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um good morning and good afternoon everybody depending on where you are welcome to this webinar today um this is actually the third webinar in a series that we've been doing about community and belonging and support in higher education for those of you that participated in some of the earlier webinars you'll know that the first two really focused around students student belonging and some practical ways that we can build community among our students but today we wanted to take a slightly different approach and talk about one of the other major stakeholders and really important components of education which is our faculty and you know not overlooking them but also thinking about what are some things that we can do to help build community and connection for them and and why that's so important today more than ever i want to thank one of our sponsors wg labs who has helped us put this webinar series on um and this webinar is also sponsored by my company which is inscribe and i'll tell you a little bit about what we do during the introductions i also want to introduce a couple of folks from my team who are here today anna and danielle they will be kind of moderating what's happening in the chat and the q a area so if you see them jump in and say hello or answer questions know that they that they come from our team and are here to help make everything run really smoothly today so if we go to the next slide um well before we jump to this then i'll do a little bit more housekeeping so um first of all we would really like to make this an interactive conversation so you know well many of you that are attending today are also experts in this area or have questions or ideas so we're going to have a couple of places where we put questions out to the attendees please use the chat function so if you're familiar with zoom or not if you look toward the bottom of your screen you'll see some controls there one of which is the chat if you click on that it'll pop it up and you can post your thoughts and comments there we also have a separate q a area so if you have a specific question that you want the panelists to address you can post it in that q a space but we'll be monitoring both areas so you know don't stress about it too much we are also recording this webinar so we will send a follow-up afterward where we will include this recording and for those of you that weren't able to make the earlier webinars we'll include links to some resources and content from those webinars again focused a little more around students as well um so just to introduce myself my name is katie kapler i am your moderator for today and i am the co-founder and ceo of a company called inscribe so inscribe is a digital community platform that helps higher education institutions foster connection among students and faculty especially for those folks who are working and learning at a distance so you know we have a we care a lot about faculty support and faculty community and have some great examples of where some of our customers have been deploying that and i'll find opportunities to kind of weave those in along as we talk if you want to learn more um please feel free to reach out to us either after the webinar so joining me today i'm excited to say i have two great panelists allison bell who is the chancellor of wgu indiana which is the state's online competency-based university alison has more than 20 years of experience in higher education leadership with four years of prior work at wgu as the general manager of wgu indiana that was from 2010 to 2014 but before returning to wgu alison served as the director of degree completion at indiana university purdue university in indianapolis where she led operations and supervised the academic coaching and career staff alison has a ba in psychology from indiana university and an m.a in student personnel administration in higher education from ball state university and also with us today is richard bodenhausen uh who is the founding dean of the honors college at westminster he is a leader in the national honors community and a two-time member of the national collegiate honors council which that which is the nchc board of directors and a recommended site visitor there an editorial board member of hip which is honors in practice and past co-chair of the ncchc publication board he is currently serving as the immediate past president of mchc which has over 800 honors programs and college members around the country and throughout the world richard regularly visits campuses to help consult on how schools can improve their honors programs and colleges right now he's teaching a seminar in humanities war literature theories of place and trauma studies and is the recipient of the 2014 gore excellence in teaching award and two-time winner of the westminster's shaw award for scholarship so great panelists today we're really excited uh welcome allison and richard thank you thank you uh so i think to kick us off today we want to learn a little bit about the folks who are attending so if we jump down to the next slide um we're going to ask you to to jump into that chat feature and just sort of let us know who you are where you're from and what brought you here today if there's something specific that you're hoping to get out of this session let us know so we make sure that that we can cover it and while people are kind of starting to put some of that information into the chat uh i thought i would sort of reflect with the panelists about um you know we have had a lot of conversations around faculty support over the years but there's been a huge uptick i think given the amount of change that's been happening in 2020 where people are really realizing they need a more strategic plan for this um i don't know if that has reflects also your observations and what you guys have been seeing at schools and in the schools that you're working with sure did you want us to reflect yeah comment on that while we see some folks coming in so you know i think i have a unique opportunity or you unique perspective at wgu and you know we've always been online we weren't our president has said we weren't built for a pandemic but it just so happens because our model