blended Faculty Development

Concurrent Session 2

Session Materials

Brief Abstract

The global pandemic has had various impacts on the higher educational landscape including faculty development needs. In this presentation learn how one institution applied a fresh perspective to redesign an online and blended faculty development program that adapted to the changing needs of faculty.

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Amy Sugar, University of Central Florida

Amy Sugar is an Associate Instructional Designer at the the University of Central Florida's Center for Distributed Learning. She holds an M.A. in Instructional Design and Technology from the University of Central Florida and a B.A. in Music Education from Florida State University. Amy’s prior professional experience includes leading the Instructional Design & Technology Team at Rollins College in Winter Park, FL, teaching in an adjunct role at Rollins College, and teaching elementary music in Orange County Public Schools. Her areas of interest and research include professional development, accessibility, and digital literacy.

Co-presenter: Trudy Trail-Constant, University of Central Florida

Trudian Trail-Constant is an Associate Instructional Designer at CDL. She holds an M.Ed. in Instructional Design and Development from the University of Georgia and a B.Sc. in Computer Science from Bethune-Cookman University. Her technical background along with her experience in Instructional Design in the business and higher education arenas have allowed her to possess a great balance and understanding of both technology and education. Her research interests include learner motivation and knowledge retention through unique, interactive learning environments and her expertise in the field has allowed her to present at multiple regional, national, and international conferences. Trudian also has a passion for all things creative and in her free time, she enjoys photography, interior decorating, event planning and even creating escape room games.

Extended Abstract

In Fall 2020, instructional designers at a large public university set out to redesign its flagship online/blended faculty development program that had been in place for over 20 years. While this faculty development program had previously undergone a major redesign in 2013, the need to make major updates to this program resurfaced to help increase its effectiveness for faculty, reduce the associated administrative burden on the instructional design team, and address stakeholder feedback.

Through the collection of various data points and stakeholder feedback from leadership, faculty, instructional designers, and students before this project began pre-pandemic, several changes related to faculty experience and professional development needs were identified. However, at the onset of the program redesign efforts, the global pandemic highlighted additional faculty needs. As a result, the instructional designers tasked with this project had to revise the goals of the redesign to address these changing needs and adopted a creative design approach to apply new ideas and solutions to this well-established faculty development program.

Join us to learn about this redesign project, the feedback-driven design approach taken, and how stakeholders were engaged throughout the entire process. In addition, updating and streamlining a faculty development program during a pandemic while continuing to offer it was a challenging feat from which the instructional design team was able to garner numerous lessons learned that may be useful to other institutions.

Engagement Strategy

The presentation will include interactive audience polls. Participants will also be able to ask questions, interact with the presenters and reflect on how the strategies and concepts learned can be applied at their own institutions.

Session Takeaways

By the end of the session participants will be able to:

  • Explore ways to apply a fresh perspective to the design of an online/blended faculty development that combines multiple best practice strategies for effective faculty development.
  • Infer how faculty and key stakeholder feedback can influence the design of a faculty development program that both meets the varied needs of online/blended faculty and aligns with the leadership’s strategic goals and vision.
  • Discover how undergoing a major redesign during a pandemic can have a positive influence on faculty development program design.

Session Outline

  • Introduction (5 minutes)
  • Setting the Stage: Purpose and Goals of the Redesign (5 minutes)
  • Exploring a Feedback-Driven Design Approach: How key stakeholder feedback influenced the program design (10 minutes)
  • Program Design at a Glance: A brief look into the redesigned faculty development program and key design elements (5 minutes)
  • Lessons learned from underdoing a major program redesign during a Pandemic & Next Steps (10 minutes)
  • Additional Q/A (10 minutes)