Abstract

This article provides leaders and educational developers of Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTL) with innovative and practical strategies on how to increase their centers’ capacity and impact by focusing on quality, efficiency, and cost. This “good, fast, cheap” model represents a promising way that CTL can continue to grow, scale, and innovate in the midst of limited resources. By leveraging existing campus resources, external vendor products, and low cost technologies, CTL are able to remain effective and impactful, without compromising quality or requiring abundant resources. This article will include real use case examples from a CTL at a mid size, private, nonprofit university in Southern California and its use of the “good, fast, cheap” model in its planning and implementation with the aim of generalizing these creative solutions to be applied elsewhere.

Keywords: administration, sustainability, technology, service, collaboration

Introduction

Christensen and Eyring (2011) contend that higher education is currently undergoing a “disruptive innovation” that will inevitably lead to sudden, fundamental changes similar to other industries, including newspapers, music stores, and book stores. Moreover, higher education is facing what Selingo (2013) aptly calls the “value proposition,” whereby academic organizations are being held more accountable when it comes to improving student learning and demonstrating effective teaching. In recent years, many members of the POD Network—the premier professional organization devoted to improving teaching and learning in higher education—have expressed concerns not only about being asked to do more with less but also about justifying their work in educational development as important and necessary.

Given today’s highly disruptive, politically contested, and financially constrained campus environment, Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTL) must find creative and innovative strategies to fulfill their mission. This article provides CTL leaders and educational developers with innovative and practical strategies on how to increase their centers’ capacity and impact by focusing on quality, efficiency, and cost. The “good, fast, cheap” model represents a promising way that CTL can continue to grow, scale, and innovate in the midst of limited resources. By leveraging existing campus resources, external vendor products, and low cost technologies, CTL are able to remain effective and impactful, without compromising quality or requiring abundant resources. This article will include real use case examples from a CTL at a mid size, private, nonprofit, university in Southern California and its use of the “good, fast, cheap” model in its planning and implementation with the aim of generalizing these creative solutions to be applied elsewhere.

Organize for Effectiveness

Azusa Pacific University (APU) is a private, faith based, doctoral institution located in southern California, with eight regional centers in the greater region. With a student enrollment of 10,000, equally divided between undergraduate and graduate, the University has a strong commitment to both teaching and scholarship in order to provide effective education at all levels. Additionally, APU’s 500+ full time and 1,200+ adjunct faculty are expected to incorporate principles of Christian faith into courses and academic programs. Given these expected levels of proficiency, all of which are evaluated as part of the extended contract and promotion system, there is a significant need for faculty resourcing.

When APU created the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment (CTLA) in August 2011, a primary motivation was to reorganize under one umbrella existing offices that were designed to equip faculty but that which existed in isolation. Specifically, APU had offices for online course creation, faculty development, faculty evaluation, diversity, faith integration, and student learning assessment, all of which had different reporting structures and none of which strategized together for how to effectively resource faculty. The creation of CTLA, which incorporated these offices, along with Institutional Research, brought cohesion and focus to the work of the offices and its 26 full time employees. Team meetings with leaders of each office enable CTLA to coordinate its outreach to faculty and to maximize impact by collaborating across units when it makes sense to do so.

Because CTLA is still considered a relatively new entity, the evidence of its effectiveness is still emerging. Faculty attendance and engagement with the many offerings is being tracked, and all indicators to date are that CTLA is offering a wide and helpful array of faculty development initiatives. In some cases, improvement in teaching scores has been a demonstrated outcome, but most assessment data rely on participation numbers and occasional video or written testimony. In terms of its organization, CTLA is much more efficient, for the reasons identified below, but overall effectiveness is hard to measure.

In a resource constrained environment, sharing staffing and recruiting faculty volunteers are essential practices. CTL often do not have the luxury of adequate full time equivalents (FTEs), space, or budget to enact the task given to them. Therefore, creative strategies to maximize available personnel on campus are often necessary. CTLA is expected to resource the university across 10 significant academic functions, ranging from online, hybrid, and face to face course design, full coordination of the course evaluation process across all units, all institutional research and survey functions, University wide assessment of student learning and program review, faculty diversity and faith integration proficiency, and management of the promotion and tenure process. To do so effectively requires the sharing of resources and staff that are distributed across its five offices (Figure 1).

