Instructional Development for Everyone: Five (Fairly) Easy Steps to Amplify Impact and Inclusivity

Traditional faculty development often relies on the dependable models of synchronous workshops, teaching observations, and longitudinal programs such as faculty learning communities. Many faculty rely on and expect these opportunities, particularly as faculty support services have become ubiquitous across higher education institutions.

For centralized instructional support units, however, meeting the needs of instructors with highly diverse schedules, interests, availability, and geographic locations poses a substantive challenge. Demands on faculty—regardless of title or position in their career—continue to increase,¹ and instructional support units are charged with finding more creative and effective means of meeting the needs of faculty across the institution. At the University of Florida's Center for Instructional Technology and Training, this meant "untethering" our workshops from traditional approaches to provide more access to a broader audience.² Traditional models continue to reach a large audience and are well covered by UF's Center for Teaching Excellence (though they are also exploring creative models). Trying something new, we shifted from synchronous to asynchronous, and from in-person to online. Initial response indicated that we were moving in the right direction.

As we continue to examine and experiment with methods to support faculty, untethering models from traditional approaches in exchange for more flexible models might meet the needs of a broader and more diverse range of constituents, supporting efforts to become more learner-centered and inclusive.³

Five (Fairly) Easy Steps

Our process was straightforward and effective; at every step, we asked ourselves, "Does this remove barriers? Does this untether development from previous limitations to access?"

Analyze

• Evaluate your current workshops. Do your current offerings meet the needs of your constituents, indicated by consistent enrollment, high completion rates, frequent requests, or positive participant feedback?
• Evaluate your reach. Do you consistently reach the same folks? Would you also like to reach faculty at different points in their careers or in different departments? Would you like to include support staff, graduate or teaching assistants, postdoctoral scholars, or others at or beyond your institution?
• Evaluate your current and future capacity. Do you have some room to expand your offerings? Are you already over-committed? Would any workshops be easy to retire (indicated by low attendance or infrequent requests) or transition to a different format?
• In light of the first three items, evaluate your growth potential. Are there content area or topical gaps in your offerings? Have any hot topics arisen on your campus recently?

Design

• Organize, strategize, and set goals. What are your goals? Are all of your content ideas related? What can you reasonably accomplish in your time frame, and who will do the work? How rigorous do you want your workshops to be?
• Map your ideas, create an assessment strategy, and ensure alignment. Define topics, outcomes, and objectives. Map your ideas to determine whether you want to aim for depth or breadth and whether you're aiming for a single workshop or a series; mapping also helps ensure alignment between outcomes and assessments. Develop an assessment strategy that includes knowledge checks and application for authentic learning.
• Determine delivery method(s). Are all of your workshops in one delivery format? Would diversifying delivery models reach more people and help you untether? Do you lack any required resources?
• Collaborate! Are there units on campus that might participate? Are there offices with folks who might serve as consultants, practitioner profiles, subject-matter experts, or guest voices?
• Validate! How will participants receive recognition and support for completing workshops? What credentials (e.g., digital badges, certificates) can help faculty illustrate and promote the value of this work?

Develop

• Create. Assign design and development tasks and deadlines. Gather resources, create content, and develop assessments.
• Review and revise. Seek feedback from colleagues, run pilots, use an iterative development process, and do quality assurance reviews often.
• Advertise. Collaborate with your marketing and communications staff to advertise your offerings through as many channels as possible.

Implement

• Deliver with a critical perspective. Consider what is successful and what could use some work. Consider whether other models might work better, and keep an eye on participant enrollment, engagement, and completion.
• Facilitate thoughtfully. Reflect on your experience. Does it take about the same amount of time that you expected? Do you engage successfully with participants? Are you providing meaningful feedback to participants on their work?

Evaluate

• Review participant performance. Does performance on assessments reflect the outcomes you established? Do you see opportunities for participants to apply what they've learned?
• Feedback is a gift. Seek feedback from participants. What does it tell you? Do the perceived rigor, engagement, and performance match your goals and expectations?
• Evaluate your new offerings. Are your new workshops or other resources achieving the goals you set? Are attendance and completion rates meeting your expectations?
• Revise. Revision is critical. Develop a revision cycle that encourages refreshing and updating content to align with feedback and new research.

Instructional designers will have noted that these steps also define the ADDIE model, a popular approach for course design and development. We found that it works well for a program of professional study as well. It has been a useful tool in considering how to develop "different learning pathways that empower more academics to grow in tune with their own rhythm,"⁴ providing a variety of topics, time frames, and methods of engagement from a menu of opportunities. Partnering with our institution's Center for Teaching Excellence has broadened that menu even further, amplifying the reach of support models across organizational units, leveraging the expertise and resources available to untether, evolve, and better meet needs across the institution.

Developing for Inclusivity

As we reimagined our approach, we sought to evolve our practice to be increasingly equitable and inclusive, inviting not just faculty but also educators in all roles (teaching assistants, graduate assistants, staff, and administrators) and in all locations (from campus to extension offices across the state and anywhere in the world with sufficient bandwidth) to engage in our programs and services. Untethering programs and offerings allowed greater flexibility in scheduling and participation and has fostered connections and community-building in ways previously not possible.

Learner-Centered Instructional Development

We used this framework to restructure our approach to instructional development in an effort to more fully meet the needs of educators across and beyond the institution. Though many of our clients arrive seeking full instructional design support, many more are in search of institutionally available instructional resources and support to help them learn about course design basics, online course development, strategies for teaching online, and teaching with technology.

Although face-to-face and synchronous web-enabled workshops and trainings were available, many clients articulated difficulty in attending those offerings. "Meeting faculty where they are"⁵ took on a new meaning. We needed to meet them not only with the content, resources, and services they needed but also with the modalities for service delivery, relevant subjects from content experts, and authentic and applied learning opportunities immediately relevant to their instructional work.

Notes

1. Miguel A. Padilla, Julia N. Thompson, "Burning Out Faculty at Doctoral Research Universities," Stress and Health 32, no. 5 (2016): 551–58. ↩
2. Michelle Pacansky-Brock, "Untangling Academic Transformation through Untethered, Equitable Professional Development," EDUCAUSE Review, January 31, 2019. ↩
3. Catherine Haras, Steven C. Taylor, Mary Deane Sorcinelli, and Linda von Hoene, editors, "Institutional Commitment to Teaching Excellence: Assessing the Impacts and Outcomes of Faculty Development" (Washington, DC: American Council on Education, 2017) ↩
4. Pacansky-Brock, "Untangling Academic Transformation." ↩
5. Jill Leafstedt,  "Personalized Faculty Development: Engaging Networks, Empowering Individuals," EDUCAUSE Review, February 23, 2018. ↩

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Shannon Dunn is Assistant Director, UFIT Center for Instructional Technology and Training, at the University of Florida.

Chris Pinkoson is Instructional Designer, UFIT Center for Instructional Technology and Training, at the University of Florida.