Center for Teaching and Learning wins praise from Faculty Senate for help with remote teaching

The Center for Teaching and Learning helps Wright State faculty members prepare for teaching.

Wright State University’s Faculty Senate has officially applauded the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), which has been instrumental in providing training and programming that has helped faculty skillfully teach their classes remotely.

On Sept. 14, the Faculty Senate passed a resolution highlighting the pivotal role CTL has played at Wright State during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Throughout the summer and fall terms, the CTL provided nearly around-the-clock-service to faculty through the Remote Teaching Plus, Online Teaching and Learning Community, Remote Teaching Virtual Summit and monthly Tips and Sips programs while simultaneously performing regular instructional design services and workshops to faculty,” the resolution reads.

The resolution goes on to say that CTL’s instructional designers, digital technology analysts, distance learning specialists, multimedia specialists and teaching innovation coordinators have gone above and beyond their job requirements to support faculty, teaching assistants and graduate instructors.

Faculty Senate President Laura Luehrmann said the Senate rarely suspends the rules and adopts a resolution in a singular sitting, like it did with the CTL resolution.

“From the very beginning of the recognition of the pandemic in early March through this very day, the instructional faculty are leaning on our colleagues in the CTL to help us provide the best learning opportunities available to our students,” said Luehrmann. “It was truly a privilege to help facilitate this resolution, which garnered the unquestioned unanimous support of the full Faculty Senate. It’s but a small token of our deep appreciation.”

Lisa Kenyon, faculty director for CTL, thanked the faculty on behalf of CTL and Terri Klaus, CTL director.

“We understand receiving this resolution is a rarity, a very special honor from the Faculty Senate,” said Kenyon. “This means a great deal to the staff to be appreciated by the faculty, whom they serve with dedication. We are very grateful and consider ourselves fortunate to work with a faculty body that would take time to create this thoughtful tribute.”

When Wright State moved to remote delivery of courses in March to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, CTL became a nerve center of instruction for remote teaching.

CTL regularly hosts webinars on remote teaching tips for faculty.

During Spring Semester, CTL provided training and remote teaching programs that enabled faculty to quickly transform their courses to an emergency remote teaching mode.

For Summer and Fall Semesters, there was a shift to higher quality remote, hybrid or online teaching using best practices and preparedness.

Interim Provost Douglas Leaman said that while it is clear that all of the faculty worked very hard over the summer to prepare their courses for the fall, their abilities to effectively, efficiently and creatively transform their materials for remote delivery were enhanced greatly by the efforts of the CTL staff.

“The myriad of programs presented by CTL provided ample opportunities for instructors at all levels of technical proficiency to receive great advice on how to make the transition,” he said. “I am very proud of what was accomplished.”

CTL offers instructional design services, classroom consultation, writing boot camps and workshops on course design, educational tools, classroom management and other topics. The CTL offices are located in Room 023 in the tunnel below Dunbar Library.

CTL experienced an exponential rise in faculty requests for assistance from January to March. In March, there were 1,062 faculty interactions compared to 342 in January.

In response to the increased need for assistance, CTL offers the following programs:

Online Teaching and Learning Community

A professional development opportunity offered by CTL’s instructional design team, this seven-week program is intended for people who wish to learn more about online learning and includes 16 to 24 faculty at one time. It is designed to give participants a better understanding of how to design, develop and teach quality online and hybrid courses. The course offers seven online modules, optional weekly face-to-face deep-dive sessions and a culminating online final presentation.

Tips and Sips: Remote Teaching Happy Hour for Faculty

A virtual safe space for faculty to grab a drink, get a snack and drop in on a Collaborate Ultra session to share successes and challenges around remote teaching and learning. Faculty can chat with others who may be having common experiences. Potential topics include alternative assessments, virtual labs, online active learning, equity and work-life balance.

Remote Teaching Plus (RT+)

This program enables faculty to engage one-on-one with an instructional designer and receive dedicated instruction and feedback to produce a custom, organized remote teaching course shell. Faculty will come away with a pedagogically sound course in Pilot-based best practices in instructional design and Quality Matters guidelines. Faculty will still be required to create their own content, but they will be able to utilize the instructional designer they worked with as a “coach” throughout the term.

Core Services and Resources

A comprehensive list of online resources is available to faculty on the CTL website. The Remote Teaching Tips and Resources webpage includes upcoming webinars, workshops, recordings, tutorials, links and articles.