is focused and flexible and all online you know we're able to continue operations in much the same way that's not to say we haven't felt the impact in some ways but not not like i would have when i worked at iupui with that uh you know both the ground and online team um um however i i think that um that the way things have shifted um we still even though our faculty has always worked online and always worked in remote locations that need for support just because of all of the change and the uncertainty just the environment around us in 2020 becomes even more important so i think that community um connection is vital just to to staying focused to staying happy and healthy um to borrowing ideas from each other so yeah absolutely sort of amplifying that need yeah i think you know one of the lessons of the pandemic is is the manner in which a lot of the shifts that took place on our campuses uh took place rather rapidly and and in some cases without intention you know we were just responding to crisis and so i think the the challenge going forward is is to be more intentional uh about some of our new practices and think about uh the manner in which they connect to our mission and culture uh as as opposed to running around with our hair on fire which is a lot of what's taken place uh in the spring and summer and so hopefully we can get into what some of that intentionality looks like yeah that's great and i and definitely seeing in the chat a lot of folks saying you know we're i'm going to be online this fall so how do i think about you know staying connected exactly what you guys are mentioning or even i'm going to be in person this fall but even in person the amount of actual get-togethers that you can have and some of the face-to-face stuff you relied on is is not available so even in a face-to-face environment virtual has a higher level of urgency in some ways um and definitely some questions which i think we'll get to about how do you balance connecting faculty supporting them but recognizing that they are super busy and even more so in this chaotic world and like what what's the relationship there that we want to support so let's keep those in mind as we think through and answer some of the questions today so let's move down to the first question from our panelists for our panelists which is so faculty support faculty community can be kind of a generalized term what what do you think are the main components if you know thinking about having an intentional strategy are there two or three main components that you think people should really focus on to get the most bang for their buck so to speak richard you want to start us off sure i i mean i i think one wants to go back to the hiring process we we typically don't go back that far thinking about faculty support but but we really want to hire in support of your mission there's such a strong sense of shared mission around student learning at westminster so as a expert in 20th century literature i can have conversations with physics and business faculty we have a lot to talk about because of that shared sense of of mission i think that should continue in the onboarding process uh we have a one week uh new faculty orientation um and often or you know the support ends there but we extend that support through the full year with a new faculty learning community and they meet monthly around common topics do common read a lot of really strong bonds grow up out of that incessant communication all our faculty are signed a mentor so i think ideally a colleague who shares some commonality maybe maybe appointments in an interdisciplinary program but then some differences too maybe a scientist with the social scientists so you can break down some of those walls get different perspectives expand your circle of colleagues and and then finally i think a lot of year-end events that aren't framed explicitly as support uh but have that covert outcome since they involve feelings of belonging in a community among faculty some of which is directed from students to faculty we we have a banquet at the end of the year where students give out goofy professor awards professor most likely to make a tick tock on a weekend um and that you know that that isn't explicitly support but it feels like connection and community to faculty yeah sometimes those subtle things that you do to create you know that are just sort of fun and light-hearted actually are major contributors to being able to feel connected and supported and what i what was interesting about what you said richard is kind of reflecting back on our earlier webinars you know what you the tools and and techniques you put in place for student support and community are not necessarily totally different than those that you would think of for faculty right and you can probably borrow a little bit from those strategies as you think about that that implementation as well allison what are you thinking um i well i i i agree with richard that um the importance of of mentors i think particularly again when i was reflecting on how i might talk about this topic you know wgu has always been so different the faculty model i won't go down the rabbit hole but it is just completely different than any other place i've ever worked so already we're structured by teams we're nationwide we're working from home and so part of the support that wgu has built over the years is to to organize our faculty into teams um so that they haven't sort of a family an automatic connection and and mentors built into those teams so i think that that when i think about faculty support at wgu i think about um the ability to find natural mentors but also that kind of structured mentorship i also think about um that they need that they need feedback not only from team members just about our how am i doing over here in my isolated little section um how am i impacting my learners um so feedback from from team members but also feedback how how are they impacting their students so i impact from impact on their student feedback um so i think about that kind of faculty support and i think that's relevant so that's always been a part of what we do here and it's always been important at wgu but i think for now for anybody who's now working maybe suddenly