Molly Keener is the Director of Digital Initiatives & Scholarly Communication at the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University, a private university situated in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA. She heads up the Digital Initiatives & Scholarly Communication team, who work with faculty on digital scholarship, digital pedagogy, and scholarly communication.

Molly has worked at the university for fourteen years, eleven of which have been at ZSR Library, and has held her current position for just over three and a half years. Her areas of expertise are copyright and author rights, open access and scholarly publishing. She has been member of the Cambridge University Press North American Librarian Advisory Board since its foundation in 2016.

Wake Forest announced its move to online-only teaching on the evening of 11^th March. It was in the middle of the spring break, which was extended by an extra week to give faculty time to prepare. Instructors started to deliver remote teaching on 23^rd March. Students who had left the campus for the break were not permitted to return, which meant most had no access to physical course materials. Those who had stayed on campus for the break also now went home if they could. A small student population remained on campus until the end of the semester because of travel restrictions.

Immediately after online-only teaching was announced, the four offices of the Faculty Commons convened to plan support for instructors who had suddenly been thrust into emergency remote teaching.  Most of them had not taught online before. Spearheaded by the Center for the Advancement of Teaching [CAT], the offices launched online open lab hours to assist faculty during the extra spring break week.

Individual consultations were offered throughout that week and continued during the remainder of the spring semester. (The Faculty Commons is located within the library and as well as CAT houses the library’s Digital Initiatives & Scholarly Communication department, the university’s Office of Online Education, and Academic Technologies, a unit in the university’s Information Systems.)

By May it became evident that the need for remote teaching would not be temporary and the support team had begun looking ahead to fall.  Betsy Barre, the Executive Director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and her CAT colleagues came up with the idea of developing a comprehensive, university-wide Peer-to-Peer Learning Communities summer program. This would train faculty in becoming proficient at digital pedagogy and teaching online. Betsy pitched the idea to the university administration; its members responded enthusiastically.

Molly takes up the story. “The Peer-to-Peer Learning Communities program was built on the premise that investing in our teaching alongside technology is better than investing solely in technology, especially when planning for an uncertain fall. Not knowing if we would be offering fully online, blended, or in-person teaching, we recognized that investing in best practices for online teaching would benefit all teaching, regardless of modality. We chose to invest in teaching by working with faculty through a comprehensive set of development opportunities: online modules, reading groups, and workshops; and coordinated peer groups to learn and share best practices and build community as they prepared for fall. The peer learning communities initiative was the most ambitious piece of the program.

“The program was launched by bringing together sixty-six faculty facilitators for an intensive 4-week learning community.  Informed by what they had gained from this, they could adopt a “cascade” approach to facilitate their own learning communities by working with colleagues in their departments or adjacent disciplines.

“At the conclusion of the Peer-to-Peer Learning Communities program in August, 93% of all faculty had participated in the program. Recognizing that faculty were asked to do work outside their contract terms, the university provided stipends for participation.  More than $1.5 million USD was spent on helping faculty to develop in this way; a third of it came from donors.”

The program was led by the CAT and Online Education, with support from Academic Technologies and the library’s Digital Initiatives department. Eight colleagues from the four offices facilitated 4 cohorts during the 4-week training period.

Molly was not one of the cohort facilitators, but she met with each cohort for the specific purpose of discussing copyright and how it affects the use of course materials in online instruction. She also taught copyright workshops over the summer and consulted with numerous faculty members in one-to-ones. As they participated in the summer program, members of the Faculty Commons published blog posts to provide further aid. Molly’s posts address specific aspects of copyright and how it impacts on online course materials. 

As several faculty attest in a university news article about the program, it has inspired individual instructors and entire departments to think about and engage with pedagogy and classroom technology in fresh ways. Reaction among faculty to all these initiatives has been positive.  Many say that it has given them confidence as they head into the fall semester.

Wake Forest has encouraged its students to return to campus now. 

Molly says, “So far – knock on wood! – we have had low Covid case counts. Over 50% of our classes are fully online and only 12% are fully in-person, so the investment in learning about effective teaching online and in blended courses is being applied broadly this semester.”

The collective programming has wound down now that the fall semester is underway; but the success of the collaboration from mid-March onwards has created a foundation for the four offices in the Faculty Commons to build future joint programs and outreach. Members from Digital Initiatives and Academic Technologies are already brainstorming opportunities to enable them to support better digital research projects in the classroom.  Molly: “I anticipate such partnerships will increase.”

Molly is very keen to emphasize that the whole initiative was a collaborative effort.  She adds that “the bulk of the investment came from and therefore all accolades should go to” the members of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching—Betsy Barre, Kristi Verbeke, Anita McCauley, and Bethany Morrison; the Office of Online Education—Allen Brown and Amy Archambault; Academic Technologies—Brianna Derr and Laura Brewer; and her colleague, Kyle Denlinger, Digital Pedagogy and Open Education Librarian.

“Their investment in this program was unmatched and the reason for its success. I was a proud supporting cast member, but far from the star of the show; all kudos belong to them.”