In explaining the creation of the Faculty Innovators, that group of faculty trained in consultations and workshops who are sent to various colleges and departments around campus, we emphasized our primary motivation in their raison d’etre was that since faculty would not come to us for professional development, we would go to them. Remember, at our traditional workshops, presentations, and communities (professional learning, creative, and Breakfast and a Book), over a ten-year period, each year we were attracting only 10% of the faculty.

But, we realized, the establishment of the Faculty Innovators was by itself an insufficient solution to the lack of participation problem. Technology offered us another way to bring the development to our faculty. After all, even the busiest of faculty will spend ten minutes watching videos of dogs tobogganing down a ski slope or binge-watching Homeland. In fact, our local cable company with its “on-demand” capability helped provide a model for what we called “PD On Demand.”

Related Reading: How to Select Faculty Innovators

Using Technology to Improve Faculty Relations and Professional Development

Our foray into using technological programming actually began quite differently. For years the administration has been looking for a cost-effective way of training faculty pedagogically. After all, our university’s theme is “Excellence in Teaching Is Job 1.” Every year at New Faculty Orientation, we spent an entire day presenting a workshop on the best practices in teaching for our newbies. Unfortunately, we had groups slipping through the cracks who remained untrained in pedagogy—mid-season hires and part-time faculty. How could we catch those groups?

Several years ago for our Ed.D. program in Educational Leadership, we had helped the College of Education develop a course, EDL 830 College Teaching, which covered the best practices. One solution, then, for those falling through the pedagogical cracks was to enroll them in that course. Unfortunately, the College of Education did not have the personnel to teach that many sections, nor did the University want to defray the tuition cost of enrolling so many people.

Launching MENTOR: Modular Educational Network for Training with Online Resources

Our next solution was MENTOR, the Modular Educational Network for Training with Online Resources. Essentially, we reduced the 16-week, three-hour course to a one-hour interactive module that we placed on our university’s course-management system, Blackboard, and we enrolled all new full-time and part-time instructors at the University. Functioning similarly to those training videos on Title IX that the University requires of everyone, MENTOR even provided a test for the users to complete. Anyone scoring 80% received a downloadable certificate and became part of our permanent record of MENTOR graduates.

Related Reading: 7 Tips for Making the Most of Higher Ed Instructional Videos

Guidelines for Effective Faculty Instructional Videos

MENTOR was just the beginning because it painted pedagogy in broad strokes only. We needed to be able to fill in the gaps. Our unit received permission to hire a Media Producer, and we began to develop videos for what we called the Faculty Innovator Network (FIN). Before even scripting started, we developed some guidelines for effective instructional videos:

1. Brevity: having read John Medina’s Brain Rules (Seattle: Pear Press, 2008), we were very conscious that short attention spans are found in professors as well as students. Therefore, we decided to keep all our videos short and as far under the fifteen-minute attention span as we could. This brevity was also shaped by professor’s schedules; even the busiest instructor can find ten minutes to view something beyond cute, cuddly kittens.
2. Sharp Focus: over the past year, having reviewed conference proposals, submissions for two books in our “It Works for Me” series, and proposals for the Journal of Faculty Development, we have discovered how difficult it is for scholars to focus on their thesis. Our videos would simplify and synthesize the material and center on what Gerry Nosich in Learning to Think Things Through (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2009) calls “fundamental and powerful concepts.”
3. Strong Visuals: In Brain Rules Medina also emphasizes that vision trumps the other senses: “If information is presented orally, people remember about ten percent, tested 72 hours after exposure. That figure goes up to 65% if you add a picture” (234). Therefore, we wanted authentic images that would core their way into instructors’ brains.
4. Interest: anything we shot, we wanted to connect to major professorial interests.

Our first product for the Faculty Innovator Network looked like an MTV video. It ran less than four minutes, focused on the demographics of the typical EKU student, contained actual students, administrators, and alums during homecoming holding up signs during a parade, at a football game, and sitting in our ravine that emphasized such things as “50% of students work part-time.” Underlying the visuals was a catchy tune. Interestingly, we found faculty and students sometimes watched the video just to see who was in it. As former English instructors, we used to constantly talk about the importance of knowing your audience (something Communication also stresses), so we also used the video at New Faculty Orientation both to help our newbies get a sense of our student body and to introduce them to a new pedagogical tool, the Faculty Innovator Network.

Next time we’ll discuss some problems we have had, other videos shot and in progress, and where we hope to go with the FIN.

Author

Charlie Sweet is currently Co-Director of the Teaching & Learning Center (2007+) at Eastern Kentucky University. Before going over to the dark side of administration, for 37 years he taught American Lit and Creative Writing in EKU’s Department of English & Theatre, where he also served as chair (2003-2006). Collabo-writing with Hal Blythe, he has published well over 1000 items, including 15 books; of his 11 books with New Forums. Meet Charlie.