either in very small groups in person or from home that kind of isolation that need for feedback and touch points i think becomes even more important gotcha and we had a question come in the chat related i think to what both of you said which is you know wgu is so different and and was from its origin do you think how would you see implementing that team's approach in a more traditional environment do you think you know and richard maybe you can reflect on that a little bit just given you know coming from a school that looks a little bit different from wgu yeah i mean uh you know i it partly depends on you know what you mean by a team i mean i mean you can have a team in which there's very little community and connection um i think right and and one of the one of the key features of putting together a team is that in some respects administrators don't get to set the culture so people like allison and i don't get to determine what that community feels like but we can certainly put into practice some um uh kind of systemic changes that are going to support community um and i i'm a big fan of retreats versus virtual or um in-person uh face-to-face not not about learning how to you know the new safety procedures of the college but a real retreat which means going away um which is faculty driven where faculty are talking peer-to-peer um where the uh outcomes are clear and uh that that's sort of away from work kind of bonding i think uh really pays dividends for a team yeah absolutely and um i think the other thing that was that you both touched on which i think is really important is that it's not a one-and-done thing right that it's an ongoing intentional strategy that you have to nurture throughout the school year or and and term overturn to help it be successful um let's jump to the next question because i think this will relate also to some of the things i'm seeing in the chat which is um so so now that so many people are teaching and and working at a distance what are and and richard you mentioned the concept of a retreat and allison you mentioned the concept of teams i think other examples of how you help people connect and then just like practically what how are they doing that are you using zoom to do virtual retreats like what could people think about incorporating to to help succeed on some of those allison want you to kick us off this time sure so um you know so wgu is always just connected at a distance that's what we've always done now when we were able and when we're able again we do um always come together in groups you know so our faculty our each of our colleges have a summit each summer typically where they they get in the room together it almost feels like a conference um and i that i think that's a key to reconnecting so so now it's about thinking about um you know hopefully by next summer we'll be able to do that again but we didn't do it this summer right now there's there there were no massive virtual summits created but is that something that we could implement and how do we do it you know we have our own tools we don't use zoom we use some other we have teams we have webex but same concept right um so when we can when we can do it virtually we do yeah i in also the way that we're organized we have um we try to build community in other ways so it's not just about who are my other you know um business faculty colleagues but who are my who are my wgu colleagues in indiana um so that's something that i actually that i actually can impact and so just in the way that we're structured we developed um a long time ago in the back 10 years ago we developed a regular meeting for our indiana faculty to come together and it's virtual and it's it's 30 minutes it's a quick hit but it is intended to you know we recognize people's birthdays and work anniversaries that that really social personal connection and people the people who join us which are large number each time seem to really enjoy it and need it need that connection and so then they get to know each other across functional teams and they're able to connect for both you know work related topics and just not you know social related you know needs so that's another example we also do gatherings around the state too so if i'm again when we can be in person if i'm in a part of the state and and i'm you know meeting with a community leader then i'm also inviting faculty and staff that live around that area to come meet and and people come out and they enjoy it and it's a way for us to continue to build community so so those are some of the things that we've done and we're thinking as a team about how do we continue to do that in a virtual way until we can do it in person again right so the point being you know sometimes you're working at a distance that you can still get together in person on occasion now is not like the best time for that obviously but um you know in the long term thinking through that and then you know what are ways to replicate that in-person engagement today right um richard what what are your thoughts sure yeah i mean uh we're a team's campus and i i think teams you know it can be clunky but i also think it's a great product in terms of gathering together affinity groups and having channels which allow for targeted uh discussions you know much more efficient than email you know our faculty group that goes to the bar every friday afternoon they meet by zoom now um so you know people are pretty getting pretty adept at picking the right platform for the activity i i think on a higher level um thinking about mission i mean constant reminders about mission and and how we're connected through that mission are supe super helpful because culture you know should flow from mission and and and really utter clarity about goals of the work so that employees have something specific to aim at i think often our mission and goals um go unstated or they're simply assumed which results in employees rowing in many different directions or feeling disconnected from the larger organization particularly if they're working remotely you know incessant communication these days so that people aren't tuning out particularly during times of change when there's so much new information coming at faculty and they've not necessarily