The integration of an instructional good idea in undergraduate classes through the natural and evolutionary process of instruction renovation was the focus of this study. More specifically, the question What personal, contextual, and innovation-related forces act on the integration of active learning into the traditional signature pedagogies of university tenured faculty? was addressed in an extensive research agenda spanning seven years. In the mixed methods study central to this research portfolio, self-nominating faculty who were proponents of active learning at the University of Saskatchewan shared their stories and perceptions about integrating active learning in their undergraduate classes through written data, surveys, questionnaires, focus group meetings, and individual interviews. The study revealed that the integration of active learning, and the development of unique personal signature pedagogies, took place naturally in a benignly neutral environment, when desire met with combinations of perceived needs and timely, resonating active learning solutions. Rather than change, instructional methods were gently renovated as participants experimented with solutions to address student learning needs. Active learning was fit together with personal and professional beliefs about student capabilities and effective instruction, and college signature pedagogies.<p> Participants indicated that supportive faculty development, student enthusiasm and engagement, policy that neither encouraged nor discouraged active learning, and the benefits of active learning were driving forces. Restraining forces included unsupportive or negative students and peers, a lack of alignment between stated organizational values and enacted values regarding rewards, and time. Active learning was thought to be effective, but was also perceived to be complex, difficult to try and assess, and too dissimilar from other instructional methods to integrate easily.<p> Findings from the central study and experiences associated larger doctoral research agenda activities suggest that faculty development could be expanded to provide coaching and suggest instructional methods which are clearly linked with signature pedagogies and instructional problems, and that small manageable ways in which active learning can be easily and comfortably integrated in undergraduate classes are showcased. In addition, students could be encouraged to interact with faculty as often as possible, that student stories of engaging instructional activities be prominently profiled, and that stated organizational values be clearly aligned with enacted values and the formal reward structure.<p> Future studies might focus on the effects of planting highly-regarded teaching enthusiasts, the relationship between student and faculty enthusiasm and engagement, the effects of external rewards on the inclusion of active learning, the role of collegial support in the integration of active learning, and the process of integrating other good ideas. Research might also be conducted on removing identified barriers and increasing driving forces identified in this study. An extension and elaboration of this study might create communities of practice on campus and encourage positive conversations about teaching as well as reveal additional driving and restraining forces that act on the integration of good ideas in undergraduate classes.

A faculty community is a type of learning community where faculty learning and development is the focus. Previous research suggests that formally structured faculty communities promoted faculty engagement, improved teaching, thwarted career burnout, increased retention of experienced faculty, and fostered organizational change. Researchers have not examined faculty communities embedded in the workplace and the longitudinal effects these communities have on mid-career and senior faculty learning. In this study, I examined how an experienced interprofessional faculty community of medical and biomedical professionals managed the implementation of a novel graduate curriculum in translational sciences. Translational sciences education aims to enhance the collaborations between scientists and clinicians for the advancement of patient treatment and care. I focused on how faculty advanced their individual and collective understanding of the curriculum implementation using collaborative reflection during weekly community interactions. The study began at the start of the curriculum implementation and lasted fifteen months. It was a qualitative, ethnographic case study including three sources of data: naturalistic observation of teaching and faculty meetings, faculty interviews, and community artifacts. Two theoretical frameworks undergirded the design of the study: community of practice and distributed cognition. The results of the study suggest that collaborative reflection in the faculty community promoted faculty learning over time in several areas: teaching and instruction, assessment and evaluation, individual knowledge, student learning, and organizational and leadership skills. Collaborative reflection occurred in response to multiple episodes that occurred during curriculum implementation, but was focused primarily on facets of instruction, which was the dominant work of the community. Collaborative reflection enabled decision-making on instructional content and process, pedagogical content and process, and curricular content. A cyclical process of instructional development emerged in the community including: session planning, implementation, collective teaching observation, and collective instructional evaluation. Attributes of the community that emerged to support collaborative reflection included: shared goals, domain knowledge, and mutual trust. The community provided a shared social context for systematic collaborative reflection and scaffolding in instructional development. The study findings represent a specific set of experiences that may inform a model of instructional development for use with interprofessional faculty communities in academic health centers. / text

