There and Back Again: Lessons Learned from Facilitated Faculty Discussions on the Move Online and then Back Face to Face.

In this Lessons Learned paper, we explore the themes uncovered from a series of facilitated faculty discussions on moving their course back to face to face teaching after the switch to online. The Institute for Engineering Education and Innovation (IEEI) at Texas A&M University (TAMU) administrates over 100 faculty whose primary department appointments and teaching assignments are in either engineering or education. Over the last two years, IEEI hosted numerous conversations for faculty members to share experiences, research, and assessments of teaching successes and concerns as they changed instructional modalities, both with the initial move online and the subsequent move back face to face. From these conversations, faculty agree that some things during the move to online instruction, such as office hours, video archives of lectures, and some activities in break-out rooms appear to enhance student learning. Yet data showed that students believed the online experience was less desirable than face to face courses. Now that we have had a near complete semester where most classes were required to be held in the face to face mode, we are hosting conversations with faculty to understand the changes they are now making to their teaching because of the experiences from online instruction. The results will be shared as a "lightning talk". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]