“We don’t talk about Bruno” and why we should!: Instructional Designers’ unique impact to enhance a faculty community of practice

Concurrent Session 6

Brief Abstract

Join us to “Talk about Bruno”: the unique impact instructional designers have in helping faculty create a community of practice to enhance their redesigned courses. Using survey data, we will discuss how by placing faculty into interactive teams led by IDs, the synergy created a more motivated experience that strengthened the outcomes.

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Tina Calandrino, University of Central Florida

Tina Calandrino has worked as an educator in higher learning for over 25 years. She began her college career as Faculty at Miami-Dade College, and later St. Petersburg College. She has embraced what technology can do for students, and sought to share that knowledge with other educators around the world. Currently serving as Instructional Design Faculty at the University of Central Florida's Center for Distributed Learning, her research currently focuses on Gender/Age/Cultural Awareness and Faculty Development for Online Learning.

Co-presenter: Baiyun Chen, University of Central Florida

Dr. Baiyun Chen is an Instructional Designer at the Center for Distributed Learning at the University of Central Florida. She leads the Personalized Adaptive Learning team, designs and delivers faculty professional development programs, and teaches graduate courses on Instructional Systems Design. Her research interests focus on using instructional strategies in online and blended teaching and learning, professional development for teaching online, and application of emerging technologies in education. On related topics of online instruction, she has published 19 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters and delivered more than 50 presentations at international and local conferences and events. She has also served as the Co-Managing Editor of the Teaching Online Pedagogical Repository. In 2016 and 2017, Dr. Chen co-facilitated BlendKit, a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) on Becoming a Blended Learning Designer. As an Online Learning Consortium Institute faculty, she has designed, developed and taught the Blended Learning Mastery Series: Research into Practice.

Co-presenter: Charlotte Jones-Roberts, University of Central Florida

Charlotte Jones-Roberts, M.A., is an Instructional Designer at the University of Central Florida. She is the Lead of ADL5000, an online faculty credentialing program which focuses on part-time and adjunct faculty credentialing. She strives to create a culture of Quality, lead dynamic virtual seminars, and wears many hats behind the scenes of TOPkit - Teaching Online Preparation Toolkit. She is pursuing her EdD in Curriculum & Instruction, focused on humanized online learning and anxiety in online courses.

Additional Authors

Shelly Wyatt, University of Central Florida

Shelly Wyatt is an instructional designer in the Center for Distributed Learning at the University of Central Florida. She earned her PhD in instructional technology from UCF in 2013.

Extended Abstract

In partnership with the Division of Teaching and Learning, the Division of Digital Learning had coordinated a campus wide Digital Learning Course Redesign Initiative (DL CRI) in 2019-2022. The goal of this initiative was to impact student learning by increasing successful course completion (reduced DFW rates – D/F/Withdraw), particularly in GEP & STEM courses, and to improve FTIC & Transfer student persistence through a strategic course redesign process that leverages the benefits of online, blended, adaptive, and active learning. After three years’ implementation, it was discovered that the group CRI projects were more successful than individual projects. Therefore, the CRI initiative was extended for a fourth, capstone year to encourage faculty cohorts to work on collaborative high-impact projects. Four Faculty Instructional Designers took on the responsibilities of the track lead role that led the planning and facilitation of the final year of redesign and live session cohorts. No longer a quiet voice in the background, these Faculty Instructional Designers realized it was time for folks to "Talk about Bruno"!

The instructional designers carefully took a deep dive into the project by organizing faculty workshops to nurture a community of practice across the program that was vital to continuous innovation and improvement (Learn for all, 2016). In our year-long support workshops, faculty members were grouped into four communities of practice (CoPs) around their project topics: personalized adaptive learning, program level redesign, and post-COVID design. During the series of eight faculty workshops, each cohort had CoP time to to share their interests in the topic, their project progresses, common concerns, and helped each other solve problems to fulfill group goals. A sense of connectedness and collegiality motivated each project group to achieve their final redesign goal. Use of survey data gathered at mid-point and end of cohorts will support empirical evidence gathered by the track lead/instructional designers. 

The implementation and support of cohorts has humanized this course redesign initiative project. Faculty can be siloed not only by colleges and departments, but they have also closed themselves off in the online teaching world and distance themselves from other faculty and instructional designers that can provide valuable insight to their own teaching methods and design. By utilizing survey data and empirical evidence, the instructional designers will illustrate the best ways to keep the motivation of faculty going during year long redesigns, and discuss what goes unsaid: the value of working with Instructional Designers to create a coactional community of practice. 

Your plan for interactivity (this is often overlooked - including a strong engagement strategy is one way you can significantly raise your scores during the evaluation process.

  • Short PowerPoint Talk initial introduction to the session
  • One on one small group interactions with session leaders and attendees to detail ideas for individualized plans for home institutions
  • Showcasing mid-point and end survey answers from faculty to illustrate motivational factors of working with instructional designers and creating a synergistic community of practice amongst faculty

    

What the attendees are going to learn from the presentation (the takeaways)

  • Motivational factors for faculty development
  • Handout for creating a Community of Practice at attendees home institution
  • Course redesign templates
  • 8 Cohort session outlines for use in planning faculty development sessions