Working with Teaching/Faculty Development Centers

[macargel]

Hello everyone,

I work at our university's teaching/faculty development center, and I am wondering if you all engage with your university's center. If so, in what capacity? If you meet with individual staff members (versus attending workshops), what makes those meetings valuable? What could make them better? I am trying to gather some information from faculty other than my own about why they choose to work with center staff and what value those interactions provide.

Thanks,
Andrea

[downer]

Hi Andrea

Good luck with your enquiries. I'm sure it is hard to bring in faculty since they tend to be reluctant participants. I know I only participate in workshops if they are required. This is a good conversation to start.

[Ruralguy]

I would engage, most likely.

There are probably various types of faculty with whom you can engage, and here are a couple-ish:

-remedial: they need help with basics of starting discussions, making syllabus clear with clear rules, keeping up beat when possible, etc.

-master: maybe just great overall, but particularly good at a technique, and could sell the technique.
I guess I am talking about selling, say "Think, Pair, Share" or even "How to Design a Riveting Lecture without Flipping!"

-people who just want to find out about how others deal with particular problems with "your" type of student. They are probably experienced, have no remediation issues, but would like to adjust what they do to meet up with local norms.

[Aster]

In most of my Higher Ed experience, these Centers are used as dumping grounds for faculty/administrators who have lost their grants, lost their courses, lost their programs, etc... I've even seen a Center used as a place to give a spousal hire a job.

The crappier centers seem to revel in bringing in various edu wonks as guest speakers and hosting self-congratulatory retreats. The better centers seem to operate as bare bones, brutally functional facilities that provide necessary campus services (e.g. Testing, Tutoring, Disability Accommodations). Those types of centers have real value to professors and students.

I have formed a personal hypothesis that the quality of a Teaching Center is inversely related to the quality of the institution. At my current institution (an open enrollment one), our Teaching Center is actually staffed by willing volunteer professors who are well respected as educators. They don't insult our intelligence by parading around the edu-fad words or edu-acronyms of the year (or worse, years ago), bore us by reading directly off their PowerPoint presentations, or tick us off with busy work projects. We actually send our new professors willingly to our Center.

But at the other three (much higher ranked) universities I've worked at, the faculty looked down on their Teaching Center and viewed the assigned faculty to them as career dead-enders. Not only did faculty shy away from visiting those centers, but new faculty were actively warned away from getting "suckered in". It was amusing in a cemetary humour sort of way.

My suggestions.
1.) Ask other professors want they want. Put out open-response, free form polls. Don't assume (at all) as to what you think professors are wanting professional development with. Actually secure a core subscription of interested people for specific workshops, before even publicly advertising workshops. Let faculty outside the Teaching Center host and run such workshops. Faculty may not respect the professors assigned to a Teaching Center in the same way as they might respect one of "their own" from their academic unit, or a non-Education academic unit. Many interests that professors have for professional development are discipline specific. Tap that maple tree.
2.) House and Operate useful campus facilities. It might be something as basic as having a faculty photocopier room, or a student computer lab. Or even having some general classrooms in the same building. But combining with and/or merging with core support services can be a huge draw. Combine with the Accommodations and Disabilities Office. Host Honors College classes. Stick a sandwich shop on the side of the building. Food access is winning.

Coke machines don't count.

[HomunculusParty]

It's too bad so many people here seem to have had bad experiences with their teaching centers. Ours has been useful to me, especially for a couple of two-day workshops which were entirely voluntary, we were paid bonus cash to attend if we chose to, consisted in large part of faculty panels (rather than edu-wonks talking at us) and hands-on work on classes we were currently prepping, and (perhaps most importantly) advertised themselves as "give us two days, we'll save you many more." And they did! I learned a lot of good new teaching and grading techniques in those chaotic first couple of years.

I will say that now it's taken a turn I don't especially like. It was merged with Academic Technologies, faculty have less of a voice, and instead we get a growing number of edu-wonks trying to tell us that (surprise!) academic technologies are the way to improve as teachers in any way.

So - listen to faculty, get faculty to be the ones talking whenever possible, and... don't do what ours did after the merge, I guess.

[dr_codex]

I go to:

• Everything required for compliance, required for online teaching, or required of all instructors of a particular course. Also, for different reasons, any optional rollouts of new hardware and software.
• Most things faculty led, whatever the field
• Almost no workshops, PR stunts, and policy roll-outs
• No webinars, unless absolutely unavoidable

I also consult one-on-one with our Ed Tech, Student Support people, Writing Center staff, and Instructional Designer. These are the people who can actually help me solve one or more problems, and they are all either directly under our Center, or adjacent administratively.

Upon reflection, what I value in descending order are:
1. People who can trouble-shoot with me.
2. People who show me what they do.
3. People who tell me what I have to do.
4. People who try to persuade me to adopt a pedagogy/system/software/technique.

