December 11-12, 2008

Mission

The Center for Teaching and Learning assists faculty by promoting teaching and learning excellence, supporting the integration of learning technologies, and encouraging scholarly teaching. The Center supports the University's mission of teaching, research, and service to the greater Charlotte metropolitan region and beyond.

Vision

We are nationally recognized as a role model for teaching and learning centers.

• We are an integral part of the success of the University.
• We are leaders in the innovative use of scholarly research in teaching and learning.
• We define best practices in professional development that ensure quality course design through the effective integration of technology.
• We are an unwavering advocate of a diverse, open learning environment which fosters active collaboration among all members of the Academy.

Goals for the Retreat

• Plan programs, workshops, and services using faculty needs assessment data and issues identified during data collection by:
  • Identifying opportunities
  • Addressing barriers
  • Recommending major training and faculty development strategies for 2009
• Build a sense of teamwork, shared responsibility, and mutual respect
• Create a shared vision
• Review and assess progress toward goals and objectives in strategic plan
• Revise strategic plan as needed

Day One: Program Planning

Presentation of Data

• Campus-wide Faculty Needs Assessment Survey (Dr. Garvey Pyke)
  • 200 respondents / 23% of faculty
  • Confidence interval approx. ±3 to ±6
  • Average completion time = 11 minutes, 40 seconds
• CTL Advisory Committee Focus Group (Lorraine Stanton)
  • 4 faculty attended
  • Face-to-face data (F2F) collection
• Faculty Interviews (Dr. Jaesoon An)
  • 23 faculty participants
  • Phone interviews and F2F

Data Analysis/ Major Findings

1. Faculty want short, relevant training
2. Campus community not aware of CTL and services
3. Faculty want instructional workshops
4. Majority of faculty do not have formal training
5. Faculty want more discussion based workshops
6. We need to define "Active Learning" (what do we mean, what do faculty mean?)
7. Low attendance at workshops (are workshop titles clear/descriptive?)
8. Awareness of multiple technology tools
9. Faculty prefer levels of training, i.e. beginner-advanced

Implications of Data/Action Items for Center

1. Implement best practices in workshops and model effective teaching practices
2. Engage users before and after workshop (pre/post activities, questions, surveys/reflection)
3. Get on same page with terminology (workshop structure, content/subject matter, clear/descriptive workshop titles)
4. Additional marketing (campus wide-faculty, staff, students, etc…)
   • More email updates (i.e., weekly workshop schedule)
   • UNCC Homepage Presence (high level presence)
   • Attend departmental/college meetings to encourage collaboration
   • Develop and maintain innovative CTL web resources as major strategy (for support, news, feedback, collaboration)
5. Include staff bios on workshop page (or link to staff biography)
6. Partner with faculty to teach workshops
7. Build on feedback to ask next level of questions (additional survey data)
8. Provide faculty with meaningful incentives for partnering and attending in workshops (recruiting)
9. Make more of a concerted effort to understand user support requests and analyze data

Conclusions/Summary from Data

1. Faculty want to know how to use tools to enhance teaching
2. Increase CTL awareness on Campus
3. Encourage faculty incentives via recognition, partnerships, stipends
4. Develop and market powerful workshops focused on "Active Learning"
5. Increase workshop attendance with clearly defined/articulated descriptions of content and structure

Survey Results /Workshops Selected by Faculty

("Adjusted" column is the percentage of potential attendees, i.e., removed # of people didn't answer any)

Assessment & Evaluation of CTL 2008-2010 Strategic Plan

Major Findings

The Strategic Plan is still relevant and reliable, but it needs periodic revisiting in order to:

• Keep Center services on target by staying present and cognizant of the Strategic Plan and to see where the gaps are
• Revise/update to reflect changes in the Center/services/faculty needs

