Page 12 - Campus Technology, October/November 2019

typically are hoping for? Sharp: This varies by training type. There are certain types of training where a one-on-one scenario is most appropriate, especially if a fac- ulty member has a specific use case in mind. Other workshops can be most beneficial if there are 10 to 15 faculty members involved. We typ- ically look at the trends throughout the semes- ter and see which workshops were the most popular and which were not as popular. We then look at the timing of those workshops to see if maybe a particular day of the week or time of the day tends to have higher attendance. We also look differently at the workshops that are provided during the academic year versus the ones that are provided over the summer or during winter break. CT: It seems like institutions can often struggle to get faculty to take advantage of these types of training resources — to get them in the door, so to speak. How do you make sure faculty are aware of all the services Digital Education has to offer? Sharp: We use a variety of methods to advertise. We send out e-mails to the faculty e-mail lists. We have a website and a Twitter account where we post information. We’re beginning to make the move into Snapchat as well. We also post flyers around campus and reach out to deans and department chairs with any workshops that we think would benefit their faculty in particular. CT: Could you give an example of an individual faculty success story? Sharp: We had a faculty member interested in doing a vlog assignment. She came to training on our video capture system and we also trained her students. She asked them to vlog their reflec- tions from their field experiences instead of doing the reflection papers. The students loved it and she loved it as well. She got more detailed reflections from the students using the vlog than she did from the papers, she was able to see them grow throughout the semester, and it saved her a lot of time in grading because she gave them feedback in vlog form. She was very happy and now we train her students every semester. She’s doing lots of vlogs and moved completely away from paper-based reflections. CT: What’s next — are you planning any new approaches, fine-tuning existing efforts, per- haps both? Sharp: We are always fine-tuning our efforts. We make modifications to the certificate tracks and workshops based on the feedback we receive from the surveys. We’re also piloting online training opportunities for faculty to do at their own pace. One of the new approaches we’re planning is to gamify some of professional development: We are organizing the content in the learning management system as a game. Faculty will be able to choose different tasks to do to earn points. More points will be awarded for more difficult tasks. They’ll be able to “level up” at certain point thresholds and will be able to track their progress on the leader board. Julin Sharp Q&A 12 CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | Oct/Nov 2019