Dr. Nancy Pawlyshyn, Dr. Braddlee, and Dr. Laurette Olson co-authored this presentation. On Feb. 16, 2011 Dr. Olson and I presented this to the ELI Educause event in Washington DC.

1. Faculty Learning
Communities:
A Model for Faculty
Development
and Technology Integration
Dr. Braddlee, Dean of Libraries, Academic Technology and Online Learning
Nancy Pawlyshyn, Chief Assessment Officer
Laurette Olson, Professor of Health Sciences
MERCY COLLEGE • NEW YORK

2. Today’s Presenters
Braddlee, Dean Nancy Pawlyshyn Matt Lewis, Laurette Olson,
of Libraries, Chief Assessment Senior Professor of
Academic Officer Instructional Health Sciences
Technology and Academic Affairs Designer
Online Learning

3. Today’s Presentation
How do we create a sustainable culture of
technology-infused teaching and learning?
 An institutional model that works to
 engage faculty with technology integration
 build an infrastructure to support it
 facilitate faculty ownership
 develop faculty leadership around technology integration
 shift focus from technology to conceptual basis for successful
teaching and learning

4. Today’s Presentation
 Background
 Institutional context, state of technology integration
 Infrastructure
 Building and supporting a faculty development model
 Leadership
 Roles, strategies and support
 Impact
 Institution, faculty and students
 Sustainability
 Lessons learned, continued management
 Vision for the future

5. Background

6. About Mercy College
 New York metropolitan area minority-serving institution
 10,000 students in five campus locations
 90+ graduate and undergraduate programs and online
 70% of classes have fewer than 20 students
 approximately 220 full-time faculty and 600 visiting, professional
and adjunct faculty
 One of the most affordable, private, not-for profit institutions in the
U.S. (tuition is about $16K per year)
 Mission to provide motivated students the opportunity to
transform their lives through higher education.
 Mercy’s PACT (Personalized Achievement Contract)
program mentors students to persistence and success.

7. Prior State of Academic Technology
 Pockets of innovation
 No college-wide systematic technology plan
 Leverage what was working to benefit the whole college
 Assessment of student learning becomes a driver

8. Why ePortfolios?...
 Began as a conversation during the ―Winter Dialogues‖
 Discussed as an authentic and useful tool for our student
population which needs multiple supports for persistence
 Committee behavior focused on previous failures
 Members listened and heard the possibility of
reconsideration

9. From there to institution-wide impact
 Grown from a conversation in an ad hoc committee to an
institution-wide project in under two years
 Wide range of use: course developmental work, program
assessment , faculty dossier, recent Middle States report
 Has effectively become a key part of our assessment
program for the entire College

10. Why had previous ePortfolio efforts
failed?
 Advanced by a single faculty user
 Few perceived benefits to faculty
 Believed that students would not engage with this type of
technology
 Perceived as being difficult—technology too advanced
 No formal faculty development program or infrastructure to
advance initiatives
 Seen as being too costly

11. Infrastructure

12. Getting Started: The early steps
 Established small group of faculty
 Attended summer ePortfolio institute
 Growing national interest in ePortfolios to:
 Improve student engagement
 Collect artifacts that provide evidence of learning
 Conduct assessment of learning
 Based on traditional portfolio concept, ePortfolios are
collections of artifacts online:
 Artifacts can include various media (e.g., text, images, video, audio)
 Artifacts are uploaded to an electronic workspace
 Software is used to provide a way for interaction: draft, feedback,
reflection, resubmit, present

13. Getting Started: The early steps
 Learning Portfolios—
 Created by the student and reflect a student-centered
approach
 Include defined learning outcomes
 Encourage reflective thinking
 Span multiple courses, or entire college experience
 Foster integrative learning across varied domains
(academic/professional/cross-disciplinary, knowledge/practice)

14. Getting Started: Choosing a tool
 Determined our own needs for a tool
 Brainstormed our needs
 Developed a matrix
 Identified our priority: well-supported and user-friendly
interface with integrated assessment tools (rubrics and
standards)
 In-depth analysis of tools and vendors resulted in pilot of
TaskStream in Spring 2009
 Started very small with a few classes / small goals and 50
student accounts

15. Getting Started: The early steps
 Set overarching strategic learning goals for the introduction
of ePortfolio for students around engagement, assessment
and technology
 Primary goal: to engage students in reflection, and also...
 To use ePortfolio to advance a philosophy of assessment for
learning, and an...
 awareness of own urgency to bring technology fluency to
our students’ ways of learning.