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Week before last we discussed what made the morning of our January progress such a success. After an excellent lunch, we moved onto a two-hour afternoon session. Our lunch served a double-duty purpose. First, we had it catered from the local Panera with plenty of options in sandwiches, salads, and drinks (a full faculty innovator is a productive faculty innovator). Second, while most participants were eating, we sent out one faculty innovator (FI) at a time for a five-minute filmed interview with our Media Producer. Each FI’s answers to such questions as “Why did you want to be an FI?” to “What has been your most rewarding moment as an FI?” were captured by camera to be inserted on the Faculty Innovator website so as to personalize each participant.

Related Reading: An Inside Look at a Faculty Innovator Progress, Part I

Becoming A Faculty Consultant

Our first afternoon session dealt with their most common role, being a faculty consultant. First, we brainstormed what we considered best practices in offering faculty consultations. That list was reduced to what the group considered the five best practices. With those practices as background guidelines, we moved on to four scenarios. The re-paired teams were given a slip of paper with a scenario in which a faculty member came with a problem, and they had to supply their best response. Each team presented how they would handle the problem; afterwards, the other FIs provided some alternate ways of dealing with the situation.

For instance, one team was handed a scenario (written by the Executive Committee) in which an Associate Professor, concerned about class participation, confessed that he called on the most willing to talk, but never had 100% participation. Was 100% a good goal? How do you keep alpha students involved, yet provide an opportunity for others to talk? How do you draw out the painfully shy? How do you handle the unprepared? Should one allow the law school “I pass”? The team’s response, as well as the comments by the other FIs, was checked against our list of best practices. As a result, some best practices were modified by the experience, while other best practices had to be added. What stood out for us was the camaraderie and the compassion displayed.

Related Reading: Faculty Innovators: The Key to the Future of Faculty Development

Observing Faculty Peers

The second hour focused on the best practices for peer observation of teaching. Recently, we have seen an increase in the number of faculty requesting a classroom observation, a three-part process that includes a pre-conference to determine the goals of the observation (e.g., Do I build rapport? Am I organized? Do I overdo the technology), the actual observation, and the follow-up conference. Traditionally, the Teaching & Learning Center (TLC) has handled these observations because the co-directors have been trained and are very experienced, but lately more and more faculty have been in need (the Blythe-Sweet Law of Classroom Observation says that observations arise in direct proportion to promotion and tenure demands), and the TLC has needed help.

To prepare for the session, the FIs were previously provided with a notebook containing (among other things) the observation rubric we use and were asked to read an article placed in the FI Dropbox (a future post will cover how the FIs use technology). Once again, we reviewed/brainstormed the best practices for the process, and we even created a list of taboos. At that point the group was presented some scenarios and asked to come up with possible solutions. This time members worked alone, then presented their ideas to the group. A subsequent discussion refined and increased our best practices. This subject is so important for the campus that we are running a professional learning community on peer observation this spring.

Each section was designed to be facilitated by a different member of the four-person Executive Committee to offer a variety of styles. In practice what happened was that no matter who led, the other three jumped right in.

Related Reading: Behind the Scenes with The Wizards Behind the Faculty Innovators

Disseminating Innovation Throughout the Institution

In the final section we covered successes and failures in disseminating innovation to the deans, colleges, and departments. FIs fessed up to things they could have done better and proudly proclaimed their successes. At the end we were able to synthesize our procedures into things we should do and things we should not do. We also rearranged our spring meetings to be every three weeks (vs. two in the fall) and set up a Doodl poll for best times.

Ultimately, two major things contributed to the success of the progress. First, we had selected excellent FIs, who were not only very good at what they do, but were also superb communicators as well as creative and critical thinkers. Second, we had spent sufficient time in preparation so that we had a three-page, single-space outline that listed even the smallest of details (e.g., how much coffee to order, materials needed, and a who-will-do-what list).

Author

Dr. Russell Carpenter is director of the Noel Studio for Academic Creativity and Program Director of the Minor in Applied Creative Thinking at Eastern Kentucky University. He is also Assistant Professor of English. Dr. Carpenter has published on the topic of creative thinking, among other areas, including two texts by New Forums Press. In addition, he has taught courses in creative thinking in EKU’s Minor in Applied Creative Thinking, which was featured in the New York Times in February 2014. Meet Russell.

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Traditionally, when groups go to a non-work area for a day of training, the event is called a retreat. Since the word retreat carries negative connotations—especially as a military term meaning to fall back—we always describe our one-day workshops as progresses, a noun that always suggests a movement forward, a journey to a goal.

One goal of the Faculty Innovator (FI) Executive Committee (three unit directors plus the FI Coordinator) is to establish professional development sessions. After all, in all the official documents on our website, FIs are referred to as “trained.” The main problem in training our cadre revolves around a suitable time all are free. During the fall semester, we held bi-weekly, one-hour meetings, but these sixty-minute sessions usually concentrated on distributing key information and putting out the fire of the moment rather than actually learning how to accomplish something like a peer observation.

