The Sparkshop: Making Faculty Development Timely and Department-Based

Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) often find that they have the same faculty members attending workshops and have trouble getting new attendees. An alternative strategy for meeting faculty where they are is to go to them rather than waiting for them to come to the CTL. At our institution, department meetings were seen as an ideal place for introducing particular teaching strategies and catalyzing discussion; this approach also would increase the accessibility of workshops with respect to time and location. Thus, we created Sparkshops, mini-workshops that could be facilitated in department meetings with the purpose of “spark”ing interest in a topic, and lead faculty to seek follow up information from our CTL. This chapter provides a brief background related to developing the Sparkshop program, the implementation process, and evaluation results. Recommendations for others interested in deploying Sparkshops are also provided.