Seminar series

In 2023, I began a seminar series targeting teaching and learning issues identified in consultations with educators. In my practice, I pride myself on creating highly experiential, hands-on professional development workshops and experiences for educators. However, these workshops only occur twice per year before the start of the semester to leverage the downtime of most of the educators in the faculty. This means that for staff who don’t necessarily request my support individually, there may be a lack of contact throughout the rest of the year. 

When I designed this series, I aimed for a webinar-style presentation with question and answer time and at least one hands-on activity to maintain that active learning and experiential vibe that I pride myself on. After the initial few seminars, it became apparent that educators were not necessarily expecting the hands-on experiential vibe, and the moment I launched into any kind of breakout rooms activity, I heard the all too familiar sounds of mass Zoom departure. Not unlike the sound of the rejection buzzer in ‘If You Are The One’, it genuinely can sound like a chorus of rejections, people collectively saying ‘Nope’. I really should switch off that sound. 

While this was a little disheartening, it made me reflect on my own experiences. I frequently attend webinars with little to no Q&A and absolutely no active learning engagement, and depending on the topic, I get a lot out of the sessions. In fact, there are many times when I prefer to keep my camera off and take notes without having to smile and engage with others publicly. Particularly when I am eating Second Breakfast. This helped me realise there is a place for the webinar-style presentation with little to no social engagement, and it has also got me thinking about the death of the lecture and how we promote active learning as the pinnacle of education. Perhaps there is space for the hour-long didactic lecture, as long as the topic doesn’t cause cognitive overload and the presenter is an engaging storyteller.  Perhaps educators were happy to listen quietly during my seminar series because I am a relatively engaging presenter. Or at least, that’s the rationale I’ve convinced myself of. 

The series covered various pedagogical challenges identified through faculty consultations, along with some of my personal favourites. Sessions included inclusive educational practices, supporting mental health in the curriculum, and integrating student feedback. The most popular topic was (unsurprisingly) Generative AI in education, on which I ran three seminars at the beginning of 2024. One of the more popular presentations on generative AI in education had 120 registrations, and 100 people attended the live session. Interestingly, this highlighted that far more people prefer attending a live presentation than viewing a recording afterwards. Looking at the analytics, over the past 10 months there have been 38 views for that presentation, with an average watch of 68%. This is one of the more generous examples, likely due to the topic. In contrast, a seminar on supporting mental health in unit design received a total of 6 views. These statistics likely represent what educators in the faculty need to know about. 

What began as an experiment in extending my educational design support has evolved into a valuable platform for ongoing professional development. These sessions also prompted leaders within the faculty departments to request workshops and presentations tailored to their departments’ needs. So, in addition to extending my support at the faculty level, they allowed me to engage more deeply with the departments. Overall, the seminar series has been instrumental in increasing engagement with the faculty and my educational design support.