Organizational Best Practices Track

Rethinking Faculty Development: Shifting From Product to Process

This presentation describes how the focus at Arkansas State University has shifted from how a quality online course looks to a process for designing quality courses that covers both technical and pedagogical aspects. An underlying principle to the approach is to provide faculty an easy way to make incremental improvements.

Presenter: Linda Merillat, Henry Torres, Steve Leslie, Terri Sue Smith,

The Interactive Teaching and Technology Center (ITTC) at Arkansas State University (ASU) is a faculty development center established to provide support and training to faculty with an emphasis on effectively using and integrating technology to help faculty members reach their teaching, research, and service goals.  The director, Henry Torres, has worked in industry for over two decades as an industrial engineer, information systems manager, and CIO.  He has taught full-time at ASU in the College of Business and currently teaches part-time.  Dr. Linda Merillat is the instructional designer for the center.   She also has a background of working in industry for over two decades in the design and development of leading-edge applications.  Her expertise combines together best practices from education, computer science, and design.  Steve Leslie works with the team as an academic technology specialist.  His professional background is in education, banking, and financial systems.  He has a teaching diploma and three graduate degrees in finance and banking, communication studies, and information systems.  He currently teaches part-time in the College of Communications.  Terri Sue Smith is the web and media support coordinator for the team.  She holds a graduate degree in computer information systems, and teaches part-time in University College with incoming freshman.