been involved in the decisions so i've been emailing my faculty every week or two since march basically same format you know here are the changes here's new information number two here's what's under discussion but not decided number three here's here's a resource that you might find helpful it's very accessible and four you know always finished with i so appreciate the work you're doing i understand the conditions under which you're doing it and i'm here to help you just let me know how i can support uh that work and um and and the usual sorts of things around transparency and giving faculty a say in decision making that that's never been more important yeah well and and i think that's sometimes under people under appreciate how important just getting a weekly update can be even if it's not decisive like to your point we're still working on these things we don't know the answer but otherwise it can feel like things are happening in a vacuum and you're not in on it or in the know so to speak and we did have a question about how do i replicate the water cooler and and obviously that's very difficult to do online but that is one way which is sometimes that's how you hear about things is in the hallway and this is just a more intentional way of getting that information out which i think is great we did have um so we had a lot of great questions coming in from martina and a few people giving her a shout out so i i want to touch on some of the things she's asking but you're kind of like really down to the practical level when you're getting a virtual gathering together any thoughts on how often people should be getting together or how to structure that conversation should you have a topic should you have it be more open forum what have you guys seen work i've seen both where i've seen both work but i was just thinking as richard was talking and and then relevant to this question one of the things that my immediate team has done since the start of because i have a team that's not always remote we sometimes worked in person so one of the things that we did to replicate that water coolers actually we have a weekly meeting called the water cooler and it's in teams and and and so and and i that how often i think you have to read your group right so we've tried some things where like even with that statewide meeting i mentioned we used to do it every week now we do it ends up being twice a month um and because we were reading the room you know and and what people did and wanted and we sent out a survey and just said you know here people here are your options we just asked them and we went with obviously we're not going to please all the people but we went with the with the average and um or the majority but with that weekly water cooler thing that's a smaller group it's a more immediate work group that works together and half of that hour is tends to be structured they'll and the team runs it by the way they decide what they want to talk about and who they want to invite so they'll invite a guest they'll have a discussion and then the last half is just the team talking with each other that that works for for this particular team but they worked that out together we just created the space where it was hey how about we do this you know and that that it's and then we gave it to them i don't even go to that because i don't want i i have other opportunities to talk with my team but i want that to be their chance to talk with each other to ask questions to each other and things have come out of that you know other requests of the leadership um other ideas so um that's just one example i don't know that that fully answers the question that's great but i but it also reiterates an important point which is sometimes just ask people you know don't feel like you have to have all the answers going in and not every situation and every set of faculty are going to be the same so try something and then like it get feedback and see if it worked and and if not change it and if so great you know you nailed it on the first try exactly don't be afraid to change it when also when it is obvious it's not working the way that it you thought that's too often then back off if it's not often enough then ramp it up but i think you just have to put it out there and create the space and then it it starts to take shape yeah absolutely what about you richard have you well i i mean i agree completely with allison i i i would say ask that that would be my answer and and of course listen then when when you hear the responses that if you ask and and you hear something you don't like uh that's the risk you take but i i think that's important that people feel heard um yeah great name for a new app by the way water cooler gotta trademark that allison right now i don't have the time someone else can have it awesome well that's great so let's um jump down to the next we're going to get our audience back involved here for a minute and i think we've already touched on a few of these things but i'd love to know from the folks who are attending what barriers do you feel like you face in building community today or that you anticipate as you try these strategies um might be things that will that that you'll have to overcome or things that maybe we have some tips and tricks that we can share about how to how to navigate that and one of the things that we hear a lot is time so when when you have a diverse faculty community and the primary mechanism for building community engagement are face-to-face activities we hear a lot of times especially adjunct faculty for example it's hard for them to navigate they can't be there at that same time or it feels like one more thing on their plate um and so we've done a lot of work with for example university of missouri system arizona state university in their case they're leveraging inscribe but it's the ideas create a community that's more on demand so faculty can kind of drop in and out when they have a question or a challenge or when they want to engage with somebody and use that to supplement the the face-to-face or the in the synchronous activities so if you can't make it maybe you can watch a recording but there's always a place you can go sort of any time of day when you're in that moment