16. Building a Faculty Learning Community
 Recognized need for an identity
 Adopted the model of the faculty learning community
 Group included an administrative champion
 Key role: enabling the group to believe their work would have
an outcome
 Nature of work was intentional, inspired, self-directed and
collaborative
 Based on inquiry and scholarship

17. What is a Faculty Learning Community?
In Milton Cox’s work, a FLC is defined as:
―a cross-disciplinary faculty and staff group of six to fifteen
members who engage in an active, collaborative
…curriculum about enhancing teaching and learning with
…activities that provide learning, development, the
scholarship of teaching, and community building…‖
(Cox, 2004)

18. Theoretical Underpinnings
 Collaborative learning forms the basis of the
construction of knowledge (Dewey, 1938).
 Empowers the learner as an active participant in the
construction of knowledge (Bruffee, 1993).
 Builds trust in an environment of “…clarity, consensus,
and commitment regarding the organization’s basic
purposes…‖ (Vaill, 1984 in Sergiovanni, 1992, p.83).
 Creates conditions that lead to innovation (Bielacyzc & Collins,
2006).
 Situates faculty as leaders in their role as knowledge
creators (Pawlyshyn, 2010).

19. Reasons for Success
 Academic innovations have failed because they have been
implemented without an understanding of ―how faculty learn
and develop, how change occurs in academic culture, and
what the most effective strategies are for change‖ (Angelo,
2002).
 ―Colleges have greatly underestimated faculty acceptance
of accountability and, consequently, have not tapped their
creativity in defining and implementing meaningful systems
for it ‖ (Crow, 2004).

20. Leadership
“The litmus test of all leadership is whether it mobilizes
people’s commitment to put their energy into actions
designed to improve things” (Fullan, 2001).

21. Three Key Leadership Roles
 Faculty learning community
 Emerging infrastructure to support innovation and
faculty leadership
 Identity as MePort, the Mercy College ePortfolio
Project
 Newly launched Faculty Center for Teaching &
Learning, led by six faculty leaders, provides
umbrella. Funded by a Title V grant to support
technology integration in teaching & learning.
 Administrative champions are strong collaborators

22. Principles Guiding Implementation
 Inclusiveness not exclusiveness – no application
 Membership vs. attendance
 Connection to colleagues valued and fostered
 Staff and Faculty co-facilitators leading sessions
 Collaborative research projects
 Development of curriculum modules
 Training and group gatherings supplement small cohort
meetings
 Rewards-based: no financial compensation

23. Key Strategies for Success
 Being strategic—seeking opportunities, communicating
progress, sharing not proselytizing
 Seeking out possible funding sources from grants
 Establishing support from senior administration
 Creating a workable process—regular meetings, space,
supplies, books, lunch
 Setting up the pilot with a research design—aligned with
the faculty approach to problem solving and scholarship
 Starting with small achievable goals
 Institutional support

24. Impact

25. Institutional Impact: Our Evolution
 Summer 2008: 5 faculty and 1 administrator - Explored
 Fall 2008: 9 faculty, 3 staff, 1 administrator - Defined
 Spring 2009: 11 faculty, 3 staff, 1 administrator - Piloted
 Fall 2009: Two learning communities with 33 faculty -
Expanded
 Fall 2009: The Faculty Center leadership led a Fall faculty
seminar day on the theme of ―Innovation and Collaboration,‖
which launched the concept of faculty learning communities
to advance faculty-led initiatives - Shared

26. Institutional Impact:
Where We Are Today
 The original faculty learning community is now the facilitation team
for MePort.
 Strategic planning and organization of all logistics.
100 faculty in MePort learning communities
1000 students have begun
ePortfolios by Fall 2010
 This number grows daily.

