[ARCHIVED] How do you engage part-time faculty?

[seufertc]

Age old question, I know. But how do you get the folks who may be teaching at two or three schools ,or have another full time job, or have many other life obligations to do great things with Canvas?

[amanda_taintor]

Train them on their schedule.

I have made it a point to offer training's in the evenings and on Saturdays, most work full time jobs 8-5 at locations far from the home campus. Making training's available when they are available has really helped our adjunct instructors to feel included and valued. I have also gained permission from my VP to meet with adjuncts at locations convenient to them  in the evenings and weekends. I have scoped out Starbucks and Panera's which make for suitable meeting locations. We have a very wide service area so this means some driving for me occasionally.

Yes, this does take extra time and yes it cuts into other services I could offer BUT I have found a noticeable increase in the adjunct use of Canvas.

[tracy_stuntz]

Here to third this. We've started offering evening training sessions and I just set up "video office hours" for our adjunct faculty that commute to campus (or teach online only).

[amanda_taintor]

What a great idea! Are you offering these in Canvas? @tracy_stuntz ​

[jbrady2]

I have to second what  @amandataintor  stated above in that the training has to be when it is convenient for them.  When our institution switched to Canvas we would meet faculty, full-time and part-time, on their campuses instead of making them travel to our offices. We had a Canvas trainer come to our school and hold three days of intensive training sessions on a Thursday, Friday and Saturday from morning into the early evening.  We also set-up a training course in Canvas, borrowing heavily from the Canvas Guides and videos and offered a $100 stipend for completing the training. It may not seem like much, but it at least could help to compensate them for their time.

[DrNufer]

I'm actually part-time faculty myself.  Adjunct Assistant Professor.  But I happen to work full-time for the education system that the university belongs to.  The strategy we employ is to offer the same training via webinar on different days at different times, and to record them and host the recordings online. 

When we were doing our very initial Canvas trainings for our migration, we staggered everything.  We hosted sessions during the day, night, and weekend.  We staggered the weeks and contract out various trainings from Instructure, as well as hosted internal trainings led by the instructional design team.  And the final piece of this puzzle is that we had top down buy-in, so deans, provosts, and VPs absolutely required people to attend at least one training.  Again, this was for the initial rollout.  Now we just offer two trainings at two different times/days and put the recording online. 

[DaleDrees]

We do something very similar to what snufer mentioned. We have office 365, so we send out a Skype for Business link to all of our adjuncts so they can attend remotely and post the recordings after our Faculty Seminar series. We also try to stagger the trainings on different days, times, nights, etc…

[Chris_Munzo]

Now the next part of the question is:  How do you review the actual engagement of instructors in their courses to determine which of them are responding to the training?  If anyone is interested in these analytics, you can review Instructor Insight at the Alliance Partner - AspirEDU​ partner page.