Strategic Expansion of Faculty Development Programming

“Faculty development is the process of providing professional development training and coaching to faculty members to help them improve their work performance, particularly in specific areas such as teaching and research” (Devran & Elçi, 2020, p.124). Faculty training is a subset of faculty development. Faculty support includes “strategies employed to provide faculty with the knowledge, skills, abilities and infrastructure to effectively facilitate student success” (Hastings & Rasmussen, 2017, p. 437), and this includes just-in-time supports to solve problems and make improvements to teaching.

Before the arrival of the pandemic, my team of learning designers offered a forecast of faculty development sessions that addressed technical skill development, pedagogical elements, and values-based approaches. We also had a mechanism for faculty support in the form of a helpdesk called Studio that provided quick turnaround times from Monday to Friday for faculty members who had live courses running. When the pandemic hit, it became clear to me that, though the infrastructure for faculty development and faculty support existed, only about a third of the faculty community engaged with our services regularly. Also, the emergence of a digital community versus the on-campus community revealed that faculty engagement in a digital community was lagging. Major (2010, p. 2160), who studied faculty members’ experiences in higher education, pointed out that even before the pandemic some faculty members “agreed that a general lack of knowledge about what works well in a distance setting and a lack of training in the use of technology could be disadvantages of online learning.”

As the pandemic took root, we saw a dramatic increase in requests for instructional design supports and synchronous tools, and as was expected all face-to-face courses, including two-week residencies, needed to be moved online. We faced a significant increase in demands for supports that had to be addressed within exceedingly tight timelines. The number of offerings for faculty development workshops had to be doubled and, in some cases, tripled. If I had scheduled one offering of facilitating learning online in June, for example, instead of running only one section of this offering, I would arrange for two or three additional sections to accommodate the increase in demand. Faculty development workshop participation rates increased from 50% to 85%, and this meant that my team was super engaged and challenged with workload issues. To provide extra support, casual instructional designers already trained were granted more hours to facilitate additional faculty development offerings and assigned “low touch” instructional design projects. I had already established the importance of having a small team of two to three casual instructional designers on staff. This gave me more capacity to take on the additional workload and was an effective succession planning tactic since a few of the instructional designers in full-time roles had started out in casual roles.

Strategic planning. I prepared a report on faculty development and faculty support for the academic leadership team to initiate conversations on strategic planning. As a result of the report, three areas of improvement were identified as critical to implementing a strategic plan to ensure that faculty development programming met the emergent needs of faculty members and that they could access workshops and offerings provided by our team of learning designers. These areas of improvement included the following.

• Diversify offerings to ensure that faculty development covered a comprehensive list of workshops, including technical (synchronous and asynchronous), pedagogical, values based, team based, and research based.
• Enhance relevance to ensure that learning outcomes, contents, and resources were “value adding” and relevant to meet the needs of faculty members.
• Enable application to ensure that workshop activities and assessments provided opportunities for authentic learning since faculty members were guarding their time and only wanted to engage in activities that they could transfer directly to their teaching.

Community building was the common thread in each of the areas of improvement and, as Mooney (2018) points out, is essential to effective engagement in faculty development programming.

Changes implemented. First, to enhance relevance, I worked closely with my team of instructional designers to revise the course called “Facilitating Learning Online.” This popular course saw an increase in participation of up to 85%. The changes included revising learning activities and formative assessments to make them authentic: for example, modelling online activities that could be applied to teaching across disciplines. Second, to diversify offerings, my team and I promoted the Pedagogical Values Series to highlight successful teaching strategies that reflect care, social justice, equity, diversity, decolonization, and inclusion. I facilitated a session focused on the pedagogy of care. Third, to enable application, I supervised the development of three new courses for teaching with Zoom (beginner, intermediate, and advanced). Additionally, all faculty development courses designed for face-to-face delivery were converted to an online format. It is important to keep in mind that these changes were accomplished without any increase in full-time staffing. Effective leadership and strategic planning skills enabled the team to achieve efficiency. Mslia, who studies Black women leaders in education, argues that “effective leadership depends more on the relevant qualities of leaders and … that qualities such as motherhood, flexibility, loyalty, mentoring, and collaborative leadership were among the qualities that were common among women leaders” (2022, p. 16). In hindsight, I drew from the skills of my mother as she raised 15 children, “mothering” that enabled me to be successful. I led the team in daily, hour-long, digital meetings, and we HUDDLED: H—helped each other, U—understood that we had to do things together as a team, D—dedicated time for planning, D—divided the work equitably, L—limited distractions, E—embraced opportunities to do things differently, and D—deepened relationships by listening and demonstrating empathy.

