Allain Daigle, Penn State Greater Allegheny, speaks during a faculty development session at Penn State Fayette.
McKEESPORT, Pa. — Thirty faculty members from Penn State’s Fayette, Greater Allegheny and New Kensington campuses recently participated in the 2025 Southwestern Faculty Development Series, an eight-week professional development program focused on best practices in online, blended and accessible teaching.
The series included five targeted professional development courses: all three levels of the Penn State Teaching Online Program (TOP), the Accessible Skills Challenge, and a customizable learning path that included one of three options: Humanizing Online Learning, Adobe Creative Educator (Level 1), or Redesigning Assessments in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.
Each level of the TOP carries a Provost Endorsement and is automatically included in a faculty member’s annual review through Activity Insights.
Led by Allain Daigle, instructional designer at Penn State Greater Allegheny and Penn State Fayette, the series aimed to expand faculty’s ability to teach in multiple modalities, focus on contemporary teaching topics, and support compliance with upcoming course accessibility requirements.
“The initial idea for the series came from seeing arise in shared and blended courses in our region,” Daigle said. “I wanted to find a way to support faculty teaching in multiple modalities and address skill gaps in learning technology use that emerged during the pivot to emergency online instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The series also served as a timely opportunity for faculty to strengthen their skills in accessibility, ahead of a federal compliance deadline in spring 2026.
“Faculty of all experience levels expressed that they were learning something new throughout the series,” Daigle said. “Although the series largely focuses on tools and best practices for ‘online’ teaching, instructors teaching face-to-face courses can also make use of these resources, especially for designing instructional experiences that make the most of in-person class time, such as facilitating active learning or offering personalized support for our students, which our University College faculty excel at.”
“I enjoyed participating in the 2025 Southwestern Faculty Development series this summer,” said Melissa Robinson, assistant professor of corporate communication. “I learned new strategies to better connect with my students in hybrid courses. I developed a more sophisticated understanding of technologies — some new and some that I am already using. I reimagined old assignments and designed new ones that I am excited to implement in class this fall.”
“The workshop also demonstrated to me the strengths of our Commonwealth Campus learning design community,” Daigle said. “I’m one Instructional Designer, but I’m connected to a very collaborative network of brilliant and generous colleagues. Many of the resources in the series were designed or facilitated by learning design units from across the Commonwealth Campuses. These partnerships enabled me to provide support for my faculty that I simply wouldn’t be able to do alone.”
Daigle created a custom dashboard to help faculty track their overall progress across the series components.