and and want to connect with somebody um i was just looking out um oh so we have a couple of folks that have said yes time is a challenge one person saying um trying to figure out and i think this kind of speaks to our next question maybe i'll hold on that one for a second but uh yes so time time for faculty faculty being pulled in many directions so i don't know richard allison if you how you how you think about getting faculty engaged are they required to attend some of these things are they all optional and what's the incentive to to pull them in it depends it depends on what the topic is right so if it's if it if there's mission critical information and the best way to to share that with the team um is through a virtual meeting then it's then it's required um if something like the water cooler we haven't actually made that required but everybody goes and i think it's because it's driven by them and they're picking the topics so i think that that's one way to do it um those are some initial thoughts yeah and yeah i think that's really thoughtful and i i kind of think about this question the way i do about mandatory service for students which i i just tend not to think is helpful where students are accumulating points because they're required to do service my approach is is you make the programming meaningful enough that students want to attend or the service opportunity is meaningful enough and likewise for faculty uh designing retreats or or other team events that have real value to them so that faculty are joining by choice they're going to be much more open to engaging in the conversations if they feel like there's real value for them uh as opposed to many of our our retreats or gatherings unfortunately where faculty are walking in with the arms crossed right from the beginning suspicious uh about their time being wasted yeah yeah good point and that probably goes back to um ask them what they want like what do you need what do you want to learn about like allison you mentioned your water cooler is the topics are all driven by the faculty themselves so there's automatic you can automatically see some value that you're gonna that you're gonna get out of that experience so and and that probably just goes back to like making sure you have a mechanism to gather that information and feedback from faculty whether it's formal surveys or a place where they can just go throw ideas out um having that open forum sounds like an important component i think i think so just i just one quick thought about that i think i'm seeing a lot of people talk about time and the complexity of managing everything that the changes because of covid and just we're all busy anyway right the more that we can do to foster this uh to simplify the process for connecting and gathering good information because nothing is more frustrating than i have a question or i need to i need to bounce an idea off somebody i don't know where to go to do that or i'm free but they're not so any way that we can facilitate that whether it be those regular gatherings or that an asynchronous kind of connection where people can can chat when they're able to and respond when they're able to i think those those are other ways that we can really help support and build community yeah climate yeah i mean i just want to reiterate that that idea of simplifying in this environment is so important i i was meeting with a faculty member at the their year-end review we're having a conversation and they're one of their goals for next year they wrote survival and they they meant it they meant it metaphorically but also there was a undercurrent of well they meant literally too in the context of plague and and i i wanted honor that i said you know what that that seems totally reasonable and and and i encourage the faculty member to yeah definitely put everything aside and focus on what's most important and likewise in our own classes this is a year to simplify and help students who also have so much on their plate uh just just manage what's around them yes yeah and i and i've seen a couple of posts in the chat too which is the there's there's this idea of you have to support your faculty around their needs professional development changing landscape but the faculty are also the front line for students oftentimes so they are now being asked to be you know mentor advisor during this time of commotion and you know helping to support them in that activity as well um i don't know if that's come up with your faculty um as you're thinking through into the fall absolutely and and of course this kind of advising burden you know typically falls on uh faculty and women of color who already are being asked to carry that emotional work um and and and now it's just um uh you know it's exacerbating that that work for those members of our community who typically are called on and it's that quiet work that often is unseen in terms of our systems around promotion and tenure yeah good excellent point um so let's jump to the next question because i think we had somebody post something that was relevant there as well and that is what what shape does this community actually take so one of the um one of our attendees says i'm gonna scroll up um james mentioned you know sometimes we want all the faculty together sometimes it's not relevant for everybody it's really just like do i teach math and that's a good time to get together so how do you guys think about the shapes of communities within or even outside your organization richard lead us off yeah sure i mean this is a super question i mean you know i think you can divvy up your faculty in a lot of different ways i mean you're high and low performers your early mid late career faculty leaders followers early late adopters of technology by academic unit i mean it's a super complex puzzle and and i i often think we forget about the many shapes of our faculty so i so i might focus on a challenger to um you know one mistake is in in imagining the loudest voices represent the majority of faculty sometimes they're just those with the most privilege who feel authorized to speak out whereas there's typically a much larger quieter group to remain silent and and so i'm always interested in drawing out uh that group into