Related Reading: The Great Professional Learning Community Experiment

A comprehensive examination of free six-hour blocks for FIs during the semester obviously concluded such periods did not exist. What we learned is that really only two good training times for such blocks exist: sometime during the summer and in the two-week period after the holiday break and before the start of the spring semester. Unfortunately, we used last summer’s window mostly for an organizational meeting, so our only training came in early January.

Developing The Executive Committee Agenda

Our Executive Committee met twice in early January to set the agenda. The topics were easy to discover; the hard part consisted of creating the proper environment. In a recent episode of the TV show Limitless, the hero, Brian, puts on a training session for his FBI handlers in a way he considers interesting by using a makeshift storyboard with a mobile (as over a baby’s crib). Unimpressed, the female head of the FBI smugly reminds him, “We do have PowerPoint.” The point is that so many training sessions we have attended in the past five years have depended heavily on PowerPoint, and as great believers in “PowerPoint promotes passivity,” we wanted to avoid that technology and give our FIs a fun event that demanded active learning. Not only did a six-hour session demand engagement to keep them there the entire time, but we wanted to reinforce non-passive learning paradigms.

As a result, we came up with the following agenda:

8:45-9:00         Meet, Greet, and Eat (we provided a healthy breakfast)

9:00-9:05         Welcome/Preview of Goals

9:05-10:05       Envisioning the Role of the FI

10:05-10:15     Break

10:15-11:15     15-Minutes to Innovation (short modules for web PD)

11:15-12:00     Lunch and Video Interviews

12:00-1:00       Best Practices for Faculty Consultation

1:00-2:00         Best Practices for Peer Observation of Teaching

2:00-2:10         Break

2:10-2:35         Faculty Development in the College and Department

2:35-3:00         Debrief

Defining Characteristics And Roles of A Faculty Innovator

But, as we noted earlier, the key wasn’t what we did, but how we did it. We started with the FI Coordinator facilitating a group discussion wherein all ten participants brainstormed the characteristics of the ideal FI. As the group called out roles, one of the Executive Committee served as scribe, listing the roles on a flip chart. We then repeated the process with the question: what accomplishments define a good FI candidate? The ten FIs were then grouped into five pairs, who were asked to determine the top three roles of FIs. As in speed-dating, they were re-paired to consider the top three items the campus needs from FIs. Eventually everyone reported out with the items on the flip charts receiving each pair’s votes. The result was a refinement of FI duties.

Listing Critical Pedagogical Strategies

The most popular exercise came after the break. Each person was given a packet of Post-Its, asked to list the five most critical pedagogical strategies (one/Post-It), and encouraged to place the Post-Its on a white board. The Post-Its were then regrouped in columns so that the FIs could tell instantly which Post-Its proved the most popular. The FIs were re-paired and given twenty minutes to create the outline of a video module on the subject and, using materials given them in the middle of the room, were asked to create a low-res prototype that embodied the essence of their module. Each team then, using their prototype, pitched its module. The winner got to write a script for their video that we will actually create this semester and place on our professional development on demand channel, the Faculty Innovator Network.

Next time we’ll go into what else happened to make our progress such a resounding success.

Author

Ph.D Hal Blythe writes literary criticism to mystery stories. In addition to the eleven books he’s published with New Forums, Hal has collaborated on four books on a variety of subjects, over 1000 pieces of fiction/nonfiction, and a host of television scripts and interactive mysteries performed by their repertory company. He is currently co-director of the Teaching and Learning Center for Eastern Kentucky University. Meet Hal Blythe.

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Everything can be innovated—case in point, the Professional Learning Community (PLC).

While we have been using PLCs on campus for the past decade (for more thorough information go to http://tlc.eku.edu/professional-learning-communities), we have always tried to innovate their use. Ten years ago Milton Cox, the godfather of PLCs, came to our campus to put on a workshop that introduced us to the traditional structure of PLCs, something we have written about in the past. What we saw, however, was not a fixed structure (e.g., 8-12 faculty study a subject for an entire semester and develop some enduring product), but an entity that we could repurpose for our various uses.

One semester, for instance, we emphasized large numbers, running approximately twenty PLCs in just the College of Education for everything from curriculum reform to transferring ownership of a state-run journal. In 2009 when the state decreed through Senate Bill 1 that we had to provide a seamless transition of common core standards from K-12 through postsecondary education, we created something we called the embedded PLC wherein we facilitated a core PLC of ten members and then each one of the members facilitated a PLC in his/her respective areas (e.g., math English, natural sciences, teacher preparation).

