Professional Development for Busy Professionals

An Online Solution

Presented to:

Innovations 2012

Presented By

• Dr. William F. Ford– Exec. Asst. to the Provost and Dean of Academic Affairs– Professor, Psychology– Bucks County Community College

• Ms Rebecca Stevenson– Scenarios Program Facilitator– Bucks County Community College

What Are Your Challenges and Opportunities…

• …as you think about how to support faculty in creating effective learning-centered experiences?

• …in orienting new faculty (part-time) to your institution and to teaching?

What is Scenarios Online?

• An interactive, problem-based online learning curriculum.

• Originally developed at Valencia Community College (FL) to assist faculty in designing and managing an enriched learning-centered environment for students.

Why Bucks Got Involved

Active and Collaborative Learning

•Results from 2003, 04, 05,06, 08, 10

•We targeted this area to focus on.

•One challenge was providing faculty (especially part-time faculty) with strategies for creating an engaging learning climate in the classroom.

CCSSE: Community College Survey of Student Engagement

A BCCC Foundation Grant

• Started the project in 2006.• Bucks collaborated with

– Community College of Philadelphia– Delaware County CC– Reading Area CC

• Valencia facilitated the first programs and trained us to facilitate future programs.

Scenarios at BCCC Today

Now owned and customized by BCCC

• Orientation course for new faculty

• Teaching at Mystic Lake Community College, Part I

• Teaching at Mystic Lake Community College, Part II

About the Courses

• Two face-to-face meetings per course:

Kick-Off and Wrap Up

• Self-paced, but there is a suggested calendar

• Readings, resources, activities, assignments

• Require about 4 hours of work per week

Topic Areas

The critical first three weeks

Handling student complaints

Effective quizzing and testing

Classroom assessment techniques

College policies and procedures

Topic Areas

Handling Plagiarism and cheating

Teaching and learning styles

Productive group work

and class discussions

Schedule

• Fall and spring semesters:

• Orientation (4 weeks) • TML Part I (5 weeks)

• Summers:

• TML Part II - (5 weeks)

Why Do It? What’s In It For the College?

• Engage part-time faculty with the College.

• Develop learning communities within the faculty.

• Create opportunities for dialog between full- and part-time faculty.

• Standardize the orientation experience.

Why Do It? What’s In It For the College?

• Nice side-benefit:– Faculty gain experience with being a

“student” in an online course.– Faculty gain experience and comfort with

navigating CANVAS – our new learning management

– Encourages faculty to consider using online course spaces for face-to-face classes

Live Tour of Course

Why Do It? What’s In It for the Faculty?

• Reduce the feeling of professional isolation reported by many part-time faculty members.

• Part-time faculty at Bucks compensated on a scale determined by number of credits taught – participation gives them a “3 credit increment” toward their next pay increase.

Why Do It? What’s In It for the Faculty?• Fulfills the contractual requirement for faculty

orientation• Fulfills one of the two required annual

professional development activities for full-time faculty.

• It’s practical! Faculty learn facts and strategies that they can apply immediately to be more effective in the classroom.

Feedback from Participants(online survey and wrap up meetings)

What was your favorite part of the course?

• Orientation to the college – “much of the information I did not know and I have been here for some time.’

• Discussion and sharing with colleagues

• Experiencing online course as a student

• Resources I can use in the future

• The realistic situations the new teacher faces in TML scenarios

What will you do differently?

“Lecture less, use multimedia and discussion more”

“Use CATs to check on whether students ‘got it’”

“Institute use of rubrics”

“Pay special attention to engaging students in the first three weeks”

“Improve my course format for clarity”

Future Directions?

Take advantage of technology available in our new LMS, Canvas

Substitute text of some scenarios for videos featuring our students as actors

Include videotaped student-faculty focus groups on course topics

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