Faculty Mentoring Networks: A flexible and effective model for professional learning

Faculty Mentoring Networks (FMNs) provide opportunities for teachers to engage in professional learning that involves working with innovative curricula, customizing them for use with particular student audiences and course contexts, implementing those modules in their classrooms, and publishing their adaptations of the Open Educational Resources (OER). The model is designed to support faculty through a full cycle of scholarly engagement in a collaborative setting across a semester long timeframe. Developed as part of the QUBES project and managed by the BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium there have been over 90 FMNs involving more than 700 faculty over the last 8 years. This model for providing professional learning opportunities has been scaled and sustained by training mentors from STEM education reform projects and recruiting faculty from diverse institutional settings. Leveraging the QUBES cyberinfrastructure (qubeshub.org) to support these online faculty learning communities both informs the reform project work by engaging their user audience and extends their reach by engaging faculty that have limited opportunities to participate in face to face professional development. Faculty awareness and confidence related to the use of OER and participation in scholarship around teaching and learning increase as a result of their participation in FMNs.