13061

13061

General Session - Conference Presentation and Interactive Activity Only (40 minutes, no formal paper)

Marla Cartwright, Kaplan University, Tennessee, USA, mcartwright@kaplan.edu April Burge, Kaplan University, Oro Valley, Arizona, USA, aburge@kaplan.edu
 * Creating Community: Using Technology and Social Media to Connect Online Faculty **

 Kaplan University’s Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) offers faculty training and professional development for a primarily online faculty audience. Over the years, we have learned that in addition to creating formal learning situations such as workshops and professional development courses, we also have various opportunities to develop more informal learning and social communities that help our faculty stay connected and engaged with the institution and with one another. These successful, faculty-facing events focus on creating cohesive online communities and include:


 * Bloggers' User Group
 * Book Group
 * Writers' Salon
 * Wellness Initiative

The CTL also offers a Facebook page for Kaplan faculty where members are invited to learn about events occurring within the CTL and throughout Kaplan University. One of the goals of the CTL is to help our faculty feel as though they are a part of a community of scholars by providing them with engaging resources and services; our staff also cultivates the online community within our own department as we demonstrate the benefits of taking part in a learning community by holding regular events such as meetings and holiday celebrations.

The communities described above effectively use technology and social media to link online faculty to one another, despite any geographical distances. In addition, the tools the CTL staff has at its disposal assist us in creating the type of online community necessary for true collaboration to occur, and we will demonstrate how these tools are used in an interactive, engaging presentation.

References Glazer, H.R. & Breslin, M. (2011). Creating community: The online faculty experience. Midwest Research-to-Practice Conference in Adult, Continuing, Community and Extension Education. Retrieved from http://www.lindenwood.edu/mwr2p/docs/GlazerBreslin.pdf

Golding, J. (2012). Facebook and classroom community. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2012/07/13/using-facebook-build-community-large-college-classes-essay

Petrović, N., Petrović, D., Jeremić, V., Milenković, N. & Ćirović, M. (n.d.). Possible educational use OF Facebook in higher environmental education. ICICTE 2012 Proceedings. Retrieved from http://www.icicte.org/Proceedings2012/Papers/09-1-Petrovic.pdf

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Vesely, P., Bloom, L. & Sherlock, J. (2007). Key elements of building online community: Comparing faculty and student perceptions. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. Vol. 3, No. 3, September 2007. "

//<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Interactivity // <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">We will use polls and virtual field trips to engage our audience. These interactivities will be done in a timely manner so they augment, rather than replace, the content of our presentation.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">All Audiences <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">online faculty community technology social media