Launching The Great PLC Experiment       

This semester we tried another tweak—what we called the Great PLC Experiment. For the past decade every PLC we have run has had a minimal lifespan of an entire semester. Some PLCs are so popular that members, not wanting to see a good thing end, decide to continue through the next semester (e.g., flipping the classroom, metacognition, and cultural competency). We have seen the same continuation phenomenon in our Breakfast & a Book Series as our Sheryl Sandberg Lean In group continued for three consecutive semesters.

Like a lot of innovation, the PLC experiment derived from a problem. Last summer Tim, our cultural competency facilitator and Faculty Innovator, came to us with a dilemma. He wanted to continue all the work he had been doing with us, but as he also served as coordinator of the campus African African-American Studies program, he had responsibilities, especially in observation of his program’s instructors, that needed to take place starting in mid-October.

Since every problem begs for a solution, we met with Tim and decided to try something new, what we now call the compressed PLC. Basically, since by our definition a PLC must meet a minimum of eight times, we decided that the cultural competency PLC would hold meetings in each of the first eight weeks of the semester—our version of the new favorite in academic circles, the eight-week course. Having never tried this form of PLC, we knew a lot of risk was involved. Usually, an every-other-week meeting is preferred so that faculty don’t feel overloaded by the add-on that is the PLC. Giving them more time helps ensure that members come to PLC meetings prepared.

The PLC Experiment Results

Well, the semester is now over, and the PLC evaluations are in. While we feared members might complain about not having sufficient time to prepare excellent presentations, they revealed the opposite. Compression meant deeper engagement in the subject. Weekly meetings also reaped another benefit that put the “C” back in PLCs—deeper friendships. Meeting more often seemed to foster a greater sense of togetherness and shared purpose.

Yes, we found a downside. Every PLC needs a product, and in this case we were developing a video repository as well as a book on cultural competency for New Forums Press. Eight weeks of study and presentations, however, left little time to develop the products.

Takeaways from The PLC Experiment

What’s the solution? Continue the PLC for another semester as we have in the past? Unfortunately, that solution puts a lot of pressure on the already overloaded facilitator. We have decided simply to work outside the PLC. Members can get help from Tim or the three of us on their writing and video development.

Had we not also been developing a minor in Applied Creative Thinking (ACT) and writing two books for New Forums—Introduction to Applied Creative Thinking and Teaching Applied Creative Thinking–while implementing a PLC program for campus, we might not have been so innovative. Certainly, our work with ACT led us to look at our successful programs from new perspectives and be open to taking risks where new opportunities presented themselves.

After all, innovation is a frame of mind that can be applied to any number of projects.

Author

Charlie Sweet is currently Co-Director of the Teaching & Learning Center (2007+) at Eastern Kentucky University. Before going over to the dark side of administration, for 37 years he taught American Lit and Creative Writing in EKU’s Department of English & Theatre, where he also served as chair (2003-2006). Collabo-writing with Hal Blythe, he has published well over 1000 items, including 15 books; of his 11 books with New Forums. Meet Charlie.

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For the past few posts, we’ve been discussing Faculty Innovators, those selected faculty members who bring development to the campus. An interesting question involves how they are selected. After all, they don’t fall out of trees.

Remember the 1989 movie Field of Dreams where Kevin Costner hears the whispering, “If you build it, he will come”? Centers of Teaching & Learning (CTLs) have enjoyed a similar phenomenon. If you build a teaching and learning center, faculty will show—too few of them.  However, those few who show up for every event and try to enroll in every professional learning community (PLC) will be dedicated, and it’s from this cream you can find a few good people.

In short, in the beginning, choosing Faculty Innovators is almost a self-selecting process.  A CTL wants to recruit faculty who are passionate about pedagogy, and what better litmus test than participation in CTL events?

Related Reading: Behind the Scenes with The Wizards Behind the Faculty Innovators

Our selection process has two stages. For the first two years of our Faculty Innovator program, stage one, we wanted the absolute best, most interested faculty—that is, we wanted to select those who have been selecting us. We have been building this program on the fly, and we didn’t want to stop to create a selection rubric, nor did we want to have to spend the time in the beginning dealing with faculty who had not shown a previous interest in development.

One way we recruited was to look back through our events for recurring participants. Of course, some faces stood out because we had worked closely with them and had gotten to know them well. Years ago, for instance, we ran a Learning Environment for Academia’s Future (LEAF) program, wherein we brought faculty in during the summer to an experimental classroom and trained them in its technology as well as best pedagogical practices. The next semester we had these LEAF fellows teach a class in this classroom, we observed them several times, and we conferenced with them afterwards. We also met with them at various times during the year as part of a PLC. One of our first choices was a graduate of this program who had actually published an article about LEAF.

Another choice had come to us with an idea for a PLC on cultural competency. With our help he had even developed a book proposal on this subject that was eventually picked up by New Forums. A third selection had not only run PLCs for us on metacognition and deep learning, but was his department’s pedagogical coordinator. Still another ran the Women and Gender Studies program and, since she once had had an office next to us, we had mentored. Another choice had offered to run a PLC for us, while another had not only attended many sessions and facilitated a PLC, but dwelt in a college on the other side of the campus. Years ago another colleague had worked with us on the Quality Enhancement Program as a coach. As she was retiring at the end of this year, she said she would meet with the Innovators and consult with her dean on her replacement, who then joined us this year.

