PODLive: Let’s Connect
Friday, April 19, 1–2 EST
Facilitated by the Professional Development Committee (PDC)
This more informal session is an opportunity to connect, support, and create community with your POD Network colleagues.
Facilitated by the Professional Development Committee (PDC)
This more informal session is an opportunity to connect, support, and create community with your POD Network colleagues.
PODLive webinars are focused online conversations among POD Network members. A facilitator starts the session, keeps participants engaged, and makes sure everyone has the chance to speak. Afterward, handouts, the recording, and a list of resources are available in the archive below. POD Network members can register for upcoming webinars below.
Workplace hiccups and breakdowns often occur because others don’t act or react in the way we expect them to. And we often expect people to act and react the way we would. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to place yourself, your coworkers, and your clients into two or three of nine possible workplace collaborative role preferences. Understanding these ways of being at work, how they interact in the project work cycle for effective project completion, and where each type’s weaknesses might get in the way, brings a greater sensitivity to how to work best with others and with your own strengths.
The American political milieu has recently been defined by polarization drawn across institutions of higher education. For many academic institutions, ideologies and legislation concretely impact how faculty, administration, and staff can engage with issues such as DEI, academic freedom, and even public health initiatives. One of POD’s core values is Equity, but what does this mean for educational developers working within adversarial political environments, risking reprimand or even dismissal if they address such issues? This roundtable creates a space for this conversation amongst educational developers and identifies ways to advance our values as a field in the face of challenges.
This session is sponsored by the Professional Development Committee as an opportunity to connect, support, and create community with your new educational development colleagues. This session is intended to help educational developers connect with one another virtually and also to discuss their burning questions and the kind of support they need right now.
The expansion of Dual Enrollment programs across the country has provided access to college to a wide range of students through Concurrent Enrollment programs, which offer college credit courses in high schools. This delivery model has also created a challenge for higher education institutions to support the professional development needs of the Concurrent Enrollment Instructors. This session will provide examples of how educational developers can contribute to the training and on-going professional development of these instructors in order to extend the impact and success of their CTL’s work.
This workshop addresses research conundrums many educational developers face: How do I encapsulate my research when I have crossed disciplinary boundaries? How do I explain my scholarship to outsiders? How do I reassure myself that I’m not an academic imposter? How do I choose new projects wisely?
Using a model by Boden, Epstein, and Kenway (2005), participants will engage in a three-step process to organize and capture their research to date, with the potential to incorporate future projects, too. Participants will create a first draft of their own “personal intellectual project” – the big-picture overview of their research. This overview is intended to help developers be understood by disciplinary outsiders, whether in promotion files, job applications, or simply everyday conversations with academic and administrative colleagues for whom educational development remains a hazy field. Please bring an up-to-date CV.
This session provides space to reflect on coping strategies we as service-oriented practitioners might have developed in reaction to multi-layered crises that have unfolded since March 2020. Join us in exploring possibilities for joy and liberation through clarifying purpose in our roles and setting boundaries to help us thrive. We will identify a workplace responsibility that conflicts with personal values and explore boundary-setting examples that center our needs and desires. In identifying intentions and advocating for needs in practical and tangible ways, we hope to restore our commitments to personal agency and integrity as we move through and beyond crisis.
This session is sponsored by the Professional Development Committee as an opportunity to connect, support, and create community with your new educational development colleagues.
Our committee supports new educational developers with the Getting Started preconference session and also the annual Institute for New Educational Developers. The pandemic has taken away these opportunities in 2020. This session is intended to help new educational developers connect with one another in the absence of these opportunities and also to discuss what kind of support they need right now. We hope you will join us.
These open sessions are an opportunity to connect, support, and create community with your educational development colleagues. Let’s check in with one another and talk about what (and how) we are all doing during this pandemic. Participants will be placed in breakout rooms to keep groups smaller and give everyone a chance to participate. Connection during this time is especially important. Join us.