Figure 1. CTLA OrganizationFigure 1. CTLA Organization

Specifically, CTLA shares administrative support staff and utilizes a project based resource approach on some of its major initiatives. For example, the Office of Diversity coordinates a national conference each spring. The two person office cannot manage all that a national conference entails, so other CTLA administrative staff “step in” to take on some of the logistics. This same approach is utilized for New Faculty Orientation (NFO), multi day institutes, and a full day faculty development conference that is offered each year. Administrative staff in CTLA are expected (and happy) to collaborate on projects that are too big for the office that has been assigned to coordinate the initiative.

Another example of the way that CTLA organizes for effectiveness is to utilize a shared pool of student workers. Rather than each office trying to secure funding for a student worker, who may or may not have a sufficient amount of work on any given day, CTLA utilizes a set of workers, managed by one of the staff, and assigned to tasks each day based on need. Student workers benefit from a continual flow of work, as well as a broader work experience from serving multiple offices.

Finally, CTLA capitalizes on the wealth of expertise found in its faculty at APU through the utilization of faculty fellows. Each office utilizes faculty fellows to differing degrees with different amounts of structure, but CTLA recognizes that utilization of faculty promotes buy in for the work it is trying to accomplish, as well as capitalization on expertise that may not be found in the professionals in the Center. For example, the Office of Innovative Teaching and Technology took on a faculty fellow who is an expert media and graphics artist, and he served as a consultant for faculty working on projects that would benefit from such expertise. While not necessarily “cheap” (faculty fellows are typically paid a stipend or given workload units), it is an effective and facile approach to advancing CTLA’s most important initiatives. Just as CTLA leadership utilizes a team based approach, faculty fellows are able to articulate the goals of CTLA broadly and to advocate for faculty involvement across all elements of CTLA, not just the office that they serve.

In short, the takeaway strategy for CTL to consider is whether they are organized for effectiveness. While this may not be as dramatic a reorganization as was utilized by APU, there may be options for collaboration across units that bear consideration. One practical starting point is to conduct a program assessment to better understand existing priorities and opportunities for improvement (Felten, Little, Ortquist Ahrens, & Reder, 2013). For example, CTL might consider how faculty support on their campuses can be streamlined and integrated, so their faculty can get what they need with the least amount of effort or touch points. Moreover, CTL might consider how to capitalize on the availability of existing student workers, staff members, and faculty fellows to advance the vision and mission of their Centers without adding new positions.

Utilize Low Cost, High Impact Strategies

While organizing for effectiveness is a first step to improving faculty support on a campus, identifying low cost, high impact strategies is a close second. CTL often have the best intentions of equipping its faculty, only to be limited by the fiscal resources available to them. CTLA is well resourced, but its goals for positive impact are very ambitious, so there is always a need to find ways to positively impact faculty without “breaking the bank” (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Low Cost, High Impact StrategiesFigure 2. Low Cost, High Impact Strategies

Foster Faculty Dialogue

When CTLA was in its inception and APU faculty were asked in a needs assessment survey what they desired from a new Center, one of the most frequent responses was “the opportunity to dialogue with one another.” As such, CTLA is committed to providing opportunities for faculty dialogue, which illustrates a low cost, high impact strategy. Examples of CTLA’s most successful dialogue producing initiatives include the utilization of Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs), brown bag, faculty led topical lunch discussions (called GIFTS—Good Ideas for Teaching Students), and Faculty Development Day, a one day faculty development conference with a faculty selected theme, faculty selected proposals, and faculty led workshops. This event, in particular, has provided significant opportunity for dialogue and community building across all faculty units. The logistical coordination of Faculty Development Day is managed by CTLA, but the event is spearheaded by the Faculty Development Council. While CTLA chooses to provide lunch at many of these events, all of them can be scaled down to budget. The primary goal of each is to give faculty space to share their expertise, rather than disseminating the expertise of the CTLA professionals.