Related Reading: Faculty Innovators: The Key to the Future of Faculty Development

Our plan, then, is not to use a formal selection process for this year and the next. After all, we are still ironing out the creases. In the meantime, the Executive Committee with input from the current FIs is developing a selection rubric for stage two that we ought to be implementing about this time next year. When done, the process will call for interested applicants to apply online, have their applications read by the current FIs, and be chosen by April. Each year during Scholarship Week (held the second week in April), we present the upcoming FIs to the university at large.

So far our embryonic rubric has produced a few standards:

• At least one FI must be from each of the five colleges. Because it is the largest on campus, the College of Arts and Sciences needs two Faculty Innovators.
• Applicants who have volunteered to facilitate PLCs or present workshops and have demonstrated excellence will be given preference.
• Preference will be accorded those with pedagogical experience—e.g., teaching such a course, serving as departmental pedagogy coordinator, or attending/presenting at pedagogical conferences like the Lilly or our own Pedagogicon.
• Preference will be given to applicants who have won departmental, college, university, or even state/national awards for teaching.

In short, we’re looking for leaders, alphas, people with initiative.

If you’re interested in our public website on the Faculty Innovators program, check out http://studio.eku.edu/facultyinnovators.

Author

Dr. Russell Carpenter is director of the Noel Studio for Academic Creativity and Program Director of the Minor in Applied Creative Thinking at Eastern Kentucky University. He is also Assistant Professor of English. Dr. Carpenter has published on the topic of creative thinking, among other areas, including two texts by New Forums Press. In addition, he has taught courses in creative thinking in EKU’s Minor in Applied Creative Thinking, which was featured in the New York Times in February 2014. Meet Russell.

 

 

 

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Just as Oz couldn’t function without the wizard behind the scenes, so our Faculty Innovators program—discussed in the previous post—could not operate without the guidance of an Executive Committee (EC). As mentioned before, we have a three-person EC, consisting of the director of the Noel Studio and the two co-directors of the Teaching & Learning Center.

The key to the EC is contained in another previous post called “Tuesday Morning” (where interestingly we refer to how “we had to prepare a final draft for a program we call Faculty Innovators”); here, we detailed how for the past four years the three of us have set up a regular meeting. To recapitulate, we hold a weekly meeting (Tuesdays) at the same time (now 8:00-9:30 as we have to adjust for semester schedules) with an agenda that each of us has constructed during the week (Charlie, for instance, keeps a note pad on his desk where he jots down ideas during the week that need a group discussion, while Rusty prefers to record his items on his Mac). While not all of our conversation revolves around the Faculty Innovators program, we have noticed that in this the first semester of its actuality, 25% of our Tuesday meetings are devoted to operating this program. What do we discuss?

Related Reading: Faculty Innovators: The Key to the Future of Faculty Development

Vision. The entire Faculty Innovator program was born of a brainstorming session, so it is quite appropriate that we continue elaborating on that vision. Right now, for instance, Tuesday’s EC meetings have focused on what documents do we need both for the perpetuation of the FI program and for administrators such as deans and our Provost to be able to obtain. A few weeks ago we created job descriptions for the Faculty Innovators and the FI Coordinator, placing both on our FI website (the subject of an upcoming post). Why, you ask, didn’t we start the entire program with such descriptions? We did, but we since so much of this program is a “learn by going where you have to go” process, we have constantly updated our descriptions from last spring with new details as the actualities of the job unfold.

Assessment. As the semester nears its end, we need evidence of our program’s effect upon the faculty. Along the way, we have collected necessities such as attendance records and actual consultations performed as well as inventing certificates to hand out to faculty for their professional development records. A while ago we developed an assessment form that is sent to each PLC participants. All this data tell us we need to continue to design and implement faculty development—programming representative of the teaching and learning on campus and where we would like to go in the future with pedagogy, collaboration, and technology, for example.

Retreat. In early January before the spring semester begins, we need everyone to come together. Our main job will be to analyze the data so as to send a report to our superiors. Having all the FIs present ensures their data is available, and we have many points of view to brainstorm our conclusions. Specifically, as with every FI meeting, we will use Google documents to write and record our conversation. We also have to train the group periodically. This January, for instance, we will be starting classroom observation strategies.

Teaching & Learning Innovations Series. Every semester we post on multiple sites our schedule of workshops and other events. Some of these events are generated in our bi-weekly FI meetings that we plan with the FI Coordinator, but the bulk of them come from the three of us. We present them at the next FI meeting and allow for elaboration, the choosing of a date for the workshop, a blurb about it, and the choice of a facilitator. We also try to align these workshops with our so-called milestone events (discussed in a previous post)—New Faculty Orientation, the Provost’s Speaker Series, Scholarship Week, and Pedagogicon 2016.

