Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.

As an Instructional Designer, I will continue building this portfolio that addresses Faculty Development Instruction add-ons for my university. This artifact centers on Quality Reviews of a faculty participant’s development course to align with the Assessing Online Programs module and building online social communities. 

The Mechenbier and Warnock essay directly connected to my goals as I am currently in the process of creating a faculty peer observation guide sheet for online instructors in my department. These authors extensively explore the topic of who should conduct online course observations. I align with the CCCC’s "A Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction" that they cite and am currently designing materials for faculty peer observations based on these guidelines:

Effective Practice 7.11: Online writing teachers should be evaluated/assessed by a peer or supervisor who has similar training and equal or superior abilities/experience in writing instruction generally and OWI particularly.

I appreciate their “Reading an Online Writing Course” position, viewing it more as a conversation than a strict evaluation—essentially experiencing the course as a student and then providing feedback. As they note, it is “a formative, not summative, process about teaching” (A13), and the observation product is a narrative, non-judgmental artifact (A14). 

Additionally, M.K. Stewart’s article on the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework and survey has been particularly enlightening. Although I may be late to discovering this, it was the first time I’ve read about knowledge construction happening through social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence. While I’ve read extensively about the importance of student interactions in writing environments, I never fully appreciated these benefits until reading Stewart’s article—this is where things truly clicked for me and I was able to apply the concept to faculty as students in the IDL6543 training. The survey results indicating that the potential of the course may not have been fully realized underscored the value of such a survey for our own courses, highlighting its potential to significantly improve our teaching practices for all instructors. The deparmental COI's and peer reviews have been particually effective for our OWI faculty that often see themselves as "different" in the pedagogical approach to assessments. 

Both Stewart’s and the Mechenbier & Warnock readings in Module 4 has influenced my Artifact. I strongly feel that the 10 week faculty development program (IDL6543) creates a community of practice and has several opportunities for a collaborative development. A QM peer review for the participants to use during the a live, interactive session will anchor the idea that faculty need to partner with the assigned instructional designer for future pedagogical guidance and course updates. This assignment will also encourage a community of departmental and university-wide peers for feedback and discussion.

Having run our faculty development program for 7 years and working on a redesign of the program, I am hoping to gain knowledge and insight in how to best support OWI faculty across the curriculum during this training—and beyond. I would like for the artifact that I created for this module to be used in the canvas course during our peer review.

NOTE: These artifacts are now a part of our part of the IDL6543 Redesigned course piloted in 2023 and taught in Spring 2024.