A couple years back this very writing project produced a book about first year teaching and shared some thoughts about “Things I Wish I Would Have Known” during that first year.
One thought I had was that the book could serve as a place to connect faculty to each other. Give those incoming faculty a little book with some good ideas and some faces, phone numbers, and email addresses of people who were willing to help them.
The book ended up having the “About the Author” section but the numbers and addresses never quite made it.
That’s ok, it was a wonderful first run at a great idea. Maybe you all will do it again?
In the meantime, I just found this today from the CSU Channel Islands people who we have long held in high esteem. It is a “Digital Learning Mentors” page that has a number of faculty offering short videos about who they are and they all OFFER TO HELP. They say stuff like,
“Please reach out and if I don’t know the answer to your question, we will figure it out and learn together.”
“I’m also interested in creative approaches to online teaching, and would be happy to be a sounding board for brainstorming creative assignment, assessment, or design ideas.”
“I am very motivated to build the community and help point you to the right path to get information.”
The site is brilliant. Here is the link again.
That is what we all need. More offers of assistance. More ways to engage in learning. Can TeLS do this? Should they? Hmmm… I wonder….