Recognize Faculty Expertise

Another low cost, high impact strategy is to utilize faculty recognition strategies. Many faculty will volunteer to share their expertise with others when they have been identified with some form of recognition. The use of faculty fellows, while paid at APU, can be “honorific” positions in a Center and can be incentivized without depleting fiscal resources. Identifying pedagogical specialists, excellent teachers, or teaching mentors can be an effective way to honor faculty but also to utilize their expertise for the advancement of the Center’s mission. In addition to identifying and recognizing skilled faculty, APU is initiating a digital badging system to recognize faculty who participate in CTLA events. While very low cost (and some may argue superficial in nature), there is an element of recognition and potentially increased motivation to engage with the Center when participation is acknowledged. Additionally, APU’s faculty advancement system recognizes the importance of professional development by encouraging faculty to record their participation in APU specific and externally sponsored professional development. Building professional development into the promotion system can increase a Center’s impact on a campus.

Maximize Existing Effort and Resources

While often difficult to manage and navigate, resource constrained realities can provide CTL with just the right motivation to maximize existing effort and resources. Bolman and Deal (1991) argue that different sectors within an organization, as viewed through the “political frame,” must compete for a limited supply of resources. As we have explained above, sectors that can come together, share human resources, and work toward a common mission will find that such limitation affects them much less (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Strategies to Maximize Efforts and ResourcesFigure 3. Strategies to Maximize Efforts and Resources

Stream Live Workshops

One strategy CTL can employ to maximize existing workshops and events is to use a web conferencing tool when possible and appropriate. Streaming live workshops is a variation of what some CTL have done with podcasting (Evins, 2010). Many CTL typically approach faculty workshops with a “if you build it, they will come” mentality. In other words, CTL spend weeks preparing and planning for a workshop, hoping to draw a large crowd. However, what typically happens is that only a small number of faculty attend, and many of them are the “usual suspects.”

CTLA offers monthly sessions for new faculty, addressing different topics ranging from training in the campus’ learning management system to an introduction to academic service learning to exploring the evaluation of student learning. For each session, faculty members at the main campus attend in person, while those teaching at regional campuses attend online. We use web conferencing tools to facilitate virtual attendance and participation, whereby the remote attendee can see and hear the presentation. Materials are emailed to remote participants in advance or uploaded to the web conferencing session. A Center professional monitors the chat window and acts as spokesperson for remote viewers as their mics/video are not enabled. And when presenters prompt small group discussions, remote participants form their own group via chat, often creating a very lively chat session. During large group debriefs, then, the chat monitor shares contributions from the online chat. The entire session is recorded and, after minor editing, made available to the entire list of new faculty, including those who missed the session. The synchronous offering also serves to normalize remote viewing and demonstrates a valuing of faculty at regional centers. See below for further explanation about available web conferencing technologies and best practices for using them.

Using web conferencing tools does pose some challenges, such as poor connectivity, equipment failure, user errors, and other problems. However, offering a virtual option to participate has steadily increased the number of faculty attending CTLA’s events over the year. Moreover, the recorded event adds to the Center’s library of resources, accessible and available to any faculty anytime, anywhere, and on any device. Our advice to other CTL is to carefully assess their institution’s culture and context to see whether using multiple modality would be beneficial. Who are the faculty, and what is their general attitude toward attending online events or watching recorded events? Is scheduling a faculty event typically challenging? What technical support staff are available for faculty attending remotely?

Sending Regular, Helpful Emails

Many CTL face a delicate balance between getting good materials out to prospective end users without overloading already full email boxes. One strategy to achieve this balance is through the use of a “grabber” email, sent at regular intervals. This grabber email accomplishes the following: (a) it provides a teaser line for each CTL offering or resource, with a corresponding link that points to a more detailed explanation, (b) because of its regularity, it places the CTL in the mind of the potential end user as the “place to go to when I need help,”(c) it provides identity branding for the CTL as the expert source, even if faculty never click on embedded links, and (d) it maximizes the opportunity by packing in a lot of information in a format that is more likely to be seen and read. The grabber emails should have the same consistent, clean look each time; this helps develop the professional brand identity. Using the same template each time not only helps the end user scan the page, it also makes it easier to put together in very little time.

