A Model for an Intensive Hands-On Faculty Development Workshop To Foster Change in Laboratory Teaching †
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Authors:
Christopher W. Beck1,‡,*,
Lawrence S. Blumer2,‡
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Received 28 March 2019 Accepted 29 April 2019 Published 31 October 2019
- ©2019 Author(s). Published by the American Society for Microbiology
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[open-access] This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ and https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode), which grants the public the nonexclusive right to copy, distribute, or display the published work.
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†Supplemental materials available at http://asmscience.org/jmbe
- *Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Biology, Emory University, 1510 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA 30322. Phone: 404-712-9012. E-mail: [email protected].
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‡ The authors contributed equally to the design and conduct of this study and the writing of the manuscript.
Abstract:
Faculty development workshops are frequently used to bring about change in faculty teaching. Yet, the characteristics of successful faculty professional development in the context of laboratory teaching are unclear. In this Perspective, we describe our approach to intensive hands-on faculty development workshops for fostering change in laboratory teaching and present evidence for the effectiveness of the approach. The outcomes from our workshops and feedback from past participants support the following recommendations: 1) faculty should attend workshops in teams from their institutions, 2) workshops should allow participants to develop curricula that can be implemented with relatively little additional work after the workshop, 3) workshops should allow faculty time to “work” on tangible products and should involve hands-on activities, 4) workshops should be of sufficient duration to allow for faculty to develop expertise and tangible products but short enough that faculty do not “burn out,” and 5) a structure for ongoing and systematic follow-up with participants is essential.
References & Citations
Supplemental Material
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Appendix 1: Description of Workshop Activities, Appendix 2: Post-Workshop Survey Instrument, Appendix 3: Post-Workshop Survey Results, Appendix 4: Faculty Retrospective Survey Instrument References for appendices
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Abstract:
Faculty development workshops are frequently used to bring about change in faculty teaching. Yet, the characteristics of successful faculty professional development in the context of laboratory teaching are unclear. In this Perspective, we describe our approach to intensive hands-on faculty development workshops for fostering change in laboratory teaching and present evidence for the effectiveness of the approach. The outcomes from our workshops and feedback from past participants support the following recommendations: 1) faculty should attend workshops in teams from their institutions, 2) workshops should allow participants to develop curricula that can be implemented with relatively little additional work after the workshop, 3) workshops should allow faculty time to “work” on tangible products and should involve hands-on activities, 4) workshops should be of sufficient duration to allow for faculty to develop expertise and tangible products but short enough that faculty do not “burn out,” and 5) a structure for ongoing and systematic follow-up with participants is essential.

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Author and Article Information
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Received 28 March 2019 Accepted 29 April 2019 Published 31 October 2019
- ©2019 Author(s). Published by the American Society for Microbiology
-
[open-access] This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ and https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode), which grants the public the nonexclusive right to copy, distribute, or display the published work.
-
†Supplemental materials available at http://asmscience.org/jmbe
- *Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Biology, Emory University, 1510 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA 30322. Phone: 404-712-9012. E-mail: [email protected].
-
‡ The authors contributed equally to the design and conduct of this study and the writing of the manuscript.
Figures

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FIGURE 1
Participant perceptions of the impact of our workshops on their teaching based on a retrospective survey. Participants who responded to the survey (N=55) were from the range of institution types represented at our workshops (two-year colleges: 18%, liberal arts colleges: 38%, comprehensive and research universities: 22%, minority-serving institutions: 22%) with representation similar to participants in our workshops.

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FIGURE 2
Faculty instructional practices prior to and following workshop participation and implementation of a new guided-inquiry laboratory activity. Instructional practices were determined using the survey and constructs in Beck and Blumer ( 18 ). Faculty (N=38) increased their emphasis on science process skills and scientific synthesis in their laboratory courses after the workshop (Wilcoxon signed rank tests: Z=2.42, p=0.016; Z=2.29, p=0.022, respectively). They also decreased their instructor-directed teaching to a marginally significant degree (Wilcoxon signed rank tests: Z=1.75, p=0.08).

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FIGURE 3
Implementation rates by institution type (A) and workshop year (B). Implementation rates varied by institution type (A) among HBCUs and MSIs, universities, community colleges, and liberal arts colleges (using non-overlapping categories in which “university” and “liberal-arts college” were neither “minority-serving” nor “community colleges”) with sample sizes (number of teams) shown above each bar. The teams from all the different institution types were represented in each of the four workshop years. The implementation rates by workshop year (B) were similar, with the exception of the workshop participants in 2010 (sample sizes, which are the number of teams, are given above each bar). HBCU = historically-black college or university; MSI = minority-serving institution.