Recommendations/Action Items

1. Provide new types of professional development opportunities
   • Online tutorials/multimedia tutorials
   • Brownbags/roundtables
   • SIGs/user groups
   • Expand and formalize SOTL
2. Increase collaboration with faculty
   • Integrate faculty input into course design and prioritizing
   • Identify opportunities to work with faculty to improve all points (showcase it)
   • Identification of workshop categories, teaching strategies
   • Faculty ownership
   • Determine best way to communicate best practices research and findings to faculty
3. Create process for workshop creation
   • User centered approach
   • Front-end analysis/pre-assessment of workshops
   • Design team-formation
   • Role of instructional design/workflow process/operational Model
4. Focus more on faculty identified topics
   • Constructive/active learning
   • Effective lecturing
   • Facilitating discussion
   • Problem-based learning
   • Anti-plagiarism tools/cheating
   • Project-based learning
   • Collaborative Learning
   • Capture and using video
   • Critical thinking
   • Gathering and using student feedback
   • Online teaching and learning - pedagogy
   • Engaging large classes

Specific Revisions Needed on Strategic Plan

While CTL staff indentified many areas of progress and also examined areas of growth (above), we also saw three places where the plan needs minor changes:

• Section 3f: change "DE" to "depts./colleges"
• Section 6d: maybe add feedback/support logs/summative evaluation
• Section 6e: needs to be updated

Synthesis Team Report/ Summary of Day One

The synthesis team summarized and also captured the discussion items and ideas that were not necessarily accounted for in the data analysis above.

1. Workshop categories
   • Instructional-based methods (how to teach)
   • Assessment-based Strategies (how to assess)
   • Instructional design (goals/objectives-instruction-assessment)
2. Design /format of workshops
   • Level-based offerings (beginner-advanced)
   • Workshop length
   • Type/format (discussion, lecture, online, face-to-face, downloadable, etc.)
   • Integrate e-learning and instructional categories
   • Active learning
3. Strategies to develop workshop categories
   • Incorporate learner needs in faculty sessions
   • Peer-to-Peer (Best Practice Showcases)
   • Tip sheets
   • Model best practices in our offerings (Active learning)
4. Other Recommendations
   • Image
   • Marketing
   • Planning/Communication/Scheduling (being proactive)
   • Faculty incentives for partnerships

Day Two: Building a Shared Vision

Moving from Vision to Action

Building on Strengths

• Collegial
• Dedicated
• Diversity of knowledge, skills, and attributes
• Forward thinking
• Collaborative
• Influential
• Flexible
• Humorous

Finding New Opportunities

• More collaboration with faculty
  • Create templates, active learning strategies
  • Organize user groups/SIGs
  • Encourage SOTL
  • Create linkages between colleges and departments and individual faculty
  • Customize services for departments and colleges
• Create self-paced, self-directed materials (PDFs, manuals, videos, links) allow focus on integration of new information into their own classes
• Integrate teaching and learning strategies/pedagogy with technology
• More collaboration between CTL teams and people
• Increase our presence on campus by raising awareness and interest
  • at college/dept meetings
  • marketing, showcasing faculty
  • innovative design of web resources
• Faculty want advice on how to tie our offerings into their courses - less tools, more integration
• More peer-to-peer collaboration in all professional development formats
• Seek grant opportunities

Recognizing and Overcoming Barriers

• Barriers
  • Faculty time
  • Many topics require a tiered approach (from awareness level through mastery)
  • Faculty awareness of our services
  • Resources (budget, personnel, etc…)
  • Ability to gain community buy-in (faculty, staff, IT)
  • Communication (large group, small group, disconnect)
  • Data analysis and reflection not a priority (deeper look at data, strategies)
  • Inherent flaws in technology
• Reducing Barriers
  • Open forum for information sharing
  • Multi-level communication strategies (deans, department heads, faculty)
  • Research based arguments and practical facts
  • Grant money

