Technology Use to Deliver Faculty Development: A CERA Study

The Impact of Facilitators' Competencies and Characteristics on Faculty Enhancement Activities in Saudi Arabia: A Mixed-Methods Research

Background and objective Seminar-based workshops envision an active learning environment that creates opportunities for faculty to learn how to become effective workshop facilitators themselves. In this study, we employed a mixed-methods design focusing on an in-depth analysis of the data to examine the impact of the competencies and characteristics of a workshop facilitator on faculty development activities and programs. Methodology This study involved 159 faculty members and was conducted via a web-based survey and 13 in-depth interviews. Results The Pearson correlation coefficients between the three effectiveness ratings showed that all three correlations are significant at the 0.01 level, which signifies a statistically significant relationship between the three variables. The strongest relationship is between facilitator knowledge and facilitator communication, followed by that between facilitator communication and facilitator attitude, and between facilitator knowledge and facilitator attitude. This suggests that the three effectiveness ratings are positively correlated. Qualitatively, four themes emerged in our study: attributes of a good facilitator, participant engagement's role, feedback's impact, and workshop organization challenges. Knowledge, communication, and attitude were identified as effective facilitator characteristics, with knowledge being the most crucial. Conclusions Our findings highlight the importance of enhancing participant understanding, providing timely feedback, and bridging theory to practice. Ultimately, effective facilitators strike a balance in terms of knowledge, communication, and attitude, acknowledging the importance of participant engagement and overcoming workshop challenges. We believe our findings will help inform the revision of the current faculty development programs and the development of such endeavors in the future at institutions of higher education.

Curriculum renewal in the time of COVID-19: The Washington University School of Medicine Story

Washington University School of Medicine began a curriculum renewal process in 2017 with a goal of implementing the Gateway Curriculum in 2020. In this article, we describe the vision of this curriculum and the infrastructure that was built to support it. We also describe the impact of COVID‐19 on the legacy curriculum and the Gateway Curriculum as well as the lessons learned to date.