27. Institutional Impact:
Where We Are Today
 The Faculty Learning Community is the model of choice
for other technology integration initiatives.
• Digital storytelling
• iClickers
• WIMBA
• Online pedagogy

28. Impact: Diversity of ePortfolio
Applications
 Tenure and promotion dossier/professional development
planning
 Framework for fieldwork and practicum reflection and
assessment
 Program capstone and general education assessment
 Course learning folios
 Assessment for prior learning achievement
 Student showcase of best work

29. Impact of the Learning Community
 Ongoing qualitative data collection includes faculty reflections that
present these themes:
 Strengthened faculty confidence to experiment
 Established sense of engagement at the College
 Enabled independent thought
 Underscored importance of community and team
 Motivation to participate is not based on financial rewards (Pink, 2010).

30. Student Impact
 Initial survey data shows that 71% of our students
indicate they see better evidence of their learning and
get more feedback from their faculty using the
ePortfolio tool
 Evidence points us in a direction of increasing our
outreach and training efforts for students.
 Increasing integration between ePortfolio and our
Learning Management System

31. Impact of Faculty Learning
Community Model on my
Engagement with Technology
Dr. Laurette Olson, Professor, School of Health Sciences

32. My teaching challenges
 Teach undergraduate and graduate courses to working,
adult students who have full time jobs, family
responsibilities, live a distance from campus, and rely
on old cars or public transportation
 Teach nontraditional weekend classes that meet from 9
am to 5:30 pm
 Collaborate with adjuncts in teaching; they support my
teaching by facilitating small groups and supervising
students as the students design and lead groups for
children. They live a distance from campus and have
full time jobs and families.

33. Technology can support the
resolutions of these challenges,
but locating, exploring and
applying learning technologies are
time consuming, overwhelming
and frustrating if an instructor goes
at it alone (unless you’re a
―techie‖).

34. FLCs provided me with:
 Access to learning about technology side by side with other
faculty on my home campus
 New ways to look at teaching and learning
 Relaxed, supportive, warm environment to learn, practice and
apply technological assists for teaching and learning
 A cross disciplinary community
 Social modeling of self efficacy
 New colleagues who were open, willing and available to offer
support and tutorials as I applied technologies.
 Self direction and self paced learning and application of learning

35. WIMBA FLC: Virtual
Classroom technology
The confidence to say that : Class
goes on…. even in a blizzard

36. Ways that Faculty in my FLC
and I are using WIMBA
 Extra help sessions
 Office hours
 Learning communities of students and faculty
 Small group supervision and discussions
 Bringing in guest speakers who might not otherwise be
able to participate

37. Taskstream Eportfolio FLC helped my
students and me go from:
Supporting Meta-reflection

38. Learning to present myself and how to
teach my students how to present
themselves through an eportfolio

39. Iclickers FLC gave me a way to :
Engage students in focusing on key
concepts.
Promote critical thinking about class
content: the students and me.
Collect excellent formative assessment data

40. Positive experiences with Formal FLCs
lead to informal FLCs to address
teaching/learning needs: One example
 Google Docs informal FLC:
 to help faculty problem based learning facilitators help
students share their group work in an organized way.
 Initiated by faculty (me) but supported by FCTL through
the support of an instructional designer to create initial
materials for teaching faculty and students specific ways
of using Google Docs.

41. Indirect benefits of core faculty participating in
FLCs: More adjuncts using technology to
support their teaching
 Enthusiasm and belief in the benefits of the
technologies for teaching and learning engages
adjuncts in learning and using technology in classes
where they co-teach with core faculty.
 Adjuncts seek out learning and supports to apply
technologies to enhance teaching and learning in their
own classes
 Adjuncts experience teaching as more do-able and
rewarding with technology tools and supports.

42. Sustainability

43. Sustainability: Ongoing Challenges
 Challenge:
 Changing the culture of the College
 Overcoming resistance to change and accepting individual
initiative as change agent outside the established hierarchy
 Strategies:
 Sharing success and garnering broad attention
 Infusing the project with scholarship and opportunities for faculty to
publish and present
 FIPSE Grant collaboration with Melissa Peet at UMichigan and
partnering with Boston University, Clemson, DePaul, and Portland
State

44. Sustainability: Ongoing Challenges
 Challenge:
 Supporting and engaging faculty, including adjuncts
 Protecting faculty initiative
 Strategies:
 Offering enough training and connection opportunities to
sustain support
 Building opportunities for faculty to share work
 Expanding outreach to increase acceptance

