1st Edition
The Productive Online and Offline Professor A Practical Guide
What does it mean to be a productive professor in higher education? What would it feel like to have more peace and productivity? To have nothing fall through the cracks? The Productive Online and Offline Professor is written for today’s busy higher education professional. Through an exploration of what it means to make work meaningful, this book offers practical strategies and tips to support higher education professionals in efficiently managing and effectively using a wide range of technologies and productivity tools.Higher education instructors will find this guide helps them to fulfill their teaching roles with excellence and to build engaging relationships with students while also successfully managing other priorities in their professional and personal lives.The Productive Online and Offline Professor assists those who teach online and blended courses with managing their personal productivity. Faculty are often expected to provide support and feedback to learners outside of normal work hours in non traditional classes. Programs that are designed with more asynchronous content may cause faculty to perceive that it is difficult to ever press the “off button” on their teaching. The author offers guidance and suggests software tools for streamlining communication and productivity that enable faculty to better balance their lives while giving rich feedback to students.Part 1 addresses the challenges in defining productivity and presents a working definition for the text.Part 2 describes the ability to communicate using both synchronous and asynchronous methods, along with ways of enriching such communication.Part 3 describes methods for finding, curating, and sharing relevant knowledge both within one’s courses and to a broader personal learning network (PLN).Part 4 examines specific tools for navigating the unique challenges of productivity while teaching online. It includes ways to grade more productively while still providing rich feedback to students.Part 5 shares techniques for keeping one’s course materials current and relevant in the most efficient ways possible.The Productive Online and Offline Professor is a practical guide for how to provide high quality online classes to diverse students. This book shares specific technology and other tools that may be used in charting a course toward greater productivity. It is intended to be a professional resource for fulfilling our roles with excellence and joy, while managing other priorities in our personal and professional lives.
Series Foreword—Kathryn E. Linder Foreword—Robert Talbert Acknowledgments Introduction Part One. Translating Intention Into Action Part Two. Facilitating Communication Part Three. Finding, Curating, and Sharing Knowledge Part Four. Leveraging Technology Toward Greater Productivity Part Five. Keeping Current Conclusion Appendix. Productivity Tools References About the Author Index
Biography
Bonni Stachowiak is the host of the long-running podcast, Teaching in Higher Ed. She is also dean of teaching and learning at Vanguard University of Southern California.Learn more about her podcast and blog at https://teachinginhighered.com.
Robert Talbert is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Grand Valley State University. Robert has experimented with and advocated for innovation in teaching and learning throughout his 25-year career in higher education. Primarily a classroom instructor, he has also served as Scholar-in-Residence at Steelcase, Inc., and held an appointment as Presidential Fellow for the Advancement of Learning in the GVSU President’s Office, where he coordinated large-scale initiatives on teaching innovation and built communities of practice around alternative grading. Robert lives in Allendale, Michigan with his wife, two teenage children, and three cats. He aspires to spend more time kayaking or playing bass guitar than in front of a computer.
Dr. Katie Linder is currently the executive director for program development at Kansas State University Global Campus. Previously, she directed the award-winning Ecampus Research Unit at Oregon State University. Katie is also a Certified Coach through the International Coach Federation. Katie is an avid writer and researcher with a passion for process and peeking behind the scenes at what it takes to be a successful academic. For the past several years, her work has focused on blended course design best practices, institutional supports for accessible online learning, and research literacy for scholarship of teaching and learning practitioners and distance education stakeholders. She speaks on topics related to writing and publication; creativity and productivity; self-promotion and personal branding; and teaching and learning with technology.Her latest works include Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers (Stylus, 2020; co-authored with Kevin Kelly and Tom Tobin), Managing Your Professional Identity Online: A Guide for Faculty, Staff, and Administrators (Stylus, 2018), High-Impact Practices in Online Education (Stylus, 2018), and The Business of Innovating Online (Stylus, 2019). She is also the author of The Blended Course Design Workbook: A Practical Guide (Stylus, 2016). Katie earned her BA in English Literature from Whitworth University in Spokane, WA, and her MA and PhD in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from The Ohio State University.Visit her personal website at: https://drkatielinder.com
"Stachowiak has written a book on productivity like none other I've read. Productivity, within her framework, is grounded in priorities and purpose and allows us to demonstrate care for the people in our lives and for the relationships that matter. Even the technology-timid will find heaps of ideas to put into practice."
Isabeau Iqbal, Senior Educational Developer, Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology
The University of British Columbia
"We all have a lot coming at us each day, and it can become overwhelming. The Productive Online and Offline Professor provides approaches that help us manage all those inputs, reach our most significant goals, and build balance in our lives. One of my favorite aspects of this book is that the end of each section offers steps to take action. Bonni Stachowiak even structured it to maximize productivity as you're reading it."
Sandra Morgan, PhD, RN, Director, Global Center for Women and Justice
Vanguard University of Southern California
"This accessible and engaging book offers clear suggestions and solutions for many of the challenges faculty face today: overflowing email inboxes, conflicting deadlines and responsibilities, and information management for research and teaching. Stachowiak deftly addresses productivity issues particular to teaching in an online environment, but much of this book will be relevant to anyone working in a college or university setting. She explains cornerstone productivity principles drawn from Stephen Covey and David Allen in relation to the particular contexts of academic work and provides actionable steps in each chapter. Whether you consider yourself already fairly well organized or in need of a full overhaul, this book will provide insight and encouragement as you develop your own individualized system for personal productivity."
Natalie M. Houston, Associate Professor
University of Massachusetts; Lowell and Personal Productivity Coach
"Bonni Stachowiak's The Productive Online and Offline Professor offers clear, actionable guidance on managing the demands of teaching in higher education today. Stachowiak moves easily between high-level strategies for crafting clear, achievable goals and specific techniques for getting the most out of an astonishing variety of tools. Further, Stachowiak never presumes to dictate technical choices her audience--or indeed to insist on technical solutions at all. Instead, she explains with empathy and good humor the particular pressures that might drive one's use of, say, a task manager, and then explains various ways to address them. By combining strategies from productivity systems such as David Allen's Getting Things Done with the practice of personal knowledge management, Stachowiak leaves her readers feeling confident about their ability to meet their careers' demands. The Productive Online and Offline Professor will interest many in higher education, especially those who are either new to, or still adjusting to the pace of, online teaching."
Jason B. Jones, Director of Research, Instruction, Technology
Trinity College (Hartford)
"I recommend it for anyone teaching online—whether novice or veteran, those who feel overwhelmed by teaching online (or offline), and those who are looking to improve their organizational approaches. Stachowiak addresses a practical aspect of online teaching that is mentioned but not often addressed in the literature: how to best organize to avoid information and screen overload when you incorporate technology into teaching."
Teachers College Record
