October 21, 2021

Faculty Development Pandemic Pivot - University of San Diego

For the past 16 years, the Catalyst Awards program has honored innovation and excellence in the Blackboard global community. In this series, a group of 2021 winners from across the globe shares their success stories and best practices.

This post was guest authored by Heather Leslie and Alejandra Lizardo, Instructional Designers in the Learning Design Center, and Ashley Kovacs, Director of the Learning Design Center.

Heather has worked in higher education for 10 years with a background in online teaching, course design, and faculty professional development. She has a doctorate in strategic management, an MBA, a bachelors in international business, and a masters in adult education and instructional design. Her research interests include the scholarship of teaching and learning and trends in higher education.  

Alejandra is a first-generation college graduate and has experience teaching in K-12, designing and facilitating faculty professional development in higher education, and creating training programs in corporate settings. She became an instructional designer because her passion is learning and she loves creating learning experiences that are interactive, skill-based and meaningful for students. 

Ashley has 13 years of experience in educational technology and provides leadership to the Learning Design Center with a vision of quality course design and innovative application learning technologies. Since completing her Master in Education, with a specialization in Educational Technology, Ashley has designed and implemented large scale and boutique Professional Development courses and programs for faculty. She enjoys developing partnerships with faculty to determine learning solutions that will provide the most impactful student experience.    

University of San Diego is a 2021 “Training and Professional Development” Catalyst Award winner. 

In March 2020, the University of San Diego (USD), like many universities around the world, had to pivot to remote teaching because of COVID-19. USD is a private liberal arts four-year residential university with over 5,000 students. Prior to the spring of 2020, most campus faculty taught exclusively in an in-person classroom environment and needed training on how to teach courses remotely. In response, instructional designers at the Learning Design Center created a training and professional development program to help faculty learn tools and pedagogies for remote teaching. This program leveraged Blackboard, Zoom, and Panopto technologies for faculty to utilize in teaching their remote courses.  

Enhanced Remote Teaching Faculty Development Program 

The program consisted of a Blackboard organization that all faculty were enrolled in, a course that faculty could choose to enroll in, and a series of live webinars that faculty could attend. The goal of this program was to help faculty plan out and design their remote courses using the technology tools of Blackboard, Zoom, and Panopto. In terms of the turn-out, 81 faculty attended the webinars, 298 faculty completed the course, and 396 faculty completed the training tutorials in the Blackboard organization during the summer and fall of 2020. 

The Blackboard Organization 

We created a Blackboard organization to house training resources on how to use the technology available to faculty for remote teaching. These training resources included how-to tutorial videos and job aids with step-by-step instructions on how to use tools in Blackboard, Zoom, and Panopto. We recently revamped this organization so that faculty can continue to use it even now that classes have resumed in-person.  

The Course 

We created a course in Blackboard that faculty could choose to enroll in that introduced online course design using a “backward design” instructional design framework. The course consisted of five modules, each corresponding to a phase of the “backward design” process. Module One was about creating effective learning outcomes. Module Two was about creating authentic assessments. Module Three was about creating collaborative learning activities that build class community. Module Four was about creating and curating engaging instructional content. Module Five involved putting it all together, where faculty create a showcase of their plan for remote teaching. The course was fully asynchronous, with opportunities for faculty to take part in peer learning activities with their colleagues, such as discussions, blogs, wikis, and groups. For many faculty, this was the first online course they had ever taken, so it gave them first-hand experience on what online courses are like from a learner perspective, which is helpful for course design. At the end of the course, participants completed a faculty showcase where they described how they planned to implement the “backward design” framework to their remote course. Faculty could choose to present their showcase as a video presentation, written paper, slide deck, or whatever made sense for them (following the principles of “Universal Design” and authentic assessment). Faculty shared their showcase with their peers in the class discussion forum, and we invited them to share with others outside the course via the Blackboard organization. We categorized the showcases in the Blackboard organization by school and department so that faculty could review their colleagues’ work to get ideas and inspiration for their own remote course.  

The Webinar Series 

We held live webinar events for those who prefer to learn and engage in real time. We hosted two webinar series on the topics of creating engaging Zoom sessions using “flipped learning” and student retention strategies using Blackboard’s Retention Center. We posted the webinar recordings in the Blackboard organization for people to view in case they missed it or wanted to review again.  

The Results 

At the end of the course, we invited faculty to give their feedback via a survey. Of those who filled out the survey (125), 34% were very satisfied, 51% were satisfied, 8% were neutral, 6% were unsatisfied, and 2% were very unsatisfied. We sent out another survey after faculty had taught their remote class to determine if they were able to apply what they learned in the course. Of those who filled out the survey (76), 43% strongly agreed, 38% agreed, 15% neither agreed nor disagreed, 4% disagreed, and 0% strongly disagreed that they were able to apply what they learned to their own remote course. One faculty commented that the course “changed my mind completely about how effective remote teaching can be.” Overall, we were satisfied with the results of the course and program and were given very helpful and constructive feedback from faculty on how we can improve for the future. In our assessment, this program resulted in faculty being able to put a plan in place to design their remote courses using technology tools available. We hope faculty are now better prepared for remote teaching and that they will continue to use and experiment with new tools and pedagogies that improve the student learning experience. 

Watch their story here.

For more information visit our Catalyst Awards Page. 

Topics: Faculty
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