Quick Tips for Online Success: Porterville College’s Journey from Chaos to a Mainstay of Professional Development

Presented by:

• Melissa Long, Professor, Porterville College
• Dr. Elisa Queenan, Professor, Porterville College
• Dr. Dustin Acres, Professor, Porterville College
• Ian Onizuka, Professor of Mathematics, Porterville College

Speaker Bios:

• Melissa Long is an English professor at Porterville College. Though her focus is in the classroom teaching college composition (both with and without a corequisite) and British literature, she also works as the campus outcomes coordinator, facilitates a community of practice for student-centered teaching, and oversees the implementation of AB705.
• Elisa Queenan is a Professor of Business and Economics at Porterville College and has a doctorate in Higher Education Leadership. She has taught within California Community Colleges for over 15 years. Her research focuses on the economic value of postsecondary education for underrepresented populations, poverty, and homelessness, specifically in California.
• Dustin Acres is a Professor of Mathematics at Porterville College and has a doctorate in Educational Leadership. His research focus was on the impact of AB 705 on remediation from the perspectives of mathematics teachers. He has had experience teaching at the K-12 and Community College levels for 19 years. He has had experience as co-chair of the Tech Review committee, Chair of the Curriculum Committee, and helped to facilitate the implementation of AB 705 for the mathematics department.
• Born and raised in Hawaii. My family arrived in Porterville in 2016 after teaching high school and college math for 11 years. I have worked to fully gamify my classroom from notes to exam reviews.

Session Info:

Quick Tips for Online Success is a webinar series that started in June 2020 as an informal way for faculty to learn from a group of familiar faces. Though the move to online education was daunting, we found that professional development to support teachers in making that transition didn’t have to be. Together, the Quick Tips team explored the shift online to hybrid and hyflex formats to a disjointed and confusing return to campus (for some) and the series offered not only an avenue to discuss andragogy, but a way to connect in a time when many of us feel isolated. Join four professors as they discuss their innovative web series, Quick Tips for Online Success, which draws from experienced online instructors’ best practices and aims to help struggling faculty keep the human elements of the face-to-face class in a virtual setting. The webinar series was developed for faculty by faculty. The presenters will share tips for developing a similar project as well as offer the resources their team has compiled.

Session Outcomes:

• Capitalize on our success with Quick Tips for Online Success and design a similar form of professional development on their own campuses.
• Describe the obstacles we faced in starting and continuing our series in order to overcome them.
• Access resources on a variety of topics that are applicable to every discipline.

Session Resources:

Quick Tips for Online Success LONG