Game changers: developing graduate faculty for a technology-rich  (Page 8/14)

Faculty professional learning initiatives

Professional learning and development in the academy was viewed as a deficit area needing attention in a national study conducted by educational leadership faculty, not outside critics whose intentions tend to be suspect. According to Hackmann and McCarthy (2011), almost a quarter (23%) of educational leadership respondents reported no professional development for faculty members within their departments or universities. Of those reporting professional development, the primary venue was workshops and seminars (31%); to a lesser extent, technology training, attendance at state conferences, and grant-writing workshops were noted. No mention was made of collaborative, ongoing, department-based professional learning opportunities. While this certainly does not mean that such opportunities do not exist, it does suggest they are not terribly prevalent. Our faculty team members and other colleagues, by virtue of participating in our departmental learning initiative, appear to be taking the road less traveled.

Effective professional development includes such features as “a focus on content, active learning, coherence, duration, and collective participation” (Bausmith&Barry, 2011, p. 176); as such, our professional learning initiative incorporates these elements into our four-part learning project. Our efforts to revitalize ourselves as a graduate faculty and prepare for effective online teaching and learning consist of four components: semiannual retreats; a professional learning community; 90-minute monthly tech labs; and participation in instructional technology conferences (as illustrated in Figure 3). Our Departmental colleagues have provided input into the development of these components at a faculty meeting and retreat in Fall 2011. Once the planning was complete, our team produced a short video to introduce our colleagues to these opportunities and invite their further participation (see Endnotes). To enlist their service, we ironically learned the importance of stressing that all of the learning opportunities are voluntary and that faculty can participate in as many (or as few) of the opportunities as they choose.

Figure 3. IMPACT V Professional Learning Model and Activities

The first component of our professional learning program for online excellence involves semiannual retreats. The daylong fall retreat is held on campus; the 3-day spring retreat is held at a conference center a short drive from our university. These retreats—because they require substantial time and because we are cloistered at an offsite location—provide an intensive opportunity for deep discussion. We have already experienced progress on the revitalization of shared knowledge and the cultivation of a position on and vision for online programming.

Professional learning communities (PLCs), sometimes known as faculty learning communities in higher education, are “collaborative collegial groups of faculty and other teaching staff who are interested in and committed to the improvement of their teaching to accommodate a diverse student population through group discourse, reflection, and goal setting” (Ward&Selvester, 2012, p. 112). PLCs are dialogic spaces in which “existing assumptions about teaching and learning are challenged and critiqued” (Bausmith&Barry, 2011, p. 175).