Delivery Platform. At the moment, because of our “learn by going where we have to go” process, we do not have a single platform to serve as a repository of everything we do. The FIs do have a website, but right now it’s most for internal use of the FIs, not the faculty. We have a You Tube channel with at the moment only three videos. We also have a proprietary website on BlackBoard called MENTOR that allows us to deliver our modular training (all new and part-time faculty, for instance, are given access to our one-hour module on College Teaching, which they must complete before the end of the fall semester—something else that becomes part of our assessment. What we need, however, is one, simplified platform for all faculty. For that, the Provost has convened a cross-campus committee to investigate what can and should be done. Rusty convenes that committee, so whatever we discuss on Tuesdays, we know is brought to the committee.

Writing. The entire Faculty Innovator experience is the subject of a book we’re writing. Guess who the editors and chief writers are?

Day-to-Day Matters. Somebody has to go to each PLC facilitator to find out what resources are needed—books, food, research. Somebody has to oversee whether the PLCs and workshops actually meet and whether records of these events are turned in. Somebody has to preview these books as to cost and appropriateness. Somebody has to keep track of the budget and how we are progressing with allotted funds throughout the year. We also facilitate a Creative Community (CC)–which meeting bi-weekly through the fall, winter, spring and summer terms–has evolved into fiction writers actually writing and publishing books—somebody has to figure out how to evaluate that CC. In all cases that “somebody” is the Executive Committee.

Author

Ph.D Hal Blythe writes literary criticism to mystery stories. In addition to the eleven books he’s published with New Forums, Hal has collaborated on four books on a variety of subjects, over 1000 pieces of fiction/nonfiction, and a host of television scripts and interactive mysteries performed by their repertory company. He is currently co-director of the Teaching and Learning Center for Eastern Kentucky University. Meet Hal Blythe.

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Anyone who has been in faculty development for a while knows its main problem: the very clientele Centers for Teaching & Learning (CTLs) are charged with developing do not attend the events put on for them. Here, we have tried different times of the day for presentations and workshops, different locations, bribes (food usually; books sometimes), various formats, assorted presenters, and even asking the Provost to make some Professional Development (PD) mandatory, but nothing seems to gain traction for long.

Unfortunately, our CTL’s experience is not isolated. Nationally, CTL programs seem stuck with about a 10% saturation rate—i.e., 90% of the faculty remain untouched by efforts to develop them professionally. The reasons given often revolve around increased faculty responsibilities and concomitant loss of time. The rise of technology has, among other things, created a cohort of online teachers who may never set foot on campus. Whatever the suggestions, the “if you build it, they will come” mentality has proven to be ineffective in dealing with the new realities of PD.

We have developed a couple of solutions to deal with the attendance problem that we’ll be covering in the next few weeks. Simply put, we decided that if they won’t come to us, we’ll go to them, and the lynchpin of our grand idea is the Faculty Innovator (FI).

What Are Faculty Innovators?

The Faculty Innovator Program went from an idea to an implemented experiment in less than six months. We started putting the idea into practice long before the entire initiative was fleshed out and thus is an example of the applied creative thinking strategy we refer to as nascent programming. Nascent programming represents extreme risk-taking, of going with a beta program or prototype before all the kinks are worked out. Nascent programming assumes that the risk of failure is outweighed by the possibility of success, that the potential for doing something looms larger than not doing it, and that even in failing we gain valuable insights.

Our Faculty Innovators Program consists of a cadre of selected faculty members with expertise in teaching, learning strategies, classroom techniques, up-to-date technologies, and a strong desire to share that expertise with other faculty. In the spring of this year, a full six months before the start of the fall semester, we chose seven faculty members with at least one from each of the five colleges at our institution. Since then the Dean of Libraries has supported an eighth innovator, the online administration is considering supporting another, and we have asked the Deans’ Council for three more.

Our intent in choosing them so far in advance of the fall semester was that we would be able to train them in preparation of fall duties. We set up an organizational scheme whereby an Executive Committee consisting of the directors of the Noel Studio (Rusty) and the co-directors of the Teaching and Learning Center (Hal and Charlie) served as facilitators of a professional learning community (see our previous posts). The Committee created all the original documents that explained the Faculty Innovators to our overseers, the Deans’ Council—the overview of the Faculty Innovators Program, the job description of a Faculty Innovator, an even the Faculty Innovator Coordinator (one FI is chosen each year to serve as a liaison between the Executive Committee and the Innovators, and to be in charge of such things as setting up meetings). During the summer and at the beginning of the fall semester, the Executive Committee facilitated bi-weekly meetings of the PLC, a job we then turned over to the FI Coordinator.