Navigating the uncertainty of fall semester alongside the stress in this time of pandemic and racial injustice, burnout is a real concern for faculty, but also for educational developers working with faculty and navigating our own stressors. Attending to our own well-being is crucial for our personal health and ability to support our faculty. In this interactive PODLive session, we’ll talk about the three indicators of burnout, acknowledge our stressors, and plan for ways to stay balanced and well going into the fall semester.
presentation | video recording (106 MB) | audio recording (54 MB) | chat transcript
The POD Network espouses social justice values, such as inclusion, advocacy, and respect, and holds as one of its goals an active commitment to diversity. Key to these values and goal is the construct of equity, which, as Sommer (2017) has written, is either overlooked or poorly understood. This session will assist educational developers in securing an understanding of equity and adopting equity as a lens through which to examine our efforts. Two educational developers with expertise in diversity will introduce participants to equity-based teaching practices and facilitate opportunities for participants to share their own equity practices, expanding our collective toolkit.
handout | video recording (107 MB) | audio recording (22 MB) | chat transcript
This special session will help educational developers connect, support, and share. Given the extensive effort we have all undertaken to assist faculty and institutions, let’s take some time to talk to each other about how we are doing and share our collective wisdom. We’ll start with a few words from POD leadership. Participants will then break into a special topic group of their choosing:
The session will finish by bringing the group back together for general discussion.
Connection during this time is especially important.
Many institutions in the U.S. and around the world are building contingency plans in case their campuses are closed for some period of time, or if groups of their faculty or students aren’t able to come to campus, as a result of the spread of COVID-19. As faculty developers, how do you support your faculty through a request to move traditional instruction online, particularly under tight deadlines?
This PODLive session presents perspectives from two institutions on how they have been doing this over the last several weeks.
presentation | video recording (68 MB) | audio recording (22 MB) | chat transcript
As institutional leaders use data to make informed decisions about resourcing instructional and student success efforts aligned with institutional mission and strategy, educational developers are asked to make a case for increased investment in teaching and learning centers. What does yours look like? Is it positioned for impact?
The Beta Faculty Development Center Matrix™ was developed by ACE to help educational developers assess their efforts and level of impact given certain resource levels; ACE and POD have now collaborated to develop a version 2.0, now called the Center for Teaching & Learning Matrix.
Engage in a discussion about using the matrix to facilitate cross-campus dialog about the benefits educational development can have at your institution. The presenters, representing ACE and POD, will introduce the matrix, provide opportunities to locate your center along the matrix, and follow with reflection and discussion on using it to facilitate conversations at your institution. Please join us.
presentation | matrix | video recording (55 MB) | audio recording (10 MB) | chat transcript
Supporting adjunct and part-time faculty comes with several inherent roadblocks at many institutions. Identifying these obstacles is the first step in overcoming them. In this session we will begin to look at common barriers to providing effective professional development and instructional support to contingent faculty and discuss how some institutions are working to remove them. Participants will be encouraged to share their own institutional issues and solutions.
handout and presentation | video recording (67 MB) | audio recording (17 MB) | chat transcript | session notes
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework and set of guidelines that increases access to and removes barriers for learning. UDL practices include multiple ways to motivate (engage) students, present (represent) content, and offer a range of ways for students to demonstrate their learning (action/expression). While technology use is not a required component of UDL, it is often used to expand ways to implement UDL. We will explain how UDL course design can be implemented in no-tech, low-tech, and high-tech ways. We will provide a UDL and technology guide with activity and tool examples, explain and demonstrate select examples, and consider challenges in implementing UDL and technology, such as resources and accessibility standards.
handout and presentation | video recording (89 MB) | audio recording (22 MB) | chat transcript | session notes
This interactive session connects the existing literature on educational development, the emerging literature on academic hope, and our study of several hundred faculty involved in reforming gateway courses to consider how hope factors into the work of both faculty and developers. We will explore how hope supports and sustains change towards more inclusive and effective pedagogical practices. Participants in this session will (we hope!) deepen their understanding of the characteristics of academic hope that are particularly salient for faculty and educational development, and also sketch a plan for integrating practices related to hope into their own work.
