Successful Instructional Development Workshops

Abstract

any instructional development programs have achieved perma nent status on college campuses (Knapper and Cropley 1985; Gaff 1979); faculty response, however, has generally been limited and diffident (Centra 1978, 188). What can we do to trans form instructional development activi ties into eagerly awaited opportunities for personal and institutional growth? Both the literature and our experiences as workshop facilitators on various cam puses suggest seven keys to effective in structional development workshops. As a prelude to sharing these keys to success, we should note the limitations of our advice.1 First, we intentionally are restricting our focus to a single aspect of instructional development?the teach ing workshop conducted by an expert from another campus. These workshops are the most common instructional de velopment activity and the least pre ferred by faculty (Pellino 1981, 31). Thus it makes sense to search for proc esses that would improve them. Because faculty members claim overwhelmingly that they prefer facilitators from other campuses (Eble and McKeachie 1985, 204), our emphasis will be on those workshops using outside consultants rather than local experts. A second prefatory statement relates