conversation and i think in other mistakes trying to bring all faculty along to particular positions just you know just like there's no way to keep everyone happy in an hoa or extended family um not all faculty are gonna be happy or feel part of the community and that that's okay that's just human nature um having said that having just used the metaphor of a family i'm also really suspicious of that metaphor that seeks to characterize workplace relationships in terms of family because i think it's coercive and unhelpful in a lot of ways so um yeah go so i was just gonna because because we had a great question which is uh and i think people struggle with this with students as well you know those quiet voices are out there how do you draw them out or give them a safe space where they feel like they can speak up yeah yeah you explicitly call on them you put them in safe positions where they can articulate those positions you you promote them you put them in positions of power you give them financial support for programming um [Music] it's not a magic bullet um but but you you acknowledge uh how valuable their work is and support that work yeah so not always a quick fix right part of it is continuing to build that culture that allows for it um but knowing you have to be pretty intentional about making that happen and then in terms of your systems make sure that your systems that are in place in terms of promotion tenure don't unnecessarily burden uh women faculty of color i mean a good example or student evaluations if those play a prominent role in tenure promotion we just have to acknowledge that that members of those communities are are going to um struggle on student evaluations because students are more comfortable they feel authorized to use hateful language or comment on dress and appearance things that have nothing to do with teaching and learning uh just because they're conditioned that way so you need to change that system absolutely and and i think in the sort of a follow-up question about how i how do you identify the folks that are out there and and that's hard hard to do sometimes but um just going back to this idea of you know if you're if you're serving your faculty if you're sort of proactively asking each of them for feedback but in a way that can be anonymous or that other people are not necessarily having to see what they're saying can start to open that dialogue and help you identify people faculty in the community that have challenges have concerns but maybe aren't comfortable to stand up and say that in a room in front of you know 40 of their peers i do i do worry about this a lot i think it it's a an issue no matter what but in this in this climate of you know the one huge virtual meeting after another i do think it's very easy for certain voices to get completely lost yeah and so um i think that's i i if i had the solution to that that just much like my water cooler app could make me a great one but some of the things that i intentionally try to do with my own team is um is to create different types of connections different size size of gathering to be intentional about one-on-one uh conversations to reach out on virtual you know by teams um so that because some people are more comfortable answering questions that way so being mindful of the variety of ways that people need to to have the opportunity to speak out um but gosh i wish i knew that the answer to that because it that's the kind of thing that when i think about faculty or staff that are that are quiet and their voices are lost i could lose sleep at night over that and it's the same thing with students i often feel that the people that are getting the most attention and help are just those that are the best at seeking it for themselves but maybe not the ones who need it the most and um so it's a great question to ponder and but i do think one of the answers is offering a variety of ways to connect and i do think that mentorship is a is a huge key to that so if you can recognize those powerful mentors on your team they often can be the ones who draw out the quieter voices and and can lift them up and encourage them to be more vocal so i don't know if that's helpful but those are some of them yeah that's a great suggestion because sometimes you just need that like you need to start small with like one connection and one relationship that helps give you the confidence or um the nudge that you need to like to get out there and say what you're thinking um we've also found you know some of the folks that are that are um building faculty communities that we are working with will create spaces for faculty to sort of self-form the groups that so there's one big community but within that community they can create their own subgroups and kind of find each other and you can learn a lot from the types of groups that faculty self-form just to understand uh it tells you a lot about how they think about their own identity and how they um you know like what they what they think of as their specialties and and focuses outside of maybe the subject that they're teaching so that would just be one of the recommendation just from some of the books we've worked with that has has worked okay let's go on to our our next question um all right so the big one that we've been talking around here um so you know change is always happening in higher education some would say that the pandemic has accelerated that change it certainly hit the accelerator for change a certain number of changes to hit that doesn't necessarily mean all the changes that we're incorporating today are are long-term so curious if you have some thoughts on things that you do think will kind of just find their way into the experience ongoing and specifically for this fall how do we help faculty embrace that change feel confident and comfortable with it and feel ready to teach you know in the 2021 school year allison take it away so first how how how how will this change like make change permanent was that the first part of that question yeah stick around so so you know i think coming from where for where we are at wgu like i i think that in some ways it's kind of validated what we've already been not not kind of it has validated what we've been doing all along