Always mindful of the large volume of emails entering faculty mailboxes, CTLA’s Office of Innovative Teaching and Technology sends a monthly email that includes key sections: (a) the largest piece—an announcement of a significant offering that month (e.g., Mobile Learning Camp), (b) two smaller sections—one announcing upcoming webinars and workshops (with titles and links) and one listing must read articles (e.g., from IDEA Center, Faculty Focus; see below for descriptions), (c) another small section identifying helpful resources, and (d) a contact info section. While grabber emails compete with other emails faculty receive, when they get through, they play an important role in creating a recognizable brand for CTL as well as serving faculty needs by providing them useful resources every time. Later in this article, we will elaborate further about available email services that can provide useful data, such as open and click rates.

Recycle and Reuse Materials

Another way to maximize resources is to make all offerings count more than once. Just as offering workshops in multiple modalities enhances reach, recycling and reusing materials stretch the impact of each dollar spent. However, planning ahead is key. In the planning stages of a workshop, for example, consider how the workshop will eventually be offered (e.g., both face to face and synchronously online) and coach presenters to build in mechanisms for remote participants to engage in similar small group discussions as those participating face to face. Or ask presenters to provide any workshop materials and handouts in both hardcopy and electronic form. The CTL can prepare a hard binder, e folder on flash drive, or access to a cloud based shared folder as a follow up resource to all faculty, including those who could not attend the workshop.

Knowing that faculty will approach resources in a variety of ways, CTLA uses all three—binder, flash drive, and shared folder—for a number of its offerings. Those in FLCs, for example, access and share monthly reading, handouts, notes, and resources they find in a Google group; faculty are provided a flash drive at the NFO week, then sent handouts from NFO distributed sessions via email to upload to that flash drive; and Center staff keep a binder available in the CTLA office for anyone needing hard copy versions of the materials (e.g., at mid year “Mini NFO” sessions). There is really no downside to double dipping, except the coordination needed to retrieve hard copy handouts and send out e materials. The upside is that workshops keep on giving, even post event.

Repurpose Pedagogies and Ideas

Not only can concrete workshop materials be maximized as resources, so too can ideas. To grow two trees from one seed, CTL should consider how the mission of one sector of the university might overlap with the mission of another. Identifying a germinal concept in one area of campus and finding ways to grow similar ideas in other areas of campus is a great way that CTL can help multiple departments benefit. Take, for example, the challenge of defining what constitutes appropriate scholarship for faculty promotion and tenure. Conversations around this are complex and can become heated, especially as definitions of what counts as knowledge are different, by disciplinary fields. Departments in the social sciences will have different conversations than departments in the humanities, and both will be different from those in clinical departments.

While promotion and tenure may not fall directly within the scope of work for most CTL, one way that a center could help an institution repurpose the resource of idea is to frame conversations of scholarship around how teaching and learning both grow out of and inform the scholarship in which faculty engage. Start with a single department, then find principles that would apply to another related department.

Shulman (2005), former president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, argues that the way learning occurs in different disciplines is not the same. He contends that learning is organized around “signature pedagogies,” systems of engaging a particular discipline’s content. By redirecting the question about definitions of knowledge, then, the teaching/learning element helps departments think outside their typical disciplinary paradigms and draws them into a meta conversation around the parallel profession of teaching. Instead of asking “What are the important journals for this field?” if a department asked “In what ways is information in my field best learned?” and “How might we go about our research so that it translates better to what we teach in the classroom?” then conversations around what constitutes appropriate scholarship for promotion and tenure would look very different. And the benefit would go beyond just that department to other departments sharing that signature pedagogy.

