C-PAD is pleased to announce the introduction of C-PAD Shares to the College. What is C-PAD Shares? As Cookie Redding put it well, C-PAD Shares is “an instructional resource with a built-in marketing campaign that gives us chances to interact and build community.” 

C-PAD Shares as a resource 

We envision C-PAD Shares as a monthly e-mail distribution to the College. Each “edition” will feature three roughly 100-word abstracts, each describing an effective teaching and learning strategy in higher education, with a link to the article and an estimate of reading length and time required. The idea is to feature practical, high-value resources of interest from fellow practitioners to share with our faculty. Resource descriptions aim to remain concise enough to survive the delete button, while surfacing enough substance for a reader to choose whether to learn more. 

As simple and straightforward as this idea is, it has already born fruit. When the first edition was recently shared informally with the LARCH 060 faculty, the article “21 Ways to Structure an Online Discussion” gave these instructors ideas they immediately applied to the course and which they will experiment with this fall. That is C-PAD Shares in action! 

Each edition may be organized around:  

• a particular topic area 
• an instructional issue or challenge 
• as a showcase to highlight a single publication or resource 

C-PAD Shares as a means for fostering interaction and building community  

We hope to achieve more here than the curation of excellent instructional resources. We hope to stimulate faculty-driven conversations around teaching and learning. Whether that takes the form of an Instagram conversation regarding a specific instructional strategy, faculty sharing their experiences, or requests for future C-PAD Shares topics, we want the content we highlight to stimulate reflection and dialog. Let us know what you think. 

C-PAD Shares as means to increase the impact of the Center 

Likewise, we expect C-PAD Shares to be just one means by which we raise the visibility and value of the Center. By serving to identify our most pressing instructional concerns, we hope to facilitate an environment where solutions may be found together. What might that look like?  

• seminars and workshops 
• invited expertise (our own and others) 
• the C-PAD Spotlight podcasts, each focusing on one course as presented by the faculty 
• informal brown bag lunches 

-Bill Rose

Instructional Designer, Office of Digital Learning