handout | presentation | video recording (54 MB) | audio recording (15 MB) | chat transcript | session notes
Surveys are a common method for collecting data in our educational development work, whether for feedback, assessment, or research purposes. How can you ensure that the questions you ask will yield the usable and meaningful data that you are looking to collect? This POD Live webinar aims to provide you with strategies for designing effective surveys that can administered online or in-person. This webinar is part of the SoED Researcher’s Toolkit, but the strategies we will discuss are relevant for any kind of survey data collection being done at your center.
handout | presentation | video recording (76 MB) | audio recording (14 MB) | chat transcript | session notes
This session questions whether the goal of “inclusion” in the classroom is adequate to address the challenges posed by the current political climate. It marries two schools of thought—intercultural competence and anti-oppressive pedagogies—in order to imagine a pedagogical framework that attends both to the interpersonal dynamics and structural inequalities that hinder our efforts to create equitable learning environments for our students. Participants will leave with a better understanding of both schools of thought as well as with concrete strategies for supporting faculty in implementing them.
There are many resources out there to help faculty members and instructional designers to increase students’ access to content, sense of control and choice in interactions, and level of engagement with each other, instructors, and the wider world. In this virtual roundtable conversation, we’ll explore how the tenets of universal design for learning (UDL) can help teaching and learning center leaders to expand faculty access, participation rates, and practice adoption of our own educational development programming. Come to this interactive conversation to share good practices and learn from your colleagues about what works—and learn more about the neuroscience of why UDL is such a powerful framework for all kinds of learners, including our faculty colleagues.
Have you engaged in educational development research and/or assessment and want to take your work to the next level? Are you not sure how to conduct educational development research that will be meaningful for the field and your own center? In this session, winners of POD Network’s 2018 Menges Award and Honorable Mention will share their tips and advice to participants on designing studies, utilizing resources, and finding opportunities for impactful research. Participants will have the opportunity to share their own ideas and develop a plan for moving their research forward.
handouts | video recording (62 MB) | audio recording (16 MB) | chat transcript | session notes
We all experience conflict in our lives, in our educational development work and beyond. While some of us dread it and others thrive in it, there are principles from the literature in organizational psychology and conflict management that can make our conflict engagements more constructive. Dr. Esther Jordan, a certified mediator, will facilitate an interactive introduction to some of those principles, an opportunity to apply them to an educational development case, and guided reflection for application in our own contexts. While the emphasis in this webinar will be on conflict in educational development work, the principles apply to the rest of our lives as well.
handouts | video recording (115 MB) | audio recording (20 MB) | chat transcript | session notes
Although academic publishing can be a bit mysterious, there are some tried and true methods for getting your work placed in academic journals, edited collections, and other mediums. In this interactive webinar, Dr. Katie Linder will share strategies for targeting research toward specific journals, effectively responding to revise and resubmit requests, and some tips for fitting academic writing into our already busy schedules. Audience questions are welcomed and encouraged!
handout | video recording (471 MB) | audio recording (20 MB) | chat transcript | session notes
To reach faculty that don’t regularly engage in professional development around teaching, we developed the “Sparkshop”, a 15 minute, active-learning based workshop that can be facilitated in a department meeting. Each Sparkshop asks faculty members to look at data supporting the use of a certain evidence-based instructional practice (EBIP), has them try out the teaching practice, and then allows them to discuss with disciplinary colleagues how to integrate that approach into their courses. This session is structured to mirror the format of the Sparkshop, giving attendees opportunities to both participate in a Sparkshop and develop one for their own institution.
handout | video recording (648 MB) | audio recording ( 14 MB)
As educational developers are called upon to serve as agents of change across various campus contexts, we need to recognize the skills, characteristics, and dispositions that we bring to our work, as well as those that we can (or perhaps should) develop. We’ll consider current research and a study of educational developers as we take stock of the characteristics that enable us to manage or lead change – horizontal and vertical – whether one-on-one or working with groups or committees. Participants will consider illustrative passages from interviewees as well as a heuristic designed for self-reflection on the skills we draw upon in order to collaborate, effect change, and position ourselves.