A more concrete example of this notion of maximizing the resource of idea is the sharing of the concept of doing scholarship in community. At APU, a Faculty of Color Network was organized to provide a space for and support of racially minoritized faculty. The network initiated a program to encourage faculty scholarship of its members. In groups of three, faculty enter a “Scholarly Productivity Covenant” each spring, listing products and deadlines for product completion, then communicating throughout the summer months to ensure completion. Groups whose members all complete their listed goals receive a stipend and are recognized at the opening banquet in the fall, which is attended by most of the upper level administrators and at least one APU board member. Scholarly activities at all levels (journal and book publications, presentations, grants, submissions for review/publication, as well as activity in process) are included for recognition, in order to encourage scholarly productivity at all steps. In the first several years of the program, the majority of listed goals were of the “in process” category; whereas, in the past two years, the majority of accomplishments listed were publications or conference presentations. Participants regularly comment that it is the most productive they have been and cite the monthly check ins (for accountability and encouragement) as a strong motivator toward productivity.

Though the start of this program predates the formation of the Center, the same concept of doing scholarship in community found its way to CTLA, in the form of faculty research communities, and has enjoyed good success. The sharing of the resource of idea did not occur at APU as we have encouraged in this article, but many of the elements outlined above are shared in both venues (e.g., communicating with group mates to consider other perspectives, sending drafts to each other for comment and critique). We encourage readers to consider ways to share and repurpose ideas a priori so as to effectively maximize existing campus resources.

Outsource Strategically

Another way to apply the good, fast, cheap model is to use the “not invented here” approach. In other words, CTL should leverage professionally produced faculty development resources, as opposed to creating or producing all content locally. In fact, it is probably strategic for resource constrained CTL to focus their time, energy, and effort on initiatives and projects that are unique to their campus, while turning to educational companies for everything else. On the one hand, resources on effective practices such as syllabus design, active learning, discuss facilitation, and other traditional pedagogies are readily available from other CTL or faculty development vendors, and thus should be outsourced. On the other hand, offering workshops featuring faculty working on campus initiatives such as how they are flipping their courses or employing project based learning should be locally curated. Knowing when to subscribe to external resources or when to tap local talents is key for CTL that are limited in scope and size because it allows them to scale their capacity without compromising effectiveness. In this section, we will share a few type of resources that we have found to be high quality, easily accessible, and cost effective (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Strategies to Outsource Educational DevelopmentFigure 4. Strategies to Outsource Educational Development

IDEA Education (http://ideaedu.org/), founded in 1975, is a nonprofit organization that offers assessment, research, and professional development services with the aim of improving teaching, learning, and the higher education process. Their flagship service, the Student Ratings of Instruction System, focuses on assessing perceived student learning, focusing on 20 teaching methods and 12 learning objectives. The IDEA reports provide faculty with data informed teaching improvement suggestions and connect these recommendations with specific resources for improvement. For example, faculty who struggle with making their content understandable can refer to the IDEA POD Note for the teaching method “Explained Course Material Clearly and Concisely,” which provides background, helpful hints, applications, assessment issues, and additional references and resources. As APU uses IDEA to solicit student feedback about their learning, its faculty receive reports that provide suggested teaching improvements with these specific resources attached. However, faculty from institutions that do not utilize IDEA can still access these well researched papers from the IDEA website free of charge.

Magna Publications (http://www.magnapubs.com/), founded in 1972, produces online seminars, publications, conferences, and other products that support faculty and staff development. While most of their services require an individual or an institutional subscription, Faculty Focus (http://www.facultyfocus.com/) is a free e newsletter and dedicated website that offers effective teaching strategies for the college classroom—both face to face and online. Faculty or instructional developers might consider subscribing to their e newsletter to receive daily tips on teaching topics that can be applied immediately. Magna’s subscription based newsletters, including The Teaching Professor and Online Classroom, provide highly practical tips and strategies to help faculty succeed in traditional and online classrooms. Magna’s White Papers offer a detailed examination of some of the most critical issues in higher education with an aim of providing practical strategies for immediate implementation. Beyond newsletters and white papers, Magna also offers their 20 Minute Mentor Commons, a library of more than 100 on demand videos of various topics. Featuring nationally recognized educators, each video runs about 20 minutes long enough to deliver actionable insights, but short enough to fit anyone’s schedule. If a campus CTL does not have the expertise or personnel to meet the needs of their faculty, then subscribing to one or more of these Magna resources might be a worthwhile.

