Transforming Learning Through Innovative and Inclusive Design

Faculty needed a way to connect their professional development with the college’s CARES goals and continue working together after in-service. I designed the structure and Canvas space for five yearlong faculty communities.

I connected the five HOME rooms and the Fall In-Service planning activity to five groups, each with two faculty leads. I built one Canvas course with five sections and a November-to-May work cycle. The Canvas course is live, with five sections and participants in place. The communities are beginning their yearlong work, with portfolio assembly planned for May 2027.

The college needed an in-service that connected faculty development plans to its CARES goals. I coordinated presenters and logistics and designed the afternoon learning experience.

I organized a sequence in which faculty analyzed a real program problem, planned a solution with colleagues, and shared their work in a gallery walk. I connected those group plans to the Communities of Practice. The group plans became starting work for the yearlong Communities of Practice. The event gave faculty a concrete handoff from an individual development plan to a shared project.

My earlier self-paced faculty pathways showed me that people needed a reason to meet and keep going together. I rebuilt that shared foundation as HOME, a ten-week live course connected to later community work.

I organized each week as a room of a house, sequenced meetings around Gagné’s nine events, and used HOME Inspections for faculty self-assessment. The later rooms introduced the five CARES communities, and week ten supported the choice of a group. The course completed its ten-week run on October 12, 2026 and became the first 20 hours of the pathway into Communities of Practice. Faculty left with HOME Inspection self-assessments to carry into their portfolios.

Faculty needed to translate the Critical Thinking College-Wide Learning Outcome into assignments students actually complete. I designed the Spring 2026 In-Service as the Bloom Block: eight departments working in parallel through six stages from Remember to Create. Simon’s story, introduced through a 16-page graphic novel in the TLC newsletter, gave the day a shared purpose. Each faculty member worked toward a concrete deliverable: a redesigned assignment with visible CWLO alignment.

I built the dean and faculty guides, six stage handouts, a Simon Ticket voting economy, and an AI CWLO checker. Faculty compared the checker’s suggestions with their own work and made the final revisions themselves. The event produced 113 CWLO-aligned redesigns from 129 submitted assignments, an 88% completion rate. Assignments naming a critical-thinking term rose from 10% to 42%, and 84% of 75 survey respondents rated the day good or excellent.

Faculty who had completed an introduction to generative AI needed a more advanced next step. I built Applied AI as the continuation of that faculty learning pathway.

I developed the course and launched it in fall 2025, connecting it to the earlier Generative AI in Higher Education course and the college’s broader AI work. Applied AI launched in fall 2025 and established an advanced next step in the faculty learning pathway. Course-specific completion and learning results are not yet documented in this case study.

The college was connecting faculty professional learning with its Professional Responsibility CWLO and program assessment work. My event work supported a two-day experience with the Office of Outcomes and Assessment.

The program moved through the outcome’s levels, from cultural awareness and inclusive practice to sustainability, culturally informed soft skills, and belonging. Faculty also updated their program learning outcome reports. The event connected professional learning and program reporting in the same two-day experience.

The in-service brought together practical faculty topics, including belonging, access, technology, and student support. I contributed a session on using TILT and AI to improve assignment design.

I led “TILT + AI: Smarter Assignments for Better Student Success” within a ten-session faculty program and published its resources in the TLC LibGuide. The session was delivered, and faculty can still access its assignment-design resources in the TLC LibGuide.

The college needed to connect faculty work with the five CARES areas of its strategic plan. My in-service work helped turn that framework into a two-day faculty experience.

The event used rotations through CARES-themed sessions and connected those sessions to program action-plan updates. That same organizing framework later carried into HOME and the Communities of Practice. The event established the CARES-based structure used in later faculty development. The recorded result is the event and its connection to program planning, rather than a measured change in institutional performance.

The original Jisan pathways needed revision as I learned more about how faculty participated in professional development. I rebuilt the yearly framework around course-design expectations and what the previous version taught us.

I aligned the framework with the Washington State Course Design Checklist and revised it each year as part of the college’s faculty learning system. More than 500 PD hours were earned through the framework. The project also gave me a structure I could revise each year as faculty needs and course-design expectations changed.

Faculty needed a foundation for making decisions about generative AI in their teaching. I built a 30-hour faculty cohort that connected AI guidance with actual course materials.

The course asked faculty to apply the guidance to their syllabi, assignments, assessments, and learning materials. It became the foundation for the later Applied AI course. The first cohort finished, with course work focused on faculty syllabi, assignments, assessments, and learning materials. That course became the foundation for the later Applied AI pathway.

The college had practical expertise across programs that faculty could share with one another. My in-service work helped organize a day around that faculty expertise.

The day opened with Simon Says: Break the Ice and moved into hands-on workshops led by faculty, including wiring, songwriting, and virtual escape rooms. The event gave faculty a structured opportunity to teach and learn from colleagues across disciplines. The program and workshop resources are the documented outputs; no event-specific learning measure is recorded.

I wanted to give faculty a shared foundation and a clear route through professional learning at CPTC. I designed PD Base Camp and four themed paths up Jisan Mountain.

I built stories, challenges, simulations, and badges around the tracks. When few faculty finished independently and time emerged as a barrier, I folded three tracks together and added Lunchtime Learning to walk teams through their next level. The initial design exposed an accountability problem that changed my approach. Those lessons directly informed HOME’s shared foundation and weekly live meetings. This is an example of using weak completion as design evidence.

I joined CPTC in January 2023 and contributed to my first in-service four months later. I co-presented an afternoon session with Geoff Cain.

That early work began the approach I continued developing: use a playful opening to draw people in, then connect the experience to work faculty can take back to their courses. The session was delivered and became an early step in my longer faculty-development work at CPTC. It was also an opportunity to begin working with colleagues across the college.