Professional Development
Explore the Center for Teaching and Learning and our program, class, and service offerings.
Please reach out to our Instructional Designers if you have any questions.
Each semester, full-time faculty in their first, second, and third year at Montgomery College sign up for one workshop series in the Academy for Teaching Transformation. (Adjunct faculty welcome)
Visit the Academy for Teaching Transformation website new windowfor additional information.Connect, explore, experiment, and grow.
Teaching is better with a supportive community.
Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) are small groups of educators who come together around a shared topic of interest. Participants seek to improve student learning by exploring practical strategies, experimenting in their own classrooms, and engaging in honest dialogue about what works and what doesn't.
Learn more about Faculty Learning Communities new window.
MC is committed to supporting your professional growth. The redesigned Learning Pathways give you the flexibility to build new skills, connect with colleagues, and apply your learning in meaningful ways. Whether you’re strengthening communication or mastering digital tools, these pathways are designed to help you succeed in your role and beyond.
What Are Learning Pathways?
Learning Pathways are year-long professional development experiences that combine:
- Curated LinkedIn Learning trainings (10 of 15 required)
- In-person special events (2 of 8 required, with lunch included)
- Reflective journaling to capture your insights and progress
What Is My PLAN?
My PLAN (Professional Learning Accountability Network) is the support system that makes Learning Pathways more than just self-paced training. While you’ll complete much of the work on your own, My PLAN ensures you’re part of a community of growth, accountability, and mentorship.
Through My PLAN, you will:
- Join a cohort of peers who share experiences and resources.
- Receive mentorship and check-ins from Training Coordinators and CTL.
- Connect your learning to Montgomery College’s Academic Master Plan and your personal career goals.
- Celebrate your achievements with colleagues at the end of the year.
How It Works
- Enroll in a Pathway
- Choose Communications and Work or Excellence with Digital Tools.
- Onboard into My PLAN
- Meet with a Training Coordinator and CTL to set your professional goals.
- Get assigned to a learning cohort.
- Engage in the Learning Cycle
- Complete LinkedIn Learning modules.
- Attend in-person events.
- Document your learning in a reflective journal.
- Share your experiences and strategies with your cohort.
- Mentorship & Accountability
- Training Coordinators provide guidance and progress monitoring.
- CTL ensures your learning aligns with College goals.
- Completion & Celebration
- Finish your requirements.
- Earn a Certificate of Completion.
- Celebrate with your peers at a recognition event.
Why Participate?
By joining a Learning Pathway supported by My PLAN, you will:
- Grow with accountability — stay motivated and track your progress.
- Build community — connect with colleagues across the College.
- Apply your learning — use new skills directly in your role.
- Align with MC’s priorities — contribute to the College’s vision for digital fluency, communication excellence, and inclusive learning.
- Be recognized — your efforts will be celebrated and formally acknowledged.
Ready to Begin?
Choose your pathway, join your cohort, and take the next step in your professional growth.
Your pathway. Your plan. Your growth.
For additional information, please contact Richard Forrest.
MC Online Faculty Trainings
Faculty trainings are provided in collaboration with MC Online and CTL.
The Online Teaching training prepares MC faculty to build and teach online or blended courses. It is open to all full and part-time MC faculty.
Online Teaching is a fully-online course that begins around the third week of each semester and runs for 7 weeks. The course will guide you through planning, building, and preparing to teach your own online or blended course. Participants will design a full course and build a course prototype consisting of a syllabus, orientation, and one learning module that is ready-to-teach. The prototype is refined until it serves as a model and a set of page templates for building the rest of the course.
To become eligible to teach online for Montgomery College, your course prototype must meet the competency demonstration criteria, which include the 23 essential standards from the current Quality Matters Rubric.
Prerequisites:
- Completion of Digital Fundamentals for Teaching and Learning (formerly SRT training) or Online Teaching Part 1 in Spring 2020.
- Approval from your department chair to build and teach a specific course.
Notes:
- Teaching remotely using Zoom or Collaborate is still live teaching. Because live teaching is not part of teaching fully-online, creating a fully-online or blended course requires a redesign to plan content delivery, learning activities, and student engagement in the absence of live lecturing.
- Faculty with experience teaching fully-online using Blackboard may be eligible for an accelerated version of the training.
- Professors should not be scheduled to teach an online or blended course until they have completed the Online Teaching training.
If you have questions about the training, contact Dr. Shinta Hernandez.
Blackboard and other Learning Management Systems are important communication, information, and design tools that are used to support learning and student success. The Digital Fundamentals for Teaching and Learning series is a group of classes that assists those who educate students in developing the skills necessary to use Blackboard effectively in a remote teaching environment. Educators also develop skills in creating multimedia elements to add to the blackboard course to promote student engagement.