Critical reflection. Santamaria and colleagues, who study BIPOC women leaders, point out that “leadership is carried out by women of color who have transcended psychological, emotional, or societal barriers including experiences with racism, discrimination, and/or oppression; these powerful understandings inform their expression of leadership in qualitatively different ways” (2022, pp. 185–186). My personal experiences with racism and discrimination as a Black woman leader have helped me to develop important skills for recourse and resilience—being able to bounce back from challenges and negative experiences with a deep desire to create change, growth, and personal strength. The key learning for me is that the demands of the pandemic created a ripened climate for change, improvement, growth, and innovation. The crisis underscored the critical role that centres of teaching and learning play in postsecondary environments. With the support of my team of instructional designers, we were able to respond adequately to the increase in demand for services. I also attribute our success to the instructional designers who took on informal leadership responsibilities as they utilized effective change management skills, increased opportunities for dialogue, listened, and took action to ensure that faculty members were supported.

Power, who conducted case studies of instructional design work, argued that instructional designers can be torn “between faculty needs and limits and the exigencies of their profession, [and] instructional designers must find a middle ground wherein they can effectively assist faculty in developing quality, online learning environments” (2007, p. 65). The following discussions focus on strategies that I utilized to strengthen our team of instructional designers.

Strategic Supports for Instructional Designers

Any instructional design team requires onboarding supports to ensure that, when new members join, they are fully supported and have opportunities to develop the skills and knowledge to be able to perform their duties effectively. A process of creating supports for new instructional designers served a double purpose since it was also a tool to engage long-serving and recent hires in a process of rebooting. I was focused on building capacities and providing opportunities for instructional designers to develop their leadership skills. One of the strategies was to implement a robust orientation. The orientation focused on building mentorship capacity and providing information about how the learning design team provided support to faculty and staff and how the team supported each other. The orientation included an introduction to institutional mission, vision, values, and practices critical to consider when examining faculty needs and provided critical reflection on the following questions. Which values guide my work? How can I build relationships and networks? How can I develop leadership skills? How do I contribute meaningfully? What do I need to know about this institution to be effective in my role? How do I plan, manage, and ensure that my work reflects sustainable practices? The orientation allowed every instructional designer to take time with the new person coming in to discuss the questions posed above. It also gave long-serving and recent hires time to reflect on these questions as they provided support for the new team member.

Although the orientation provided reflective opportunity and leadership development for me and the instructional design team, it was lacking in terms of preparing instructional designers to implement the institutional learning design processes. Hence, I collaborated with my team to create a new online training course that would take 10 to 12 hours for new instructional designers to complete. Although it was not required for current instructional designers, they did need to review it and participate in feedback loops to improve it. Three new casual instructional designers completed the new training course and following are some of the anecdotal comments that they shared. “I feel so well supported in my new role.” “The course really helped me understand the institution and how I fit in.” “This is an outstanding resource for me, and I will be using it as a guide and tool for my work.” Generally, the new online training was well received. Time was indeed the most important consideration, and new instructional designers were not assigned any projects in the first four to six weeks to give them time to complete all training required to perform their duties. This was another effective strategy that helped to ensure that instructional designers were well prepared for their role and understood the tasks, challenges, demands, and responsibilities before diving in. The one drawback for me was the investment of my time during the new instructional designer’s probationary period. A case in which the instructional designer did not successfully complete the probationary period could be noted as the one drawback of this strategy. Probationary periods are times when two sides must be aligned (i.e., is this work a good fit for me? and am I a good fit for this work?).

Strategies to foster informal leadership. Eddy, who studies leadership in higher education, argued that “building an equity framework for leadership development requires questioning underlying assumptions about who can lead and what leadership should look like, which requires fundamental organizational change” (2018, p. 9). I am inclined to support an approach that values both informal leadership and formal leadership. Yet the former type is often understated and cannot thrive within a hierarchical organizational structure. I was happy to share some of my leadership tasks with my team and made space for instructional designers to chair team meetings and lead professional development microsessions for our team. Some of the instructional designers organized a book club that I attended, and we committed to collaboration on scholarly writing and research projects (done from the sides of our desks).