Wiley Learning Institute (WLI) (http://wileylearninginstitute.com/) provides online professional development for higher education faculty and campus leaders through live webinars, on demand library of workshops, and an online community space. Similar to Magna, WLI offers individual, department/program, or institutional subscriptions, depending on the need and the budget. A subscription to WLI includes participation in an average of 20 live webinars per year as well as access to a library of over 75 on demand workshops, including supporting materials and resources. These workshops cover a range of common topics: assessing learning, designing courses, engaging students, faculty development, research and scholarship, and teaching online. Most workshops run about an hour and are presented by notable educators. One way we have taken advantage of WLI’s live and on demand webinars is to host “viewing workshops” for faculty. In other words, we would identify a WLI webinar (live or on demand) we want to offer, send out an announcement with the meeting time and location, and on the day of the offering, project the webinar onto the screen for participants to view. This type of event gives time and space for faculty from various departments to engage in cross disciplinary conversation around the concepts. We offered two such viewing sessions with free lunch, and the response was very enthusiastic. Faculty felt that viewing these live or on demand workshops in a room with their colleagues was much better than viewing these on their own. They especially enjoyed the discussion that followed.

Professional organizations such as EDUCAUSE (http://www.educause.edu/), Professional and Organizational Development (POD) (http://podnetwork.org/), the Online Learning Consortium, formerly known as Sloan Consortium, (http://onlinelearningconsortium.org/), the Teaching, Learning and Technology Group (TLTG) (http://tltgroup.roundtablelive.org/), and many others are also great places to look for high quality, low cost educational development resources that can be easily leveraged at the local context. While access to premium content requires an institutional subscription, many of the resources on these organizations’ websites are available for free and under creative common licenses that allow for anyone to redistribute, remix, tweak, and build upon. To leverage these resources, a member of the CTL can cull through them and repackage them for their local context.

It is important to note that in certain instances it is better to depend on locally created resources, as opposed to using professionally produced content. For example, as APU is a Christian learning institution, most, if not all, of the faculty workshops and resources on faith integration are created by a Center professional. While there are faith integration resources we can purchase, most of them are not appropriate or relevant for the campus context. Moreover, externally produced faith integration resources, anchored in other faith traditions, are often seen by the faculty as less useful given their evangelical Christian background.

Another type of resource we prefer to produce locally are workshops focused on campus initiatives. In recent years, the Provost has initiated a blended learning initiative, encouraging faculty to reduce the amount of time they spend in the classroom by putting some of their lectures and learning materials online. There are excellent materials on blended learning available from places like Jossey Bass, Wiley, and Magna Publications, but instead of directing faculty there, we prefer to curate some of these materials and repackage them in the context of the initiatives. This way we can better coordinate and emphasize certain aspects of the initiative.

Leveraging professionally produced content allows CTL to achieve three key benefits. First, it allows CTL to quickly and affordably scale their services and resources without significant costs, compared to adding staffing. Second, it frees them to focus strategically on topics and initiatives that are unique to the local context, while relying on the vendors to offer more general resources. Finally, it gives CTL options to use professionally produced content in creative ways, such as hosting live or on demand webinars, sharing content with faculty, and expanding the library of resources available to their faculty. As there is so much available, the biggest challenge for any CTL is to spend time curating and culling through the available content and making it manageable and easily accessible for faculty to consume without feeling overwhelmed.

Use Free, Low Cost, or Emerging Technologies

The use of free or low cost educational technology is another strategy that CTL can leverage in a resource constrained culture. Leveraging technologies to support and engage faculty has often been suggested as a cost effective strategy (Ehrmann, 2010). Moreover, supporting faculty through the use of technology provides CTL opportunities to model and demonstrate what is possible when technology is used effectively (Kuhlenschmidt, 2010). With the advent of software as a service (SaaS), everything from email marketing to client management to creating infographics to hosting webinars can be done more cheaply, quickly, and effectively. In this section of the article, we will share how our Center has capitalized on a few of these technologies, increasing our effectiveness and impact without dramatically increasing our budget. Given the rapid pace of change with technology, it is important for CTL to stay current with its technology portfolio. On an annual basis, CTL should evaluate the specific technologies being deployed, and if appropriate, find newer, cheaper, or better alternatives. The technologies featured below are chosen not only because they fit our framework but also because they have lasting power, as evidenced by their adoption among businesses in other industries (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Free or Low Cost TechnologiesFigure 5. Free or Low Cost Technologies

Email remains the number one communication tool for faculty on most campuses. However, faculty, as mentioned above, are bombarded with emails on a regular basis. When CTL send faculty email announcements about their events, services, and resources, there is little assurance that faculty are actually opening and reading them. To check whether faculty were opening their emails, we began utilizing an email marketing service called MailChimp (http://mailchimp.com/). While MailChimp offers many robust features for managing email campaigns, the one tool we use is their advanced analytics, which provides important data such as open and click rates. These data points offer us insight into how many people are opening their emails and what exactly they are clicking within the emails themselves. It even offers a feature called A/B Testing that allows senders to see what day/time of the week gets better open rates, what subject lines are more effective, and what name should be used in the “From” field. We have even experimented with using different subject lines for the same announcement, and based on the results of the A/B Testing, we were able to use the “winning” subject line to increase the overall open and click rates. For example, when promoting our mobile learning workshops, we tried the following subject lines: (a) “Mobile Learning Event” and (b) “It’s Appy Hour!” The former yielded only a 20% open rate, but the latter resulted in a three fold increase (60%) in recipients opening their emails. Through the use of the A/B Testing feature, our Center has become more strategic and creative in how we use emails in reaching faculty. As of the writing of this article, MailChimp allows a sender with fewer than 2,000 subscribers to send up to 12,000 emails per month for free. If you want more bells and whistles, then you can upgrade for as little as $10 per month.

In person workshops remain a staple offering of most CTL and one that can be resource intensive in terms of the time it takes to plan and prepare and the number of personnel involved, including staff and faculty presenters. Moreover, when in person workshops are offered, as referenced above, the turnout is often less than desirable. Common reasons cited by faculty for why they do not attend Center events include conflicts with teaching schedules or department meetings, other competing campus events, and inconvenience (e.g., different part of campus, difficulty finding parking). The added challenge we face at APU is that our faculty are geographically distributed across eight regional locations across Southern California, some as far as 120 miles from the main campus.

To make our in person workshops more accessible and available, we have begun using a web conferencing tool called Adobe Connect (http://adobeconnect.com). What we have done is take the traditional face to face workshop and add a live streaming option for remote attendees. How this works is that faculty from an off campus location can participate in the live workshop by watching through their web browser and interacting using the web conferencing interface, such as asking questions, responding to polling, and providing comments/input. The setup is fairly simple and straight forward, requiring a laptop with an external web camera facing the presenter and a staff member monitoring the questions and comments from the online participants. Moreover, Adobe Connect allows the event to be recorded, so once a workshop is done, it will be available to view on demand for those who could not attend synchronously. As Adobe Connect is a web conferencing tool, it can also be used for hosting webinars—events that are held purely online in real time. In some cases, webinars can be just as effective as in person workshops, similar to how online courses can be equally effective as face to face courses. At the time of this writing, an individual Adobe Connect hosting license costs $45 per month, and each web meeting allows for up to 25 attendees. As a free alternative to Adobe Connect, Google Hangout On Air (http://plus.google.com/hangouts)is Google’s live streaming service, and while it has fewer options than Adobe Connect, it gets the job done.

YouTube (http://youtube.com) is a free video hosting service that CTL can utilize to upload their recorded workshops and webinars. Key advantages for using YouTube over other video hosting sites include its popularity (over 1 billion unique users per month), searchability (as Google owns YouTube, search results yield YouTube videos as well), unlimited storage (there is no limit to the number of videos you upload), and being ad free (generally advertisements are displayed, but institutional accounts can opt altogether for ad free viewing). The YouTube account our Center has created serves as a central hub for all of our video contents, including recorded in person workshops, webinars, and software training. A handy YouTube feature called playlist allows us to organize our videos based on the office that produced the video (e.g., Office of Faith Integration), the topics presented (e.g., technology workshops), or other organizational schemes. Establishing a YouTube channel for our Center is an important first step; our next goal is to draw more viewers to it via better marketing and publicity.

While neither free nor low cost, the last example involves the experimental use of Double Robotics (http://doublerobotics.com), an emerging technology that can transform the future of distant communication. A telepresence robot or telerobot is typically a motorized stand with a flat screen that displays the face of the person from a remote location. Through the telepresence robot, the human operator experiences a sense of being on location at a remote site through controlling the robot from his/her computer or tablet (Herring, 2013). The operator is able to control the robot and interact (talking and listening) with individuals at the remote location. The biggest reason for using a telepresence robot is cost savings. To mitigate the costs and hassle associated with traveling (not to mention environmental stewardship), many organizations, including those in higher education, are seriously exploring and investing in the use of remote participation technology as a more cost effective solution. Yes, there are popular teleconference tools, such as Skype, Adobe Connect, and Google Hangout. However, these are limited because remote participants cannot see, hear, or control their remote location readily or easily, which could lead to feeling disengaged, fatigued, and frustrated. Teleconference participants describe their experience as being "flat" and "unengaging." Telepresence robots overcome limitations of teleconferences by providing remote participants with greater control and navigation of their remote location, leading to a richer experience. A few promising use case examples of telerobots include remote attendance of meetings/workshops, remote presentation at meetings/workshops, remote training, advising, and consultations, and other tasks that would benefit from a rich remote experience (EDUCAUSE, 2013). At the writing of this article, the telerobot our Center owns is made by Double Robotics, which costs about $2,500. While not cheap, when compared to the costs associated with commuting between regional centers and the main campus, this can seem like a deal.

Conclusion

Given today’s new higher education reality, CTL must undergo their own transformation, rethinking how they approach faculty development in new, creative, and innovative ways. The traditional faculty development paradigm of “if you build it, they will come” has proven to be insufficient, inefficient, and costly in light of today’s resource constrained and technology enabled culture. To remain relevant and viable, CTL must provide quality service efficiently and within or under budget. Cost effective and low threshold strategies and tools have made it possible for resource constrained CTL to take safe, incremental steps to service their faculty.

In this article, we have highlighted five “good, fast, cheap” strategies that CTL can employ to improve their overall impact on their campus. First, we discuss strategies of how (re)organizing existing faculty support offices/units, utilizing faculty fellows and student workers, and sharing administrative support can dramatically increase CTL’ impact without needing new resources. Second, we encourage CTL to utilize low cost, high impact opportunities, such as FLCs, brown bags, one day faculty development events, as well as faculty recognition strategies such as faculty fellows and badging, to enhance faculty support. Third, we recommended CTL to maximize their existing efforts and resources through engaging multiple modalities, communication channels, existing events/offerings, and signature pedagogies. Fourth, we share how strategically outsourcing certain aspects of educational development via leveraging resources from vendors and professional organizations will allow CTL to quickly scale their services at a fraction of hiring new personnel. Finally, we explore how using free and/or low cost technology not only extends CTL’ offerings to more faculty but also archives their events for on demand access. Collectively, these strategies can help CTL grow their offerings and extend their reach without diluting quality (good), investing inordinate amount of time (fast), or breaking the bank (cheap).

While strategies and ideas discussed in this article are based on how our Center has implemented this framework, we would posit that many of the suggestions are easily adaptable and transferable to other campuses, regardless of size, type, or circumstance. The “good, fast, cheap” model provides CTL a practical and functional framework for navigating the new world.

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