which is that you focus on quality experience for the students and that a very student-centered um flexible experience and i think that more institutions will do that because they have to now and then see the value of it and stick with it um so so i think that that kind of change will happen um what i hope that i hope that people start to see and understand that online education can happen in a lot of different ways and it's not just about taking that classroom experience and plopping it in an online meeting room that there are lots of different ways to interact with learners online and and that perhaps that you know daily me or daily meeting at this time for this long is maybe not the way to do it for all different subjects so so i'd love to see that change continue um how can community help to embrace change i think any time things change and when they change particularly uh because of outside forces and it's not something we we drove ourselves i think that creates a feeling of sort of panic and insecurity and i know just speaking as a human being one of the things that i do when i'm feeling panicked and insecure and unsure is i seek people that i trust um at as sounding boards for ideas um for support uh so i think the more that we can help our faculty to find each other and feel safe connecting with each other for that kind of sounding board that mentorship that then that just makes the change feel better it also makes it happen more effectively um so it was really like nurturing that social emotional component of change which is you know not necessarily about the change itself but more about the emotions and the uncertainty that's around it and creating a network i think that's a piece of it though i wouldn't i also think that there's a lot of idea sharing too yeah right like i tried this and it worked or um or i'm thinking about trying this what do you think and so there's resource and idea sharing as well as the social and emotional piece of it so i think both are important and i and i think the more that we can foster that connection and conversation among faculty members the more you know the um part of effective change management is raising the awareness around like the need for the change so if you've got people talking to each other and you've got this faculty member who's feeling really good about it and understanding it and they can bring along this one who's like not as sure then it's going to happen um in a more that change is going to happen more effectively and everybody's going to feel better as it happens yes yeah so so it's almost like they're reinforcing each other so if there are changes that you want to persist like adapting new technologies and part of the way that you make that successful to your point is by having faculty be able to share best practices and talk about how we're using it and learn from each other otherwise at the end of the day we might just end up throwing it all away again right back to where we were to start okay richard what do you what are you yeah yeah it's a really good question i i think the the question institutions need to ask themselves uh is who owns change during times of crisis uh it's not a question that gets asked that often you know i'm reading uh rebecca solnit's super interesting book uh called paradise built in hell uh which i recommend the thesis focuses on the opportunity that can come from massive disasters like the 1906 san francisco earthquake um and basically you know solnet's arguing that there's always a hunger for community because we're human beings and we thrive when we're with others but ironically disasters like 911 katrina um earthquake they satisfy that hunger as people come together to overcome calamity and it's one of the reasons so many people find meaning and common purpose in going to war and it's been one of the failings of our national response to the coronavirus crisis actually that we don't feel a common sense of purpose um one of sulnet's uh cautionary notes is that the source of community is rarely those in positions of authorities like me you know me and allison um in fact authority figures tend to be disruptors to community that's developed organically in crisis so i mean i i'm amazed by the collaboration amongst our faculty working in the middle of this crisis the uh the sharing around ideas um around pedagogy preparing for this term through really generative conversations around innovation workshops run almost exclusively by faculty um talking about technology so you know i'm somewhat optimistic actually that hopefully these ways of doing our work will continue that's interesting um so two important points there one is don't presume that this isn't already happening at your institution and then squash it by trying to implement on top right so try and figure out and if there are successful things either stay out of the way or ask you know what can i do to help nurture this and help you be more successful i also um we have we did a panel um uh right when the when we were in the midst of it in the spring on a similar topic and and much like you mentioned richard it was seeing the amount of collaboration that naturally sprung up not even just within institutions but across institutions and the amount of information sharing and just generosity that people had to help each other through the process um was really inspiring and i agree i hope something that you know always existed in pockets but maybe can be more at the forefront of how we do business yeah in san francisco in 1906 the authorities set fire breaks which had the unfortunate uh outcome burning down more of the city than helping so you know we don't want to we don't want to act in uh that sort of manner at our own campuses yeah absolutely um so i will i think if we want to open it up um i don't know if we have any questions that have come in through the chat that we didn't capture and danielle if you want to jump in and help us navigate that we can jump down to the next slide here we go awesome so attendees other questions that you might have or things that if you did post it in the chat and we missed it we'll try and grab it but feel free to repost please so that we don't miss out on any get into any of your hot topics danielle yeah