This study explored the motivations of college faculty who teach social justice lessons through their service learning courses. In recent decades, universities have begun to respond to calls for a renewal in their civic missions, and educating students on civic responsibility and social justice issues (Boyer, 1994; Boyte & Hollander, 1999; Ehrlich, 2000). Faculty have been shown to be the critical facilitators in brining social justice topics to the curriculum through the use of service learning instruction (Buchanan, 1998; Ward, 2003). Given the emphasis in higher education today on social justice learning outcomes and the importance of the role of faculty, there is surprisingly no previous research on faculty motivation to teach social justice lessons through service learning. For this study, there were two guiding research questions: (1) what aspects of the faculty’s individual backgrounds influence their teaching of social justice topics? (2) What are faculty’s perceptions of the impact that service learning has on student learning? The setting of the study was a large research university in the southwest. Data were collected from 11 faculty through individual interviews and supplemented by course-related artifacts. Data were analyzed using coding procedures suggested by Strauss and Corbin (2008) from a grounded theory qualitative approach. Results indicated that faculty motivation to use service learning to teach social justice lessons was based on several core themes. These themes included: 1) the faculty’s personal background; 2) individual identity and role as faculty; 3) faculty’s perceived desired student outcomes; and 4) faculty reflection of observed student outcomes. In addition to the key themes, results showed that faculty did enjoy their teaching approach, an enjoyment that reinforced their motivation to continue to teach. Faculty in lecturer positions indicated that they believed they were adding special student experiences through social justice lessons that were void in other aspects of their education. Faculty with tenure indicated that although they were providing social experiences for students, they also tended to combine their social justice instruction with their research work. A model of faculty motivation for teaching social justice topics was presented. Implications for research and practice are discussed. / text

The purpose of the study was to explore factors that influence the intent of teacher education faculty members in the State of Illinois to teach online and their intent to participate in faculty development using Ajzen's theory of planned behavior. Understanding the beliefs and attitudes of teacher educators, their normative frame of reference, and elements of external control in regard to online instruction and faculty development, will provide rich data to administrators and faculty developers who must aid faculty in the preparation of online instruction. A 40-item questionnaire went out to a sample of 300 teacher education faculty members via email. Through linear regression, the findings indicated a positive relationship between the intent to teach online and the intent to participate in faculty development. Self-efficacy served as an additional construct in the study and when added to the regression equations proved positively significant. A review of the data from adopters and non-adopters of the intent to teach online revealed a positive response by the non-adopters to teach online if they had appropriate training. Further research is needed to understand past behavior, self-efficacy, and the effect of intervention implementation plans for faculty development pertaining to online instruction.

BACKGROUND: Faculty vitality is integral to the endurance of higher education. Strengthening vitality is particularly important for mid-career faculty, who represent the largest and most productive segment, but also the most dissatisfied. While the mid-career phase is particularly vulnerable, the backdrop of academic medicine appears to be another factor that may put faculty at risk of attrition. To address these issues, Boston University School of Medicine initiated the Academy for Collaborative Innovation and Transformation (ACIT), a ten-month mid-career faculty development program consisting of six two-day interactive learning modules and multidisciplinary group projects. METHODS: This study is a mixed-methods evaluation of ACIT using a quasi-experimental design to assess the program's impact on faculty and institutional vitality. Pre-post surveys compared participants with a matched reference group. The quantitative data were augmented by interviews and focus groups with participants, senior leadership, department chairs, and ACIT staff members. RESULTS: At the program's conclusion, ACIT participants showed marked gains in knowledge, skills, attitudes, and connectivity when compared to the referents. Results also indicate that the program was largely successful in equipping participants to accomplish the four primary learning goals: to self-reflect and pursue an individual development plan; to connect longitudinally to one's peer cohort and to the larger organization; to collaborate effectively with colleagues across disciplines, sectors, and roles; and to enhance ability to implement transformative work. Lastly, the majority of didactic sessions were rated highly for both content areas and speakers, while the group projects and learning communities received mixed reviews. Based upon these results, recommendations were made to improve the design, execution, and costs of the program. CONCLUSION: Given that mid-career faculty development in academic medicine has not been extensively studied, this evaluation is able to provide a novel perspective to guide future initiatives aimed at this specific subset of higher education.