What Do the Faculty Innovators Do?

In our job description of Faculty Innovators, we suggested some minimal requirements and tasks that all should be able to perform:

• Attend regular meetings and professional development sessions.
• Provide one presentation/year as part of our Teaching & Learning Initiative.
• Facilitate one PLC (i.e., PLC, Breakfast & a Book, Creative Community/year, including keeping records of such things as attendance, who presents what.
• Work at our August orientations (i.e., full-time faculty, part-time faculty, first-year course instructors, and teaching assistants), including introducing oneself and the FI program at the initial College meeting of the year.
• Provide individual class observations.
• Offer specialized workshops for colleges, departments, and programs.
• Maintain a record of all activities.
• Help with each end-of-the-semester assessment.
• Help train the incoming class of FIs.
• Work in the new Faculty Innovator Training Studio.

Sound interesting? Next time we’ll continue with the Faculty Innovator Program, detailing the specifics of budget, how FIs are selected, maneuvering in the political climate, and some tips on success.

Author

Charlie Sweet is currently Co-Director of the Teaching & Learning Center (2007+) at Eastern Kentucky University. Before going over to the dark side of administration, for 37 years he taught American Lit and Creative Writing in EKU’s Department of English & Theatre, where he also served as chair (2003-2006). Collabo-writing with Hal Blythe, he has published well over 1000 items, including 15 books; of his 11 books with New Forums. Meet Charlie.

 

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In Learning To Think Things Through (2005), Gerry Nosich claims that every course needs a focus, what he calls “the central question . . . It is the unifying question, and everything in the course fits into that question” (111). In every literature course we teach, for instance, we have two central questions that we choose to formulate in the form of declarative sentences:

• Art reflects the culture that produces it.
• What differentiates art from nature is art has unity, and in literature every element—plot, character, setting, method of narration, and imagery—contributes to that unity or it doesn’t belong.

Using Values and Themes to Unify Faculty Development

Faculty development programming, likewise, needs a central concern—be it a question or declaration—around which it revolves. Why? Research demonstrates that isolated one-shot presentations have little effect on the faculty. In actuality–as we pointed out in “What Services Should a Center of Teaching and Learning (CTL) Offer?”–we divide all our CTL efforts into three types of programming—orientations, informational roundtables, and pedagogical workshops. With the exception of informational roundtables (e.g., how the counselling center works, what you need to know about disabilities and accommodations), the rest of our programming follows a unified approach. Just as iteration reinforces central concerns in courses, so that principle applies to CTLs.

How do we achieve this unity? Every CTL needs both guiding values and annual themes. Our guiding value is encapsulated in our motto “Helping Teachers Help Students Learn Deeply,” which aligns well with our unit’s (the Noel Studio) chief objective, deep student learning. This year’s major theme at the University as initiated by our provost is metacognition, so we have developed workshops and professional learning communities around that subject.

Related Reading: What Services Should a Center of Teaching and Learning Offer?

Setting Milestone Events for Faculty Programming

The chief way we create a unified program is through a series of milestone events—i.e., major programming. Milestone events are held each year and spaced out through two semesters. Faculty members rely on their existence and plan their annual professional development programs around these events. We embed the major theme in all these events. Each year we start out with four milestone events, aiming to run two per semester:

1. Orientations (i.e., New Faculty, Part-Time, First-Year Courses Instructors, and Teaching Assistants): held in August before the actual start of the fall semester, these workshops introduce new instructors to the basics of becoming a successful professor.
2. Provost’s Speaker Series (e.g., metacognition this year, significant learning experiences last year): chosen by the provost with consultation from our unit, this event brings in a nationally known expert to address the faculty (and occasionally students) through a lecture/workshop.
3. Scholarship Week: held in April, this week-long event celebrates and showcases both faculty and student scholarship with displays, speakers, and workshops.
4. Pedagogicon: held every May, this pedagogical conference started a few years ago as the Kentucky Pedagogicon, but is now increasing its participation range. This year’s theme is “Exploring High-Impact Educational Practices Using Scholarly and Creative Teaching.”

Other Events Developing Our Unified Themes

Not all faculty members are new, so attending even three events does not provide sufficient pedagogical development. Throughout the year, we also offer other ways to reinforce the academic year’s fundamental and powerful concepts, some of which we have discussed in prior blogs: classroom observations, individual consultations, workshops, and communities–i.e., professional learning communities, Breakfast and a Books, creative communities.

Related Reading: Focused Faculty Groups: Breakfast and a Book

In addition, we have this year implemented two experimental programs that we will explain in future blogs. Essentially, these new initiatives stem from the recognition that today’s faculty differ from that of even a decade ago. These newly minted profs consider teaching a 9-5 job, revere technology, and are more likely than not teaching one or more online classes. As a result, they expect training to come to them.

The Faculty Innovators initiative is an approach whereby the most effective faculty are selected, trained, and then sent back to the colleges, departments, and programs to put on workshops and provide consultations.

