Approach+to+Faculty+Training+and+Development

University of Maryland

"How do I series?" Moved away from Manuals and long training sessions to Quick Guides. Popular topics are delivered in multiple formats. (F-T-F) and online. Also - used a question and answer format. Example format 1/3 demo 2/3 Q & A. Wimba was used for live session then the session was archived for access later. They extracted the demo into a video format and posted on their Youtube channel. They also provide options in terms of technology selection. For example, for the podcast tutorials faculty can choose Audacity, Jing, or Camtasia.

There are different types of technology support. Support for doing more with what I am currently using. (Eg. Using wimba in Blackboard). These can be small tutorials. Then there are more topic based areas of support such as using iTunes U. Faculty tended to be more interested in the topic based sessions which seems **obvious**. You want those short tutorials on a just-time basis. You want to do something in Blackboard and as soon as you run into that stumbling block you want to have the support at your finger tips. People generally don't anticipate issues. The presenter seems to hold the misconception that if we build the resources - the how tos then that should be enough and if it isn't then faculty just aren't interested or it is the wrong format. Lacking a faculty point of view.

My side notes: Key ingredients for faculty development (Relevance- helps address a problem of practice (presenter mentioned this but it is more than finding a hot topic -it is about how it relates to teaching and learning), Support, Timely, Follow-up, and technology options that are proximal to their current ways of using technologies (rather than use it my way- here is what you are doing and here is how you can use it and do a little more with technology x)- make the technology itself relatable and feedback/implementation suggestionts from their peers.

We need to have options that include support for quick how tos when instructors run into a problem or have an immediate need (The video tutorial along with printable handouts seems good for this). We also need a different development model for supporting faculty in integrating more technology into their practice. We need to think of this differently... presenter admitted that they are the experts for all of these sessions and it is a sort of button pushing approach. We need to approach this from the perspective of supporting teaching and learning- making it truly relevant.