 Thank you. So hi, I'm Karla Fribli. I'm academic technologies and seminaries librarian at Erlum College in Richmond, Indiana. Erlum is a small liberal arts college, and I'm the both a librarian, but I'm also the frontline Moodle support on my campus. So before I get started though, I Feel like we might all need a little bit of a spa moment. Okay, so maybe you're thinking about your choices Thinking about staying a little bit late last night at the with the open bar Maybe you're thinking twice about that second piece of key lime pie this morning So I'd like to give everyone a chance to center themselves and honor of our spa theme talk Can I get an oh Okay, well at least you're all now staring at me mostly so I'm going to be talking about promoting Moodle with massages running a spa themed faculty training So I'm curious How many of you have or currently offer workshops or training to your users or faculty? Okay, that's a good bit of you. How many of you have perhaps been Underwhelmed by the number of attendees or participation Okay, yeah, it happens How many of you would prefer to get involved at the design phase with your Faculty or instructors rather than reacting mid-semester to something crazy that they came up with that really isn't going to work out Okay, so I'm going to talk about a workshop model that We use that actually addresses all of those needs the model is a program called a course design spa and it's a I've offered it now at two different institutions that I've been at highly successful We typically have a wait list for this event where we actually have to turn the faculty away So if you're looking for a highly successful and highly popular model, this could be one that you use So how does it work? Course design spa. This is a one-day event that we plan and If you work with faculty or teachers or humans If you ask them something that they're always lacking something that often is missing is enough time So there's not enough time to do all the things they might want to sit down and talk with you But there are many competing things going on So this event is designed to literally give the gift of time The course design spa falls we usually schedule it a week or two before the semester begins And it's an open work day So we actually stole the idea from a writer's retreat that we used to run for faculty where It's a chance to just come in and focus on one thing forget about all those other things that you have going on in your life and focus on in this case course design so We invite faculty to come in work on their courses and then We coordinate and get lots of different support folks from around the campus to offer consultations. So we have Folks available to talk about instructional technology folks from the Campus Teaching Center folks from the library Disability services diversity and inclusion all of these folks come in and because of the spa they offer treatments basically consultations and conversations Continuing in the vein of the cheesy spa theme. We also Hire license massage therapists to come in and they offer 15 minute chair massages throughout the day kind of to sweeten the deal So I mentioned the cheesy spa language the the image that's on the screen there is Actually, one of my colleagues created a spot treatments brochure. So this offers the different types of help that you might be able to receive including Assignment exfoliation Things like that So it's a little silly, but embracing that theme actually gets people excited about the event I'm pleased to offer what I think is the second reference to choose your own adventure books from the conference But the whole day is actually structured as a choose your own adventure kind of day So what's nice about it from a planner is that I don't have to try to guess what's going to be Interesting to people when once they show up they can kind of decide how they want to structure the day So how does that work? We have them we have the faculty register in advance So they fill out a form saying that they're going to come We ask them a few questions about what they're going to be working on There's a little some tick boxes where they can express the kinds of help that they think they might be interested in But then when they come in The really the only structured part of the day is the introductions at the start of the day, so faculty come to the event and the different consultants offer Quick 30 to 60 second introduction and say this is who I am. This is how I might be able to help you So from there they can decide how they want to structure the day To enable that this is the piece of technology that we use to help faculty structure their days Yes, it's a giant whiteboard so For the giant whiteboard that we have the I know it's impossible to read from where you're sitting, but there are the column on the left lists all the different types of help that faculty might be able to get throughout the day whether it's instructional technology help or Librarian help and then the different columns are time blocks so they can sign up for oh I want to get help from this person at 11 Then I'm gonna sign up for this other thing at 12 15. It's helpful I think for both the participants to kind of plan out their day, but also it helps the consultants know Who they're gonna be working with when? So one of the examples on here The a participant named Dave for example he Signed up. He met first with somebody from the Office of Diversity and Inclusion talking about Issues within his classroom and then he moved from there at 11 15 to talking with the librarian about a research assignment and Then after that he had 1145 talked with somebody about the learning management system and how he could integrate that for a particular assignment Took a lunch break then actually worked on his own for a couple of hours before having an additional appointment in the afternoon So that was just how he chose to structure the day. I'd say on average faculty Sign up for maybe three to four Assignment or consultations of some type. So I've talked a little bit about how it works logistically But now I want to go into why this works. So I mentioned I've now done this Two different institutions. I know of Seven or eight different other schools that have launched their own versions So I think all together I've run about ten of these And I mentioned before that this is an event that we actually have a wait list for so if you ever are having Trouble getting people to attend something. This is something that we don't have to Lure them into attending. It's it's pretty popular So why from the faculty member faculty members perspective does this work? I already mentioned that it helps them carve out time, right? If you look at surveys of Higher education faculty at least that's Something that they never feel like they have enough of if you look at the number of hours a week per week that they're working They're actually working longer than their predecessors did 20 years ago So this actually Capitalizes on that need for time It also helps create a space where they can learn from each other. So You know again connecting to that lack of time They might think that they'd like might like to talk with other faculty about their teaching But it's hard to find this time and space for that. So this creates a space where they can do that Timing wise it also falls at a time When they're looking for this kind of information, so I'll share an example I mentioned that I know of seven or eight other institutions that have started running these since I Since we started talking about the idea So I had a colleague or I won't say what institution she was at but they Launched one of these at her institution and she was really excited to tell me that they're gonna be doing it So time passed next time I saw her I said, oh, hey, how did your course design spa go? She said oh Well, we only get it got a few sign-ups. So we ended up having to cancel it and I said oh no That's terrible. So I started getting more information from her and it turns out that they had tried