Recommendations for Major Faculty Development Strategies for 2009

New Offerings

• Building community in online environment
• Active Learning
• Academic integrity tracks
• Evaluating student performance
• What is active and online learning strategies
• Classroom management for engaging large classes
• Critical thinking to bridging real world application (problem-based learning)
• Learning Styles
• Teaching Styles
• Personality Types
• Effective uses of video to meet classroom objective
• Effective Online Teaching
• Using technology to address ESL, students w/disabilities, learning styles, etc.
• Student peer review
• Classroom observations and feedback

Strategies for Designing & Developing of Workshops

• Describe each workshop in terms of teaching & learning strategies and outcomes
• Design/deliver workshops in terms of teaching & learning outcomes
• Delete workshops with low value (evaluate impact to teaching)
• Break longer workshops into series (e.g., Quality Matters)
• Design workshops to be social/collaborative
• Identify topics that are instructor-led versus self-directed
• Base workshops on standards, best practices
• Evaluate current resources
• Use a collaborative team approach
• Create a systematic, user-centered process in-house that all can follow

Strategies for Workshop Adoption

• CTL, faculty can propose new offerings based on needs as found in data, feedback, state policies, suggestions, requirements
• Data sources
  1. bi-annual needs assessment
  2. outreach (polling on CTL site, attend college/dept meetings)
  3. workshop evaluations
  4. advisory groups (CTL, eLat, User Services, ITS, etc…)
  5. change our workshop evaluations to ask for suggestions for topics
  6. R&D new/emerging technologies
• Use staff retreat for planning
• Approved/vetted by Valorie, Faculty Advisory Committee
• Needs to be a simple process, not cumbersome, not a barrier or taking long
  1. Adopt a formal submission process (title, audience, objectives, descriptions, instructional purpose)
  2. Adopt a formal review process (maybe rolling panel, faculty advisement council)
  3. Adopt a prioritization process based on needs, data, resources, and interests (Valorie, panel)

Strategies for Workshop Delivery

• Develop weekly/monthly Series (instructional & technology infused design)
• Create monthly series of items that build upon a common theme (e.g., Week 1 - Developing test items; Week 2 - Blackboard/Moodle test items; Week 3 - Improving test items)
• Explore certification programs/strategies
• Use tiered approach as needed; identify levels - Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
• Increase use of faculty consultations, develop downloadable tip sheets, online tutorials, video/flash modules based on current "tool level" workshop
• Offer beginner workshops early in semester; create tracks (beginner-intermediate-advanced)

Tiered Approach to Workshops - Examples

1. Technology Workshop Layout
   • Tier 1 - Downloadable handouts/activities such as Intro to clickers, smart podium, second life, Blackboard/Moodle, Centra
   • Tier 2 "How-to" (Hands-on)
   • Tier 3 - Best Practices, faculty demonstrations
2. Instructional Workshop Layout - example
   • Tier 1 - Principles of Assessment (F2F)
   • Tier 2 - Developing Objective Test Items
   • Tier 3 - Individual Test Development & Faculty Consultation/Follow-up
   • Tier 4 - Test data analysis

Matching Workshop Topics to Different Formats - Examples

Aligning Workshop Topics and Formats to Experience Levels - Examples

Summary Recommendations/Next Steps

During the annual retreat, CTL critically reviewed faculty needs assessment data as well as impacts resulting from our strategic plan. As a result, we agreed upon new strategies for enhancing effectiveness, increasing productivity and better supporting the teaching and learning needs of faculty. The following are major action items we plan to implement for 2009:

1. Develop a formal process for identifying, developing and prioritizing new workshop offerings.
2. Focus workshops and programs on teaching and learning goals while recommending technology tools to enhance pedagogy, classroom management, and efficiency.
3. Review organizational structure to ensure optimal delivery of programs and services.
4. Restructure existing workshops/programs according to skill levels (beginner-advanced).
5. Increase use of multimedia tutorials and online resources for introductory workshops.
6. Increase use of faculty partners in customizing and teaching workshops.
7. Position CTL resources to support the increased development of online degree programs.
8. Increase awareness of CTL and its programs, services, and workshops.