The Faculty Innovator Network is basically a technological resource, offering videos on important topics (e.g., student demographics at our university, how to get started publishing, an intro to metacognition).

But the key to every activity we sponsor, provide, and support is unity—somehow each one aims at transforming our students into deep learners.

Author

Dr. Russell Carpenter is director of the Noel Studio for Academic Creativity and Program Director of the Minor in Applied Creative Thinking at Eastern Kentucky University. He is also Assistant Professor of English. Dr. Carpenter has published on the topic of creative thinking, among other areas, including two texts by New Forums Press. In addition, he has taught courses in creative thinking in EKU’s Minor in Applied Creative Thinking, which was featured in the New York Times in February 2014. Meet Russell.

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A few years ago a group of faculty came to us, and because we had taught creative writing for years, they asked us to facilitate a fiction-writing group. No, fiction wasn’t something they could claim on their promotion and tenure documents, but it was something they had always wanted to try (why didn’t they try enrolling in our novel-writing class, we wondered). We had never done such a community, but since it sounded creative, we agreed.

Just this week that group published its third collabo-written novel.

Defining The Three Types of Faculty Development Communities

Recently, we have been examining the two major types of faculty groups sponsored by Centers of Teaching and Learning (CTLs), the Breakfast and a Book (B&B) and the Professional Learning Community (PLC).

Our novel-writing group represents a third type we simply call the Creative Community. The Creative Community (CC) is called into being usually by a narrow, single task rather than a desire to study a subject broadly. Unlike the B&B, it focuses on a product, not discussion. And while a PLC studies the background research both on the topic and areas surrounding it (e.g., metacognition), the Creative Community has little concern with the “big picture.” Actually, a Creative Community seems more like an academic workgroup, an ad hoc unit designed for a specific project. Workgroups, however, are usually constituted to solve an institutional problem that cuts across the disciplines (e.g., a strategic plan, a diversity initiative). The Creative Community is essentially a writing group producing a specific document (e.g., an academic article or a piece of fiction).

Related Reading: Introduction to Applied Creative Thinking

Years ago, for instance, we ran a PLC designed to introduce assessment to the University. Along the way, we invited Peggy Maki, an assessment expert to campus, Peggy Maki, to facilitate a week of workshops. In one of her sessions, she happened to mention she was editing a collection of essays on how universities were responding to the call for assessment. A subgroup of six of us in the assessment PLC started talking with her, wondering if she would like an article about this university’s attempts to develop and assessment strategy. When she invited us to participate, we decided we had to meet more frequently than our PLC had been. We divided up the writing into various sections, came together weekly (the assessment PLC met bi-weekly), and produced a chapter for Maki’s Coming to Terms with Student Outcomes Assessment (2010), “From Bereavement to Assessment: The Transformation of a Regional Comprehensive University.”

How to Develop A Creative Community

The Creative Community can be formed by any department, but because it often necessitates skills from differing disciplines, its organization is often best facilitated by a CTL. When we wrote on assessment, we asked two faculty members who weren’t in our original PLC to join us because we needed their specialties. One member, for instance, was the head of Institutional Effectiveness at the University, while another had just done an assessment study for the College of Education.

In another instance, the dean of the College of Education came to us because his unit had been given a state grant to facilitate a newly-passed state law, Senate Bill 1, that mandated a seamless transition of Common Core between K-12 and postsecondary institutions. The dean asked how we would organize such a cross-campus effort. We picked two faculty members with whom we had worked in the past, and after several meetings we came up with a working document and methodology that, interestingly, involved our creating a series of interlocking PLCs.

Related Reading: Teaching Applied Creative Thinking

Problems A Creative Community Solves

Creative Communities, then, can be employed to solve immediate problems. Our Common Core CC led to the formation of another group, our assessment CC basically executed a one-shot article, while our creative writing CC has been on-going for the past four years. That community began as a way of evaluating each other’s fiction (e.g., a mystery short story that someone wanted to submit to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine) and transformed itself into the whole group working on a single project.

Basically, the success of the CC has encouraged us to beget several more. We encouraged a member of the College of Justice and Safety to work with a faculty member from psychology—yes, we would consider a two-person team a CC. For New Forums, we started a three-person team to write the Introduction to Applied Creative Thinking (2012) and a four-person team to write both Teaching Applied Creative Thinking (2013) and Achieving Excellence in Teaching (2014).

Three types of communities exist out there—try them.

Author

Ph.D Hal Blythe writes literary criticism to mystery stories. In addition to the eleven books he’s published with New Forums, Hal has collaborated on four books on a variety of subjects, over 1000 pieces of fiction/nonfiction, and a host of television scripts and interactive mysteries performed by their repertory company. He is currently co-director of the Teaching and Learning Center for Eastern Kentucky University. Meet Hal Blythe.

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