to hold it in May immediately after classes had finished on her campus Which Emotionally physically that's not a time unfortunately when most faculty are ready to think about what's gonna happen next fall So when you're scheduling your events think about when's the best time for me to be trying to reach them When is this gonna be of most interest to them? Connected to that and understanding your users and what motivates them This is not marketed as a learn-about moodle day It might break our hearts that that's not the the hook that's gonna draw them in the door, but Framing it as a Time-saver for them and also something fun. I mean I may not be persuaded to come to an open work day But I might be persuaded to come to a spa day, right? So thinking about what might motivate your users So that's the piece as far as why it works for faculty and I'll go briefly into why it works for me as a Somebody that does faculty development and also campus partners that I work with so the biggest one is that it's pretty easy To partner with others on this kind of event So, you know, you could have seven or eight different departments that all are helping you out with this event And what you're asking from them is pretty minimal They for the most part just have to show up and they have easy access to talk with the faculty in-depth about their courses Without having to prepare a lot It is Something where you can get in at that design phase rather than trying to react to something later Or rather trying to get their attention Further down the line and last but not least it is a pretty cheap event to run So not to ignore that piece if you get enough sponsoring departments This is something where you each chip in a couple hundred bucks. It actually only costs Three or four hundred dollars for the massage therapist. So if you get enough sponsoring departments to work with you on this It's pretty cheap for everybody. So I've done enough of these now that There are some things that we've learned. I think it's sort of an iterative process where we change it every every time try something new one of the things that we Figured out from feedback pretty early on so we ask faculty and also the participating consultants to always fill out an evaluation form where they Share some information about their experience and one thing we heard a lot at first from faculty is that they really wanted more chances to Structured opportunities to talk with other faculty about teaching. So we got them all in that space But they needed a little bit of help Having those conversations with each other. So we switched Our we had lots of one-on-one conversations throughout the day we actually switched some of those into group sessions so rather than coming to me to Talk individually about something they might want to try to do in Moodle We switched that to a group session where we would all be talking about some kind of shared topic or where people would bring in their Questions and talk about it as a group Similarly in that same vein of creating structured spaces where collaboration and conversation could happen We something simple. We just switched to having a fixed lunch break. So everyone was forced to kind of stop and Stop what they were doing and talk with others and that helped read some more collaboration That's not to say that we've gotten everything right there's There's always something that I'm trying to figure out with this event. So one of the big ones for me is trying to figure out How this kind of event How we can reach distance faculty or faculty that may not be able to come to our Event we've tried different things like Streaming certain sessions or taking those one-on-one conversations and offering them over zoom or Skype or what have you and It hasn't really clicked yet. So there you know, you'll get a person that signs up for those kinds of things But so far that's something that we're kind of still figuring out Also with your something small that with a campus partner We had our Counseling center who wanted to participate and offer consultations. So they came and they were ready They were excited to talk to faculty about mental health issues on the campus and how they can navigate tricky situations in the classroom They are there all day and not a single person talked to them So, you're not always going to get everything right one of the things we did for that Campus partner is to actually switch from having them to be there the whole day to just give them a two-hour time block where they were there and one of those sessions was a group session so to kind of Hopefully enable Or and make it a little bit easier for them to participate. So I Think I'll stop there as we inch closer to lunch I'm happy to take questions now if this is something that you'd like to know more about I wrote an article about this a couple years ago So if it's something that you want to read more about or share it with other folks that on your campuses, there's a I'm a librarian. So there's a nice citation there for you But yeah, if you do end up offering one of these at your own campus, I would love to hear about it inevitably you will have some Magnificent ideal of idea that I would like to steal. So please do share if you end up doing one of these Another than that. I'll open it up to questions. Yeah What idea so the question is what ideas have instructors given me For the future So I mentioned building in more spaces for conversation among each other Sometimes it's just seeing the kinds of things that they're interesting and so one of the surprising things So Instructors or faculty often grumble about how their students have poor time management skills But in general humans have poor time management skills so one of the surprising things that was really has been really really popular are The folks that run our writing center They also they offer time management sessions for students where they can sit down with them and help them Map out the semester and figure out when they're gonna submit stuff. That was actually really popular with faculty. So Even you think that adults figure these things out magically But that was an area where a lot of faculty were really interested in sitting down with another person and men mapping out their Semester and figuring out how they can balance assignments and due dates and things like that. So So the question was about what physical space do we use? So both times that I've run these we we hold it in our campus library So if you're not friends with your librarians Time to become friends And it's a mix so for most of the individual conversations They'll just happen in a different Corners of the room. There are some folks that So for example our Office of Diversity and Inclusion sometimes they have conversations that can be It's helpful to have a private space for them So we do have some study rooms that we use for some kinds of conversations also the chair massages We have those in a private room because nobody wants to get Touched in front of a lot of other people. So Well, most people don't So yeah, it kind of depends on the space that you're using but Also for the group sessions we that's nice to have an enclosed space so that the sound just doesn't carry everywhere so think about the types of conversations that are going to be having and that the people will be having and then structure the Spaces around that Yeah, so the question is about waiting list how we decide for At my last institution it was sort of we noticed that there was most interest in Instructional technology help and also our teaching center teaching consultant help and we only had a certain number of those folks so we Based on the space size and also just how much support we thought we could really offer Since those were the slots that tended to tended to fill up first. We would cap it at 35 But that's gonna depend on your staffing and what you feel like you can manage So I think I'm at time. I am happy to answer more questions later. So come find me If you have them and other otherwise, thank you for your time