45. Sustainability: Ongoing Challenges
 Challenge:
 Sustaining funding support in downturns
 Strategies:
 Always seeking funding from grants and collaborations
 Write ePortfolios and other technology initiatives into grant
proposals
 Institutionalizing faculty learning communities within the
Faculty Center and the organizational structure where it
resides – budgets, staff, space

46. Sustainability: Ongoing Challenges
 Challenge:
 Increasing student engagement
 Strategies:
 Training workshops for students
 Intense development over the summer of 2010
 Students help design the workshops and class visits
 Expanded multimedia tools for students
 Focus our learning community efforts on students

47. Sustainability: Continued
Management
 Continued leadership from senior administration
 Appointment of Chief Assessment Officer in Academic
Affairs and new Dean with oversight of Academic
Technology
 15-member MePort Facilitation Team serves as a model for
implementation of other initiatives
 Supporting project through planning and service
 More school-based outreach to deans and chairs
 Liaisons appointed from schools

48. Concluding thoughts
 A sustainable commitment to technology integration across
the institution requires
 Faculty engagement and ownership
 Willingness to experiment
 Effective tools that are relevant for your institution
 Resources from across the institution and with external
partners
 A pull approach as opposed to push
 Leadership across key constituents

49. QUESTIONS?
braddlee@mercy.edu
npawlyshyn@mercy.edu
http://nancybpawlyshyn.wordpress.com
lolson@mercy.edu

50. References
 Angelo, T. (2002) Engaging and supporting faculty in the scholarship of assessment. In T. Banta, (2002). Building a
scholarship of assessment (2nd edition). San Francisco. Jossey-Bass.
 Banta, T.W. (2002). Building a scholarship of assessment (2nd edition). San Francisco. Jossey-Bass.
 Barrett. H. (2010, May 6). Portfolio life: ePortfolios for faculty professional development and lifelong learning.
Presentation at the first annual Mercy College Faculty Development Symposium, Bronx, NY.
 Bielaczyc, K. & Collins, A. (2006). Fostering knowledge-creating communities. In A. O’Donnell, C. Hmelo-Silver, & G.
Erkens. (2006) Collaborative learning, reasoning and technology. NJ: Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
 Bruffee, Kenneth. (1998). Collaborative learning: Higher education, interdependence, and the authority of knowledge.
MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
 Cox, M. (2004). Introduction to faculty learning communities. [Electronic version]. New Directions for Teaching and
Learning. No. 97.
 Crow, S. (2004, April) Testimony to the National Commission on Accountability in Higher Education. Chicago, IL.
Retrieved June 7, 2009 from http://www.sheeo.org/account/comm/testim/NCACS%20testimony.pdf
 Dewey, J. (1938, 1997). Experience & education. New York: Touchstone
 Fullan, M. (2001). Leadership in a culture of change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

51. References
 Hubball, H., Collins, J. & Pratt, D. (2005, September) Enhancing reflective teaching practices:
Implications for faculty development programs. [Electronic Version]. The Canadian Journal of Higher
Education. Vol. 35, No. 3, pp. 57-81. Retrieved April 2009 from
http://www.eric.ed.gov:80/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp_nfpb=true&_&ER
ICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ771031&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ771031
 Macpherson. A. (2007, Oct.). Faculty learning communities: The heart of the transformative learning
organization. Transformative dialogues: Teaching & learning journal. Vol. 1, issue 2. Kwantlen
University College. Retrieved June 7, 2009 from
http://kwantlen.ca/TD/TD.12/TD.1.2_Macpherson_Learning_Communities.pdf.
 O’Meara, K. (2005). The courage to be experimental: How one faculty learning community influenced
faculty teaching careers, understanding of how students learn and assessment. [Electronic version].
Journal of Faculty Development, Vol. 20, No. 3 New Forums Press, Stillwater, OK. Retrieved April 2009
from http://newforums.metapress.com/content/c7q78188nl447804/
 Pink, D. (2009). Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. NY: Riverhead Books.
 Senge, P. (1990). Give me a lever long enough…and single-handed I can move the world. In Jossey-
Bass (2007). The Jossey-Bass reader on educational leadership (2nd ed.) San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
 Sergiovanni, T. (1992). Leadership as stewardship. In Jossey-Bass (2007). The Jossey-Bass reader on
educational leadership (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.