Shared Faculty Space comes in many forms--Shared resource website, Common Folders, Teacher Forums, My Yvonne Tips For Teaching Blog, Virtual Teaching Circle and Facebook Newsfeed.
Shared Website Resource Folder--Common Folders
Sometimes this means access to a shared website where teachers can all share teaching resources. The resources can be uploaded to the shared website in folders where other teachers can then access these resources for their classes. Individual teachers can create these teaching resources and make them accessible to other teachers through the shared website.
When I worked for UOP and for AMU, we had a shared website to share resources. At UOP, I remember logging into a website and I was able to share other teacher's rubrics and/or use their rubrics to make my own rubrics for my UOP classes.
At AMU, we had different called Common Learning Space where teachers in all departments created Resource Folders. I kept a resource folder of 54 of my writing videos that I made available to all AMU teachers and I used these writing videos in all my writing classes. These Common Folders were inside the LMS. Ask Tech Support where the Common Folders are located in your LMS.
Resources included: e-books, video links, web site links, learning modules created by colleagues about the same topic you teach etc..
Collaborative Teaching Tools
You can use collaborative tools like wikis, eportfolios, or Google documents where teachers can collaborate in real time on teaching projects or help each other build a class.
In Google Documents, you can create a document with comments about how to change a class or what content to put in the DQ forums. Then, invite teaching colleagues to comment on the content of your DQ forums in real time. The other teachers who teach your class can then submit suggestions on how to improve the DQ forums and thus giving other teachers a feeling of ownership to the class.
With this blog, you can have multiple teachers comment on blog articles, write blog articles for the blog talking about best practices and giving other blog writers suggestions on how to improve teaching, best practices, or topics for future blog articles. In this blog, I welcome other teacher comments on my articles or even better suggestions for future blog articles.
Teacher Forums
When I taught for UOP, this was the first time I was introduced to the fun world of online teacher forums. It is like a huge water cooler faculty room for online teachers just like the Chat cafe ungraded forum for students in an online classroom.
When I used to teach face to face, I enjoyed eating in the Faculty cafeteria and then hanging out with other faculty in the faculty lounge. We would all talk about the latest gossip (math teachers dating English teachers kind of gossip) or complain about the xerox machine constantly breaking down and running out of paper.
The UOP Online Teacher Forums served the same purpose. I learned from other UOP teachers better ways to make rubrics, create better writing assignments, engage students in forums, and grading shortcut tricks. I also learned how to purchase a cheap instructor telephone (Tracfone) for business calls and how to get free telephone numbers online from other teachers.
At AMU, our English/Literature Department created a similar webspace where teachers could talk, let down their hair, share resources, share best practice teaching tips, talk about family, death and just become good friends with our colleagues. I learned when a colleague had a baby, had a dying relative, a new pet, or a pet who died. We all learned to care about each other beyond just being teachers and we learned to see each other as people with lives outside of teaching.
We would give tips to each other on how to handle problem students, or to brag about our awards, or commiserate about long grading hours or constant server break downs. I remember I enjoyed that forum so much, the boss made me administrator of the AMU Teacher Forum. I even wrote a newsletter about this fun teacher forum at AMU.
Faculty Newsletter
Having a faculty newsletter where faculty can keep track of each other, keep track of the latest trends in teaching, school policies, departmental policies, professional development opportunities, calls to research for conferences as well as keeping track of the teacher conversations in the Teacher Forum. I remember totally enjoying writing the Faculty Newsletter and acting as a Departmental reporter. As the Webmaster, I reported on the most interesting teacher conversations in the Teacher Forums.
Later, all of the faculty would compliment me on my newsletter and when I stopped writing the newsletter to become Course Lead, faculty thanked me for the newsletter for making them feel like family and giving them a sense of belonging since teaching online can be quite an isolating experience.Writing a Faculty newsletter is also another way faculty can come together and be family.
Facebook Newsfeed
On my Facebook newsfeed, I have all my UOP colleagues and my AMU colleagues all in one place. I also have all my ex-bosses from AMU on my newsfeed. On Facebook, we can be even more informal than we are in the Teacher Forums at our schools. We can exchange teaching trends, teaching job openings, commiserate about long grading loads/classes, rejoice when vacation comes just like our elementary students run outside for recess with such glee, and most importantly we talk about our family and lives outside of academica on our newsfeed!
I know one teacher who loves Arizona and the Arizona desert with his motorcycle, another teacher colleague who has constant spiders all over her house, yet another colleague who collects Pez and finally another colleague who loves to barbeque hamburgers and steak. The teaching colleague who loves to barbeque steak is the same colleague I met who loves his hamburgers when I first met him at a Regional Faculty Lunch! :)
Having a virtual place where teachers can meet, share resources and get to know each other helps develop a sense of belonging to the school, lowers turnover and increases faculty morale and work productivity.
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