Literature regarding faculty development in uniprofessional healthcare programs is prolific; however, little has been written about instructional programs designed for faculty delivering interprofessional education (IPE). In this paper, we describe the genesis, content, and improvement of a faculty development workshop which exemplifies a meta teaching model and was designed to serve faculty facilitators in a rapidly growing IPE program. Evaluations following initial delivery of the workshops in fall 2018 returned high faculty satisfaction ratings and feedback suggesting a need for even more pedagogical training with a stronger emphasis on meta techniques and less on a review of student content. In response, program developers incorporated additional teaching techniques in the spring 2019 training. Faculty evaluations in spring 2019 reflected even greater satisfaction with the increased focus on “meta skills”. The faculty development program described in this paper supports the need for a structured training process for faculty facilitating in IPE programs.

This article outlines a process for developing standardized patient cases. The initial step in the process is to define the educational goals of the exercise. Following this step the patient characteristics, setting for the interaction and clinical information are developed. Clinical information, in addition to history, may include elements of nonverbal communication, actual or simulated abnormal physical findings, and laboratory results. Guidelines for the standardized patient regarding disclosure of information to the student and providing feedback to the student enhance the value of the case. If the case is to be used as part of an examination, a grading system must be developed. Issues of cost, validity, and reliability are briefly addressed. .

Evaluating faculty's contribution to the research component of the tripartite mission is based on quantified data, such as number of peer-reviewed articles, impact factors, and the number and amount of grants. In contrast, although effective teachers possess universally agreed-upon qualities, evaluating faculty's teaching excellence can be difficult because of varying criteria. Using objective research criteria and peer review, the ability of faculty to demonstrate teaching excellence may be elevated by the pursuit of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). The continuum of effective teaching, scholarly teaching, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and educational research can demonstrate how this elevation can be possible. Suggested methods for faculty development and institutional change are explored.

In 2017, the College of Public Health implemented a “teaching incentive” by which faculty would receive extra pay if the composite score of teaching effectiveness on the student assessment of instruction (SAI) was in the top third for all scores in the college in that same semester, and at least 40% of the students in the class completed the SAI. In the first 4 years, 53 incentives were awarded to 25 different members of the faculty, for a total of $206,772. The college documented an increase in the composite score of teaching effectiveness and in percent of students completing the SAI. Significant increases in the composite score were seen for all faculty (3.47 to 3.59 out of 4.00, p =.02) and for those faculty in the college for the entire period (3.47 to 3.57, p =.0189). Over the 4 years, the percent of classes that had at least a 40% response rate increased for all faculty (41.2% to 55.7%, p =.0447) and for faculty who were in the college for the entire 4 years (39.6% to 51.9%, p =.1373). A teaching incentive that includes a significant salary supplementation appears to be associated with an increase in both student response rates and overall assessment of teaching effectiveness.

This dissertation comprises two manuscripts formatted for publication, preceded by a brief introduction to the dissertation project. The first manuscript addresses the recent history and development of peer observation in the United States and synthesizes the body available peer observation scholarship. Five fundamental elements of peer observation (design, community, control, training, reflection) are put forth as a nexus at which meaningful and formative peer observation can be undertaken. A selection of empirically based methods for conducting peer observation is also presented. The second manuscript is a mixed-methods descriptive study of the five fundamentals of peer observation. Three academic departments at a large land-grant university were identified, via questionnaire, as having programs of peer observation that aligned with attributes of the five fundamentals. These academic departments participated in individual case studies designed to bring-about a description of the five fundamentals as they were and were not manifest in authentic university/college contexts. / Ph. D.