handout | video recording (983 MB) | audio recording (42 MB) | chat transcript | session notes
Would you like to be more engaged with current education research for your own professional development or to support the work of your center? Do you need ideas about how to accomplish this task without overburdening yourself or hiring more staff? If you answered “yes” to these questions, then you are not alone! This POD Live webinar aims to provide you with strategies for consuming education research a part of your individual or your center’s workflow, and to connect you with colleagues from other institutions who are looking adopt similar initiatives. We’ll also consider what POD resources currently exist and brainstorm ideas for creating new ones.
handouts | video recording (88 MB) | audio recording (331 MB) | chat transcript | session notes
As educational developers, we focus on helping others, experiencing the same stressors faced by the faculty with whom we work and then some, but perhaps without enough opportunities to reflect on our own well-being. Through discussion of research, collective experience, surveys and interviews, participants in this session will explore educational developers’ encounters with burnout and compassion fatigue; assess their own levels of stress and resilience; identify tangible, realistic strategies for practicing better self-care; and establish a network of support that might help us all re-engage with our work, define what matters for us, and find greater satisfaction and success.
handouts | video recording (807 MB) | audio recording (24 MB)
Are you interested in taking some of your programming online? What is your purpose in doing an online event? Join us to explore whether an interactive webinar format may be appropriate and how we can rethink the webinar experience to create authentic interaction with our audiences. We will discuss best practices and tools that encourage real interaction and create a meaningful experience for everyone who attends.
handout | video recording (344 MB) | audio recording (19 MB) | chat transcript | session notes
If you are reading this description, you are likely in the field of educational development (or aspire to be). You may work in for center of teaching and learning (or similar organizational unit) or support faculty in teaching in other ways. You may have been (or continue to be) a scholar in a particular discipline or professional field. Have you considered turning what you do, or what you think about doing, as an educational developer into published scholarship?
Educational development emphasizes the value of evidence-based practice, and you can be a part of how we enhance that body of evidence. This interactive workshop focuses on providing an overview of the emerging field of the scholarship of educational development, including what it is, who it’s for, where it came from, and (possibly) where it is going. You will have the opportunity to think through turning your practice into research through inquiry, analysis; and reflection; integrate your disciplinary or professional background into your process; and consider how research and scholarship may fit into your long-term professional development goals.
You will leave this session with an idea and a plan for your next scholarship project. This session is ideal for beginners or novices; though experienced educational development scholars may also find opportunities to generate new questions, find colleagues with shared interests, and/or shape long-term research goals.
handouts | video recording (52 MB) | session notes
Lieutenant Commander Charlotte Mundy will speak briefly about military vs academic cultures, acknowledging the fundamental differences and exploring similarities. She will offer thoughts on why a written leadership or command philosophy is important, the importance of knowing your own leadership style, and how to effectively communicate your philosophy to your team. Then, after about 15 minutes from LCDR Mundy, we will have questions and discussion.
Advance readings 1 2 3 4 5 | video recording (202 MB) | audio recording (22 MB) | roundtable notes
Using the metaphor of an orchestra conductor, we explore different ways to lead collaboratively, either within a center, in a classroom, or at an organizational level. We refer to a TED Talk by Itay Talgam, called “Lead Like the Great Conductors.”
TED talk | video recording (306 MB) | audio recording (25 MB) | roundtable notes
What does it mean to “lead from where you are?” In this roundtable, attendees will be presented with a set of ideas that explain why leadership at all levels is needed in organizations now more than ever, and will explore examples of practical tools to help emerging leaders understand what it takes to create change from their desk. After a short presentation, attendees will contribute their questions, thoughts and observations about this type of leadership and the support needed to help develop leaders in this way of thinking.
advance reading | video recording (213 MB) | audio recording (23 MB) | roundtable notes
We will discuss “exemplary leadership” and what it means to you. You will receive materials prior to the session summarizing the leadership model by Kouzes and Posner. Main questions to be addressed are: How do you lead the way? How do you motivate and challenge others and inspire a shared vision? How do you enable others to act and induce change?
advance reading | video recording (206 MB) | audio recording (24 MB) | roundtable notes