META Model for Faculty Development Using a Comprehensive Faculty Development Program To Promote Continuous Quality in Online Teaching TCC 2012 Eileen Dittmar, PhD  Holly McCracken, MA Capella University 

Let’s Begin by Hearing from You! Poll #1 How many of you have participated in a training program for faculty members teaching online?  To vote click on the “yes” ( ✓ ) or “no” ( ✖ ) icon in the upper left toolbar (4 th icon). In the chat box, respond to the following questions: “What were the best aspects of the program in which you participated?” “Were there things that could have been improved? If so, what were they?”

Why Assist Faculty Members To Continue to Develop Skills?  Demonstrates an institution’s investment in sustaining quality teaching & fostering rigorous learning.  Strengthens both effectiveness & productivity.  Sustains innovation to continually direct best practices.  Shapes instruction & technology integration.  Reinforces longevity within the institution.  Engages & trains a large geographically dispersed faculty teaching 100% online.  Promotes student satisfaction & achievement.

The META Model: A Powerful Model that Gets Results Dittmar, E., & McCracken, H. (2012). The META Model.

META Model Program’s Goals  Promote collegiality, strategic collaboration & affiliation.  Create a community of practice.  Reinforce self-assessment & continuous quality improvement.  Coordinate the organized distribution of information.  Promote ongoing capacity building & innovation.  Reinforce curricular standards & best practices.  Strengthen student satisfaction & success  Establish a foundation for scaling current & developing new program components.

Strengths of the META Model  Provides variety & enables personalization.  Facilitates ongoing support, collegiality, & institutional affiliation.  Guards against reliance on a single approach to respond to a variety of individual goals & needs.  Designed for customization with individual teachers.  Offered according to individual needs & requests.  Promotes assessment on an ongoing basis, integrated throughout all model components.  Utilizes strategic collaboration to enable customized peer-to-peer mentoring.

Challenges to Implementation  Generating ongoing stakeholder investment about the potential of the model to provide critical training.  Coordinating faculty members’ adoption of strategies & technologies for instruction.  Maintaining the time commitment required to participate in associated programming.  Ensuring all faculty members acquire the technical competence &requisite hardware, software, & connectivity to implement the model.

Let’s Hear from You! Poll #2 Of the 4 components – mentoring, engagement, technology, & assessment – which is the most important?  To vote click on your choice using the icon in the upper left toolbar A = Mentoring B = Engagement C = Technology D = Assessment In the chat box, respond to the following questions: “Thinking about your response, in your experience what makes the component you chose the most important? Why?” “Is there another component that should be added?”

Component 1: Mentoring for Excellence: Customized Individual Coaching  Provided to faculty who need improvements in their student satisfaction ratings; new/newer faculty; & veteran faculty upon request.  Enables personal consultation re: pedagogical advisement, curricular implementation, student support, procedural information & policy integration.  Facilitates continuous self- & peer-evaluation.  Mentors are rotated to capitalize on respective strengths & abilities to appropriately match expertise with changing needs.  Coaching needs are identified as the result of mentors’ ongoing review of instructors’ teaching & corresponding data analytics reflecting student satisfaction.  Detailed feedback is provided re: instructional approaches, classroom presence, assessment methods, & the application of technologies to facilitate learning & teaching.

Most Requested Areas for Mentoring  Facilitating interactive discussions & maintaining a teaching presence.  Providing substantive feedback & meaningful assessment of student assignments.  Integrating emerging technologies in instructional practice.  Maintaining awareness of key institutional policies & mandates that effect instruction.  Identifying resources that support student learning.  Utilizing data analytics to strengthen approaches & methods.

Component 2: Furthering Engagement: Collaboration & Information Distribution  Facilitating continuous communications via web-based applications to disseminate information to the large, geographically dispersed faculty team.  Coordinating real-time faculty team meetings.  Completing collaborative projects & programs.  Promoting involvement with professional organizations.  Providing opportunities for integration within the institution (e.g., service, scholarship, & research activities).  Conducting ongoing webinars, targeted training series, & workshops for faculty by faculty.

Webinar Series 1.0 Focuses  Utilizing pedagogical approaches to facilitate student connections with curricula, instructors, & peers.  Guiding the use & application of critical thinking.  Developing research & writing skills.  Strengthening meaningful interaction in virtual discussions.  Linking theoretical understanding with practical application of knowledge & skills.  Assisting students to acquire abilities in self-assessment.  Webinar Series 2.0 currently being developed.

Component 3: Using Emerging Technologies: Facilitating Instructional Quality  Establishes a diverse series of applications from which technologies can be selected based on user strengths, abilities, & preferences.  Facilitates skill building related to individual use.  Promotes knowledge sharing, interaction, & collaboration among users.  Impacts workforce efficiencies as well as program & organizational culture.  Promotes the construction of new knowledge through ongoing facilitation.

 Extensive Resource Wiki: An epic informational hub that facilitates teaching consistency & continuous quality  Adult Learning Blog: A resource for information about ongoing trends, activities, relevant research & training  Peer-to-Peer Conferencing: The platform for ongoing collaboration & communication  Shared Peer- & Self-Assessment Instrument: A tool for ongoing formative evaluation Types of Technologies Utilized: A Focus on Web 2.0 Tools

Component 4: Sustaining Performance - Assessment for Continuous Improvement Strong assessment practices ensure teaching outcomes are continuously evaluated & reinforced according to key data analytics & related to discipline-specific trends Key human resources functions (e.g., a summative performance evaluation) are accessible via the web, & enable document & file sharing, as well as asynchronous collaboration & viewing. The voluntary use of a formative assessment, a “course review worksheet”, identifies critical instructional tasks, attitudes, methods & data analytics, so that faculty members & their mentors can record impressions of progress.

Recognizing Achievement: The Exemplary Faculty Rubric  Identifies standards for requisite attributes, abilities, & knowledge.  Guides continued skill development.  Integrates reviews of course archives & student end-of- course evaluations.  Recognizes high-performing faculty members.  Contributes to annual performance review process. Formative Assessments + Summative Evaluations = Continuous Quality Improvement & Student Satisfaction

The META Model Achieves Results Results are above-average instructor metrics for student success & teaching performance On student end-of-term evaluations re: “I am satisfied with the overall quality of instructor”: on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), the cumulative metric for combined 50 faculty members is 4.68 out of out of 50 faculty members achieve “exemplary status” based on the “Exemplary Faculty Rubric.” 41 of 50 faculty members achieve ratings within a small percentage of achieving exemplary status; as a result they are able to clearly identify & target areas for improvement.

We’d Like to Hear Your Ideas… Please use the chat box to respond to this question from the position of a faculty member How can faculty development programs meet your learning goals & needs?

Conclusions about Using the META Model Sustains quality, consistency, & collaboration among a large geographically dispersed faculty. Reinforces & maintains knowledge of instructional best practices, relevant policies & procedures, & technology tools. Aids in web-based teaching & learning, as well as continuous professional engagement. Impacts continued pedagogical development & curricular improvement. Reinforces ongoing professional development to sustain quality & policy compliance. Promotes departmental cohesiveness & high degree of organizational affiliation. Facilitates increased engagement with students & colleagues.

Dr. Eileen Dittmar Faculty Chair Holly McCracken Faculty Member Thank You for Joining Us! We Look Forward to Your Questions & Ideas Visit Capella University at For More Information Contact