so we don't actually have any questions in the chat at this point that we haven't covered oh great wow we were very productive in uh in scoping through the chat so that's good for us um ah the nitty-gritty of learning groups so give us a little bit more around that raya i don't learning groups for a leading group so i think uh i think kind of going back to the idea of you've got a group of people together and how do you lead them in conversation or discussion how do you and how do you get everybody to start talking and participating do you have any sort of practical ice breakers or or tips that you use that have have helped in the past here's a key that i think a lot of people and we even are guilty of it at wgu a lot is and um just have everybody introduce themselves if it's especially if it's a small group right um sometimes you can't but um have giving people an opportunity to just say who they are and breaks the ice and so if you can do that sometimes when my groups are larger it's just uh give me one word like and and i can get much like how one word descriptor of your mood or what depending on what the conversation's going to be um so that can be a quick hit for everybody to get there and i say everybody turns their camera on um yeah that's my yeah when you're doing a virtual meeting i think cameras on is huge it keeps people from they don't feel as free to multitask um you know and there's pushback on that and i understand it but i just think it's too important if we were going to be in the room with each other we'd have to look at each other's faces so a couple of things but um i also just think that as a as a leader of the conversation you have to go in with a plan you can't i mean you've got to have some sort of a structure and have a plan for how you will ask individuals to participate and don't just rely on that person who feels real comfortable speaking up but invite people to participate and get super comfortable with silence we don't let we don't wait long enough as speakers and sometimes especially in this virtual environment there's the technology sometimes you're double muted and you don't realize it you have to give people time to get their thoughts together and then get their technology in order participate um i think using i think that there are lots of other things like using chat is a great way to get people to participate that wouldn't participate otherwise and um and there's most of the different technologies have polling or you know something like that so i think getting ready with some polls and having people participate in that way have all been effective that's great love love the point about silence couldn't agree more at breakout rooms um you know we just we want to take the best lessons of active learning and apply them to our meetings and you know virtual or face to face and uh people really open up when they're in groups of three and four i'm a big fan of calling on uh people who are quiet and much harder i think is not routing the conversation through uh the leader of the meeting and and trying to get some peer-to-peer conversation that tends to be more generative uh if possible yeah and um it reminds me a little bit of some of like the workshops that you'll sometimes do at conferences where they'll put you in groups and then they'll ask you to reflect on something and then you have to report back to everybody you know what it is that you did some of the same active learning techniques that we use in the classroom can absolutely be um applied when we're trying to help our faculty figure out how to how to engage and and how to lead them in discussion as well and katie your point about just low stakes intentional reflection uh that that's super generative i you know i have all my faculty do at the end of the semester an intentional reflection all the classes in the honors college are team taught and and so the faculty engage in a low stakes formative exercise where they're simply asked to answer three questions what went really well what didn't go as well as you uh thought it should and what are your plans for next time you teach the course that might be different and it's not tied to evaluation it's just to facilitate conversation honest conversation between the two partners and they the partners if they teach again tend to go back to that document and build the class from there that's great and that same structure can be applied you know to all kinds of things right like what worked what didn't work how do we want to improve it next time and that's a great suggestion richard a super simple um pen and paper way to to help people think about um and and and raise their voice about what they're thinking about um so it doesn't look like i don't think i've seen any other questions pop in so once again great job panelists getting through the questions as we were talking um so if we just jump to the last slide here um so first i want to thank richard and alison so great to have you guys here sharing your expertise and helping to you know address some of the challenges and questions for our attendees today um also big thanks to wg labs for helping us put this on if you want to learn more about wg labs or inscribe you can follow us on social you can also check out our website which i think someone will drop in the chat um but we would love for you to reach out to us share what you learned today with your followers and and friends and again this is a community itself and we are all learning from each other so thank you to all of our attendees for for sharing what you did today and for being here um i will also let you know we'll we'll follow up this webinar again with the recording as well as some links to our previous webinars those would be useful to you and we at inscribe just recently put together a an institutional assessment to help you think through how your institution is building community for students and faculty so we will give you an exclusive link to that assessment in our follow-up email and hopefully it will have some great tips for you as you think about you know what that means to you today and and going forward into the fall so thanks again everybody for being here and uh everyone have a wonderful day and a great fall semester thank you