Critical reflection. The pandemic quickly affirmed what some scholars have known for decades: effective distance education must be rooted in systems methodology acknowledging that leadership roles are necessary for many subsystems of a suprasystem, including administrative functions, teaching responsibilities, research, instructional systems design, curriculum design, program design, learning technologies, faculty support, student support, and more. To get the job done well demanded sacrifice of personal time and required strategies to maintain health and well-being. Davinson, a leadership scholar, noted that “being a leader requires the constant balancing of dissonance: balancing the vision of the institution with the daily workload, balancing the professional elements of the job with the personal aspects of one’s life” (2012, p. 17). Exercise, healthy eating habits, and resilience had instrumental roles to play in keeping me focused amid tensions. I was able to draw from personal resilience that embodies many elements: flexibility, strength, buoyancy, and spirituality. A key learning for me is that effective leadership must be rooted in relationship building that promotes collaboration, teamwork, and a human-centred approach that makes space for an appreciation of differences.

Recommendations for Leadership in Distance Education

All of us have the potential to lead. When we have developed the skills and knowledge within a discipline, subject, field, or art that can be labelled as a form of expertise, it is critical to take up informal or formal leadership as the circumstances demand. When working within a team environment, every member is accountable to take on leadership in different ways and at different times. Women have demonstrated strategic leadership and are capable and competent when carrying formal and informal leadership responsibilities (Mslia, 2022). I argue that women can rise to the challenge and perform well in leadership positions, bringing to the fore a desire to nurture the leadership development of members within their team. However, it is important that we shift the focus from qualities of women leaders to qualities of effective leadership.

When educational leadership fails, students, local communities, and the global community are affected. Therefore, it is important for individuals in formal leadership positions, as well as those who perform leadership responsibilities without formal titles, to spend some time reflecting on the “ingredients” of effective leadership in higher education (Palahicky, 2020, p. 185).

The following effective leadership “ingredients” will be useful for any woman (or other individual) taking up or continuing a formal or informal leadership role in distance education: (1) practise critical self-reflection, (2) commit to people first, (3) practise shared decision making, (4) build community, (5) express gratitude, (6) prioritize self-care, and (7) model inclusive practices. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to serve in my formal leadership role as a Black woman who recognizes that not all women across the globe will have such privileges, particularly women of minority groups.

References

• Davinson, P. L. (2012). The 24/7 public possession: Understanding the dissonance and grace of being a post-secondary leader. Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 42(2), 13–33. https:// journals .sfu .ca /cjhe /index .php /cjhe /article /view /183580
• Devran, B. Ç., & Elçi, A. (2020). Traditional versus digital assessment methods: Faculty development. In E. Railean (Ed.), Assessment, testing, and measurement strategies in global higher education (pp. 20–34). IGI Global. https:// doi .org /10 .4018 /978 -1 -7998 -2314 -8 .ch002
• Eddy, P. L. (2018). Expanding the leadership pipeline in community colleges: Fostering racial equity. Teachers’ College Record, 120(4), 1–18. https:// doi .org /10 .1177 /016146811812001404
• Hastings, N. B., & Rasmussen, K. L. (2017). Designing and developing competency-based education courses using standards. In K. Rasmussen, P. Northrup, & R. Colson (Eds.), Handbook of research on competency-based education in university settings (pp. 232–249). IGI Global. https:// doi .org /10 .4018 /978 -1 -5225 -0932 -5 .ch012
• Major, C. H. (2010). Do virtual professors dream of electric students? University faculty experiences with online distance education. Teachers’ College Record, 112(8), 2154–2208. https:// doi .org /10 .1177 /016146811011200802
• Mooney, J. A. (2018). Emergent professional learning communities in higher education: Integrating faculty development, educational innovation, and organizational change at a Canadian college. The Journal of Teaching and Learning, 12(2), 38–53. https:// jtl .uwindsor .ca /index .php /jtl /article /view /5526
• Mslia, V. (2022). Black women school leaders: Building effective schools against the odds. Multidisciplinary Journal of Gender Studies, 11(1), 1–23. https:// hipatiapress .com /hpjournals /index .php /generos /article /view /8925
• Palahicky, S. (2020). Innovative leadership: The higher educational context. In S. Palahicky (Ed.), Enhancing learning design for innovative teaching in higher education (pp. 183–206). IGI Global.
• Power, M. (2007). From distance education to e-learning: A multiple case study on instructional design problems. E-learning, 4(1), 64–78. https:// journals .sagepub .com /doi /10 .2304 /elea .2007 .4 .1 .64
• Santamaria, L. J., Manriquez, L., Diego, A., Salazar, D. A., Lozano, C., & Aguilar, S. G. (2022). Black, African American, and migrant Indigenous women in leadership: Voices and practices informing critical HRD. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 24(3), 173–992. https:// doi .org /10 .1177 /15234223221100847