The AT&T Professional Development Academy for Community College Faculty
The AT&T Professional Development Academy for Community College Faculty was established by CORD in 2003 through a grant from the AT&T Foundation. The Academy offers online, interactive professional development courses for two-year college faculty in an environment that is interactive and engaging.
The six-week courses offer professional development in a format ideal for community college faculty members’ busy schedules. Course participants can login to an Academy course at a time convenient for them and have the opportunity to share experiences and best practices with a cohort group of other faculty. While weekly assignments, activities, and discussions are expected of course participants, they may choose the best time during the week to complete their coursework.
Academy courses available include:
Comments from Academy course participants include:
“The information is wonderful, the flexibility makes the course stress-free, and the validation and sharing of information and ideas is remarkable, but I must say that trying a new idea and seeing a students face when they ‘get it’ is priceless! I use active learning in my classes but now have many new ideas to try.”
“One of the reasons I took this course was that am teaching an online course, and I was curious about what my students experience. It's been a very rich experience from that point of view and will send me back to my course with new sympathy for the late posters to my discussion boards. I think everyone who teaches an online course should take one, in part, at least, because it will open their eyes to how rich an experience it can be. I haven't had a professional development experience this intense or useful ever! A course—even a relatively short-term course—requires participation in a way that a 4-hour workshop does not, and participation, as we've found out, is crucial to learning. We've had time to digest the material and to incorporate it in our classes. I would certainly take another course in this series!”
“I’ve learned that I'm really not such an oddball after all. There are lots of teachers who worry and struggle and put in extra time to make the learning process better. This course makes me feel like I'm part of a community of professionals who really care about what they do. I don't always feel that way on a day-to-day basis. That may be unfair to my colleagues. If they were all in this class they might be just as enthusiastic as I am. But to be able to sit down and interact with professionals who share my goals and interests is a real treat. To tell you the truth, I probably wouldn't have thought of the topics for this class but I'm sure glad YOU did.”
To learn more about offering AT&T Academy courses for faculty members at your institution, please contact Hope Cotner, Vice President of Community College Initiatives, at hcotner@cord.org
