To Train Faculty, Treat Them Like Students

Transforming Tech Training into a Community of Learning

University lecturers are hired for their subject-level expertise and industry/academic experience. Traditional tools of the trade include a classroom and chalkboard. But modern, student-centered learning experiences require faculty to do more, such as delivering their course and building community in a learning management system (LMS) that’s packed with ever-evolving technical features. How do you effectively train faculty on the system while respecting demands on their time, and how do you make that training stick?

The Search for Solutions

Universities continue to struggle for solutions. In an EDUCAUSE study of over 800 institutions, faculty reported that “they could be more effective instructors…if they were more skilled at using the LMS.”¹ Depending on the institution, responsibilities for LMS training might fall on instructional designers, technical support, librarians, or other administrators. Some take a hands-off, “learn on your own” approach. They send faculty user guides and videos. They create self-paced, asynchronous, online courses² to get instructors familiar with the LMS itself. Then, they cross their fingers and hope for the best – that faculty absorb the information and recall how to use the (often non-intuitive) LMS features to organize and deliver their course. And then the tech support tickets start rolling in.

A common response is to bombard faculty with even more information. I’ve been there. In my early days as an LMS administrator/trainer, I was convinced that giving faculty as much detail as possible would help them become technically proficient powerhouses. I soon realized not only was this approach ineffective, but it contradicted my training goals. I want faculty to know just enough to “drive” their course so they can focus on what they were hired to do: teach. And then it hit me – to truly reach faculty, I needed to become their teacher. I needed to learn about learning.

Learning Objectives for LMS Proficiency

In What the Best College Teachers Do, Ken Bain, Vice Provost for Instruction at Montclair State University, explains that “learners must construct knowledge rather than simply absorb it.”³ While it’s easy to point faculty toward user guides, the more difficult – yet more rewarding – approach is to engage and offer individualized feedback, just as we encourage them to do with their students. Rather than talking about features and functionality, I have begun to focus on learning objectives (concrete, actionable outcomes of my training “courses”). Taking another page from Bain, “highly effective teachers often talk about what they want students to ‘do’ intellectually rather than about what they should ‘learn.’”⁴

To transform my current approach to technical training – trying to cram everything LMS-related into a 60-minute workshop – I sought out the expertise of my colleague Delores Amorelli, an Instructional Designer and educator. She was tasked with delivering LMS training to multiple universities at Bisk Education, a company that partners with universities and corporations to finance, develop, and support online learning programs. To support faculty in both their teaching practice and proficiency with the LMS, the team built a three-week, online course, supplemented with synchronous online class sessions where they would “discuss the content and model the tools.” ⁵ Each week’s online session focused on a key component of the LMS. For instance, in a session that focused on “instructor presence,” the trainers would share practical teaching examples and conduct interactive activities using LMS features that supported the topic: sending an email and posting in a discussion forum.

Engaging Educators as Students

Wary of essentially demoting instructors to students, I asked Delores how her team’s efforts were received. Surprisingly, faculty embraced the student treatment. As Delores notes, “faculty could see the student perspective in the LMS and experienced potential problems early on.” ⁶ Delores recalls faculty expressing gratitude for experiencing those problems, because they were then able to “relate to and help [their] students.”⁷

By going beyond user guides and one-off demonstrations, LMS trainers can turn uninspiring and routine technical training into a true learning experience. Jack Mezirow, a sociologist and Emeritus Professor of Adult and Continuing Education at Teachers College, posits that knowledge is “constructed by the individual in relation with others.” ⁸ Treating faculty as a “class” lets us create a community of learning that promotes pedagogical prowess and technical skills. Faculty need real-world examples to reflect upon their teaching styles and practices. They also benefit from regular practice – and effective, targeted feedback – just as their students do. For true LMS learning to occur, we need to serve as their coaches and teachers, modeling the instruction and engagement we encourage them to foster in class.

1. Eden Dahlstrom, D. Christopher Brooks, and Jacqueline Bichsel. The Current Ecosystem of Learning Management Systems in Higher Education: Student, Faculty, and IT Perspectives. Research report. Louisville, CO: ECAR, September 2014. Available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.
2. One particularly robust example is Richland Community College’s Canvas Instructor Training, available at https://richland.instructure.com/courses/1911107.
3. Bain, 2004, p. 126
4. Bain, 2004, p. 49
5. D. Amorelli, personal communication, September 25, 2017.
6. D. Amorelli, personal communication, September 25, 2017.
7. D. Amorelli, personal communication, September 25, 2017.