Providing professional development to your students or staff can be a daunting task but it shouldn’t have to be! Technology provides us with new avenues to effectively drive engagement up. Below we provide five different ways to incorporate professional development into your work as higher education professionals!

Utilize Podcasts to Start Dialogue

Podcasts have been around for quite some time now. Many of us listen to them during long car rides or during our morning workout. One way to increase your staff’s (students or professionals alike) exposure to new content or varying perspectives is through the use of podcast episodes. How does this work or what could it look like? Great question. It is as simple as asking folx to listen to an episode ahead of time and then leading a discussion about it during a staff meeting or class. Or, if your staff needs to work on that annual mailing, put on an episode so that y’all can listen in together and have an active discussion.

A list of Podcasts to Check out:

#JPSPEAKS: Social Justice and Inclusion Podcast for Higher Education Professionals (Social Justice)

Code Switch (Discusses Race)

The Student Affairs Spectacular (Student Affairs)

Josie and The Podcast (Technology in Higher Education)

*If you have a podcast that you’d like included, leave the title and a link to your podcast below in the comments section of this post*

Share Online Posts to Inform your Community of Varying Perspectives

Social media has taken over our lives in both positive and negative ways. And, it has found its way into the day-to-day responsibilities of many offices on campus. Another way to provide professional development to your students or staff is by sharing online posts across these social media accounts as a way to spread new content or varying perspectives. In addition, the act of sharing posts across your network via social media strengthens your  digital identity (shout out to Paul Gordon Brown) as an office. Growing the number of “likes” on your page or “followers” on Twitter is ineffective if you are not creating a brand that is consistent (i.e., posting regularly, engaging with people online, etc.) for your network.

Move Your Trainings Online with Webinars

Can’t afford to bring in a speaker for an upcoming training? Are you looking to provide alternative professional development opportunities for your students or staff? Webinars are a great avenue to accomplish this task! What are some benefits of hosting an online webinar for your institution? Many times they are more financially accessible to institutions. You may not be able to bring a speaker at full price to campus. Webinars provide a more accessible price tag for an institution. In addition, it eliminates the stress of finding one meeting time throughout the semester that works for every one in the office. Eli can’t make the meeting? That’s okay! Some webinar platforms provide a link to the recording (JPHigherEd provides a 24-hour access link to the institution after the live event) so that those who were unable to make the live event can still access the information. Moreover, webinars provide the institution an alternative platform to provide content to its community. This can be especially useful on commuter campuses or community colleges. Institutions can look to webinars to help supplement its professional development needs as well as programming needs. Do you need a program for the third week of Black History Month? Or, do you need a sexual health educator for the month of March? Webinars can provide solutions to those needs.

Check out some of our upcoming #JPWebinars: