Extended Care Professional Development Model

In 2008-2009 we developed and implemented our Extended Care model of faculty professional development. This model is based on our review of the literature on adult learning, training, and professional development; lessons we learned in our mentoring of individual faculty in the first two years of this project and the 3 years of the previous project; and our own experiences with professional development.

We used online social networking tools (Tapped In http://www.tappedin.org and CCC Confer http://www.cccconfer.org) that are freely available to better serve our geographically dispersed and budget-challenged faculty.

The Extended Care Model

Begins with a 4-5 hours face-to-face orientation in a central location that asks students to arrive with assigned prep work completed. The face-to-face meeting provides an opportunity to give students an immersion in a sample task (GreenHealth Mini) in the Adding SBL workshop. In the Develop a Scenario workshop we use the meeting time to complete the assessment and SLO design exercises in task 1.

Then posts the scenario-based learning (SBL) tasks for the workshop online in our SBL library (Create a Scenario--Workshop and Adding SBL to Your Classroom )

Continues to meet in a private online classroom for several weeks. The online classroom links to the SBL tasks and includes threaded discussions, links to resources, and a place to upload and download files. Forms and files for participants are uploaded by instructors for the students to download. Participants turn in assignments by uploading files for the instructors to download.

Also meets weekly in a telewebconference using CCC Confer (a service provided to California community colleges through a Chancellor’s Office grant) or something similar.

Then archive the conference for later viewing and convert to podcasts or vodcasts posted in our online library (we’re working with CCC Confer to make this possible).

Supplements the online contact with private phone conferences as needed.

Provides co-instructors for each task to support the work of the instructor, provide expert advice, and provide additional feedback for the participants.

Continues to support in the private online classroom for a few weeks after the workshop tasks are completed to provide follow-up support.

Then moves the discussion to the public online community: Scenario-Based Learning for follow-up.

Faculty commented in the workshop evaluation on the value in going through the scenario process as students, the interaction with and ideas of peers, and the instructor interaction and feedback (Saflund, 2008, p. 23).