I am aware that other members of the Faculty are almost exactly the opposite: they want software workshops, not metacritical discussions of specialized topics. My guess is that the faculty may not actually know what they want until it is offered. One of our staff members volunteered to run Excel workshops, and packed the house; our STEM faculty member presented on his own research and only a handful of Humanities folks turned up.

PM me if you want more detail.

dc

[marshwiggle]

It's too bad so many people here seem to have had bad experiences with their teaching centers. Ours has been useful to me, especially for a couple of two-day workshops which were entirely voluntary, we were paid bonus cash to attend if we chose to, consisted in large part of faculty panels (rather than edu-wonks talking at us) and hands-on work on classes we were currently prepping, and (perhaps most importantly) advertised themselves as "give us two days, we'll save you many more." And they did! I learned a lot of good new teaching and grading techniques in those chaotic first couple of years.

My experience is more like this. There are lots of good workshops, open to full-time and part-time faculty, as well as seminars and special events. I've been involved with several of these including being part of panels. No edu-wonks here, and lots of involvement from faculty who really care about teaching.

So it's a valuable resource.

[Morris Zapp]

The best thing our teaching center ever did -- though they stopped doing it awhile ago, I guess due to lack of funding -- was to have an annual "Teaching with Technology SHowcase" (though the actual name was much more horrible).  Basically, if you were doing something unusual and/or fun with technology (either in your online or on campus classes), you could have a 15 minute slot to demonstrate it to the other faculty.  It was held in a large lecture hall, and faculty could wander in and out at will.  THey served lunch.  It went on for about three hours.  It was a great way to see what your colleagues were doing that was new and different, what apps or programs you might want to try with your students, etc.  It was also a nice way for the early adopters to get some recognition.

[artalot]

I do think that you need to make sure that visiting the center doesn't become punishment. Whenever someone would have teaching problems - really poor evals, or concerns in their departmental reviews - they would be required to visit the center. It got a bad rap, and being involved was associated with being a poor teacher.
Ours got cut due to budget concerns (and because no one was using it).

[downer]

Andrea, it's tricky to respond to all these thoughts here, but are you going to report back on how you use the info?

[spork]

I do a lot of SoTL and have connections to a good-sized network of faculty development people who are not tech fetishists. Common obstacles when it comes to teaching/faculty development centers:

• Faculty assume they know how to teach well despite not having had any training in it when they were graduate students. They tend to mirror what they saw their own professors, who in turn mirrored what they saw their professors do. In the 1960s.
• CTLs, etc., are often not regarded as critical to the mission when it comes to budgeting. If budgets need cutting, the CTL is treated as non-essential. This also plays a role in the salaries paid to instructional designers, etc.
• Because of the first two items, CTLs are often short-staffed or lack staff with adequate expertise. If an administrator puts someone in charge of a CTL who doesn't have credentials or experience in the field, that CTL person is not likely to be respected or regarded as useful by faculty.

[marshwiggle]

I do a lot of SoTL and have connections to a good-sized network of faculty development people who are not tech fetishists. Common obstacles when it comes to teaching/faculty development centers:

• Faculty assume they know how to teach well despite not having had any training in it when they were graduate students. They tend to mirror what they saw their own professors, who in turn mirrored what they saw their professors do. In the 1960s.

And in my experience, the ones students complain about the most are often the most convinced of their inherent skill at teaching, whereas the ones the students like best are proactive about going to seminars and using the resources of the CTL.

[writingprof]

• Faculty assume they know how to teach well despite not having had any training in it when they were graduate students. They tend to mirror what they saw their own professors, who in turn mirrored what they saw their professors do. In the 1960s.

Was teaching particularly bad in the 1960s?  At least people knew facts back then.

[marshwiggle]

• Faculty assume they know how to teach well despite not having had any training in it when they were graduate students. They tend to mirror what they saw their own professors, who in turn mirrored what they saw their professors do. In the 1960s.

Was teaching particularly bad in the 1960s?  At least people knew facts back then.

The purpose, especially at university, was a lot different then. When students had vastly less access to the content, then lectures presenting content, and required textbooks, gave students access that they otherwise would not have had. Now with phenomenal amounts of resources available instantly online, instructors aren't needed to provide access, they're needed to provide context for their own students. Simply spewing the material adds virtually no value.

[ciao_yall]

• Faculty assume they know how to teach well despite not having had any training in it when they were graduate students. They tend to mirror what they saw their own professors, who in turn mirrored what they saw their professors do. In the 1960s.

Was teaching particularly bad in the 1960s?  At least people knew facts back then.

The purpose, especially at university, was a lot different then. When students had vastly less access to the content, then lectures presenting content, and required textbooks, gave students access that they otherwise would not have had. Now with phenomenal amounts of resources crazy conspiracy theories and outright lies available instantly online, instructors aren't needed to provide access, they're needed to provide context an accurate framework for evaluating resources for their own students. Simply spewing the material adds virtually no value. That said, spewing never did in the 1960's, either, nor prior. Crazy wasn't invented with the interwebs.

There. FTFY.