Faculty Professional Development Series: Infographics
General description of the project
The purpose of this proposal is to showcase a Title V Promoting Postbaccalaureate Opportunities for Hispanic Program Graduate Grant at the HETS 2021 Virtual Best Practices. The grant was awarded to Albizu University, Miami (AU-M), in October 2019. The Title V PPOHA Graduate Grant addresses gaps and weakness that hinder the University from adequately serving that needs of Hispanics and disadvantages of postbaccalaureate students and support the professional development of faculty to improve their online teaching and learning.
Under Initiative #1 of the grant, which focuses on strengthening and expanding online/hybrid graduate program offerings, the project proposed developing a new system for high-quality online instruction and preparation of faculty to adopt Quality Matters (QM) standards.
This proposal will focus on the use of infographics for delivering professional development for faculty in best practices for online teaching. Through the infographics series, faculty learned to appropriately integrate technology into the curriculum to meet QM standards and improve their delivery of instruction to graduate students. Faculty who participated in this project learned about online course design and delivery and trained to use online tools to evaluate the effectiveness of the online courses and its impact on student achievement.
Technologies
A series of 13 infographics were created and disseminated via email weekly. The infographics were made available for download via Blackboard. The infographics were created using Venngage, an online platform that allows for easy creation of graphics, so there was no additional cost to the university. The infographics were saved in PDF format so they can be displayed on Blackboard as well as saved for later.
Explain project results
Developing technology competence among all faculty is critical to enhancing the online learning platform in which technology is used to support the curriculum and meet the individual learning needs of all students. Through participation, faculty will be able to bring technology-enhanced lessons to their online courses as they integrate new technologies into their teaching practices.
Why it should be considered best practice?
• Integrate technology more effectively into teaching online
• Build capacity to offer quality training to an increased number of faculty
• Provide the institution with educators trained in the creation of online curricula, an essential resource as institutions move to online instruction because of the COVID-19 pandemic
• Develop leadership capacity and expertise of educators and administrators
• Help faculty gain access to high-quality training resources
• Offer time flexibility that makes it possible for more faculty to receive meaningful professional development
• Create a community that can work together toward a common goal of using technology to help meet curricular goals
Highlights of your proposed presentation
The goal is to assist faculty with time constraints by providing more flexible options. Examples of the infographic topics include Accessibility for Online Learning, Writing High-Quality Course Objectives & Learning Outcomes by Incorporating Bloom’s Taxonomy, and Using Best Practices for Lecture Videos.
As a capacity-building project focused on quality professional development and technology integration into the curriculum, the PPOHA grant will enable the institution to sustain this learning far beyond the grant period and change institutional practices that impact professional development.
The Evaluation Committee will evaluate submitted proposals based on the following criteria. Each area will be rated on a scale from 1 to 7 (1= non-satisfactory; 7 =outstanding), for a maximum of 63 points.