Boots on the Ground: Answering Our 5 Most Common Faculty Questions

Concurrent Session 7

Brief Abstract

Experienced learning designers will tell you that every course brings with it unique challenges. However, they’ll also tell you that the new faculty we work with tend to ask the same set of questions. Our team at Penn State’s Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness will highlight five of the most common questions our learning design team gets from faculty and some evidence-based answers we provide. The audience is encouraged to contribute to the conversation with their own faculty FAQs. 

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Sing Wong, Penn State

Sing is currently the Manager of Learning Design and Solutions at the Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness. At the Clearinghouse, he manages a team of learning designers, production specialists, and developers to produce researched-based educational solutions to help improve the lives of United States military members and their families. His areas of expertise include instructional design, educational technology, faculty development, adult learning, student engagement, active learning, MOOCs, and the development of STEM-related courses. Sing has previously presented presenter at various education conferences, including the OLC Accelerate, Learning Solutions, and the Penn State Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium.

Extended Abstract

Experienced learning designers will tell you that every course brings with it unique challenges. However, they’ll also tell you that the new faculty we work with tend to ask the same set of questions. Not only that, but they’ll also tell you that their faculty expect evidence-informed answers and the literature to support your responses. 

During this session, our team at Penn State’s Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness will highlight five of the most common questions our learning design team gets from our faculty and subject matter experts. We will cover curriculum-specific questions about design philosophies, scaffolding content, and content chunking. We will also talk about some common administrative questions, such as content development time and learning design, and development cost estimates. Responses will be provided in FAQ form and will include resources and citations to evidence-based answers.

This session will be interactive and participants will be asked to contribute common questions they receive in their organizations/institutions. Participants will be able to share verbally as well as digitally. Audience responses will be recorded and appended to the presentation post-conference. By the end of this session, participants will be able to take away new knowledge and resources to add to their own instructional design toolkits to use with their faculty.