Demonstration Project
Demonstration Project
Faculty Development Advisory Committee
Persons present: Russ Adkins-DBCC, Neill Foshee-UCF/IST, Joan Hallinan-UCF/OIR, Mary Alice Hartman-UCF/OIR, Barbara Martin-UCF/COEd, Jim McBrayer-UCF/Eng, Lucy Morse- CFCHE, Patrick Moskal-UCF/IST, Rusty Okoniewski-CFCHE, Bill Patterson-CFCHE, Patricia Rausch-L-SCC, Barbara Truman-CFCHE, Lisa Valentino-SCC
Persons absent: Vern Allen-CFCC, Kim Ellis-SCC, Gary Orwig-UCF/COEd
Pat Moskal, chair, opened the meeting at 10:15 am. Introductions were made and discussion centered on the agenda's seven topics including the role of the group. The topics are listed below.
Topics for Discussion
1. What is Faculty Development?
2. What is the goal of the Faculty Development component as it relates to the overall CFCHE project?
3. A Faculty Development Assessment instrument has been proposed. What are the needs of the CFCHE member institutions concerning Faculty Development?
4. What are the Logistical concerns for collecting the assessment data?
5. What are the roles and responsibilities of the Faculty Development Advisory Committee?
6. How do the Distance Learning courses taught by Indiana University and the AT & T Center of Excellence in Cincinnati mesh with this project?
7. Should part of our role as a committee be to address policy issues related to faculty involvement in distance education? How do we involve people? Rewards? etc.
Moskal said the grant will provide consulting and instructional, technical design workshops. A needs assessment will be the first priority. The literature review revealed that no faculty assessment instrument exists in the public domain, so one will have to be created.
Bill Patterson will be in charge of training the community college instructional technologists. Patterson described a possible telecommunications workshop he could do to be a modicum in broadening the palettes at the community colleges.
The faculty development workshops are for training and the instructional technologists can give individual support on specific procedures, such as how to logon, how to use the internet, etc. Martin said the workshops will be created to apply instructional systems design to distance learning. Adkins said he saw the workshops as being the first step and consulting services the next step. The workshops will come in the summer.
Although community colleges have faculty development with varying degrees of needs assessment in place, the grant's faculty development will broaden the picture. Existing practices will be enhanced with attention to design, organization, management and implementation of sound instructional design, specifically geared for distance delivery methods. This approach also will be useful in designing and improving traditional instructional delivery.
McBrayer spoke of his recent trip to Mexico where 26 campuses were connected in a distance learning venture. Paraprofessionals are used and the group participates together through networked technology for the first half hour, then they perform offline activities for an hour. Afterwards, the groups reconvene in the networked environment to wrap up.
Martin said that the faculty development workshops could be one-hour online and then go offline for individual exercises. She emphasized the importance of using the technology for at least one of the planned workshops in order to model the distance education content being taught .
After discussion, it was decided that some workshops would be done without possessing the results of the needs assessment, because general instructional design information will be necessary.
Adkins suggested that committee members organize focus groups at each campus to give the committee a flavor of what faculty are doing and what they believe about distance learning. Morse said she would like to see a faculty development assessment tool as a deliverable in addition to the data collected.
Discussion followed concerning the lack of rewards for using distance learning. Martin observed that only tenured faculty do distance learning at Indiana University because there are no rewards. Valentino said that a misconception in doing television courses occurs when it is believed that less time is needed to do a T.V. course, therefore more students can be enrolled. The question remains: what can be done to get faculty involved? Administrators need to be involved to educate them.
Information sharing is essential for three areas: 1) for comparing notes on the needs assessment, 2) to see how the six community colleges and UCF are approaching the use of distance learning, and 3) to seek out and compare other models out there in the world. Moskal said that he would have a draft assessment within two to three weeks and that policy regarding rewarding faculty would be researched. Indiana University and AT&T's joint projects will be looked into and Maine's satellite conference would be reviewed for contact information. Hallinan taped it for Instructional Resources. Also, Bill Bozeman's student assistant is reviewing tapes to prodce abstracts on tele-conferences.
The next meeting will be Monday, July 10th from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm in room 100 of the Research Pavilion.
The meeting was adjourned at 11:40 am.