Learning Outcomes
- Apply Blackboard tools to establish an online presence
- Adapt your course for Digital Teaching in alignment with best practices for the discipline
- Using Blackboard tools to assess student learning while considering alternative assessment techniques
- Utilize appropriate video conferencing software to promote student engagement
- Explore multimedia technology for use in the digital classroom.
Series Elements
Designed to be completed over a four week period, Digital Fundamentals for Teaching
and Learning is broken into four sections (1) Blackboard foundations (2) communicating
with students using Blackboard, (3) assessing students using Blackboard, and (4) using
and developing multimedia for Blackboard. Upon completion of the Digital Fundamentals for Teaching and Learning series, you
will create a working Blackboard teaching site that demonstrates many of the elements
taught throughout the series.
Blackboard Foundations
The following foundational courses are essential in helping faculty learn how to demonstrate
an Online course presence, which is critical in the digital teaching environment.
Foundational courses include:
- Blackboard Essentials: This course will teach you how to how to navigate Blackboard, post files, and upload a syllabus, which are skills that must be mastered before starting the rest of Digital Fundamentals for Teaching and Learning.
- Blackboard Text Editor: This course will teach you how to create pages in Blackboard with text, links, images, and embedded videos. Embed a video on a webpage, include student learning outcomes, and ask your students a few questions to guide their thinking as they watch the video.
- Creating an Online Presence in Your Course (Handout): This handout helps faculty master the skills of creating course elements with proper introductory and transitioning statements to orient students. This helps faculty make the shift between face-to-face and remote instruction.
Note: All foundational courses must be taken before completing any other course in the series.
Communicating with Students using Blackboard
The following courses are designed to help faculty learn how to communicate effectively
with their students using Blackboard. To support the outcomes associated with communicating
with students using Blackboard, participants choose one of the following courses:
- Blackboard Communication tools: This course will teach you how to create and manage an Online Discussion board for your students. If you find that there are topics that you talked about in class that students want to explore further, you might set up discussions on these topics to further engage students.
- Blackboard Collaborate/Zoom: This course will teach you how to communicate with your students in real-time using audio conferencing, presentation software, and other collaborative tools.
- Teaching and Learning Tips for Developing or Improving Online Discussions (Handout): This handout provides tips to help faculty craft engaging discussions, maintain faculty presence on the discussion board, and develop netiquette policies to successfully manage student behavior online.
Assessing Students using Blackboard
The following courses are designed to help faculty become proficient in giving and
grading tests in Blackboard.
- Blackboard Assessments: This course will teach you how to create online tests for your students that are automatically scored by Blackboard.
- Blackboard Grade Center: This course will teach you how to set up an Online Gradebook for your students that can be automatically updated throughout the semester as you enter grades. This can help keep students on track with their grades throughout the semester and allows them to monitor their own progress and improve performance as the semester progresses.
Using and Developing Multimedia for Blackboard
The following courses are designed to help faculty create an engaging experience for
their students by expanding their abilities to provide content beyond the typical
use of Microsoft Word documents and PowerPoint files.
- Screen Casting Made Simple: This course will teach you how to use Screencast-O-Matic to create simple videos that can be used on Blackboard to support teaching and learning.
- Using the Automatic Captions in Yuja: This course will teach you how to caption the videos you create to support accessibility for all students.
Common courses are pre-built, ready-to-teach, fully online courses. The dean and department chair should contact the Associate Vice President for Access and Completion Strategy, Dr. Shinta Hernandez, with the names of instructors who need to complete common course training.
Common course training involves three steps:
1) Complete Digital Fundamentals for Teaching and Learning. Sections are offered online or on-campus. Check Workday in MyMC for dates and times.
2) After completing Digital Fundamentals for Teaching and Learning, contact the Common Course Coordinator
- Nader Chaaban (COMM 108)
- Kateema Lee (ENGL 101)
- Anna Deadrick (ENGL 102)
- Tonya Seed (HLTH 100)
- Marge Turnbow (HLTH 113)
and Tom Cantu to arrange the following next steps:
- Complete additional modules to learn features of Blackboard needed to teach the common course.
- Complete the common course competency demonstration to become eligible to teach the common course.
3) Meet with the common course coordinator to review the online course and the expectations of an online instructor. Notes:
- Steps 1 and 2 above can be completed online.
- The deadline for completing the competency demonstration is usually several weeks before the start of the semester.
- This allows time to review the competency demonstrations and ask the instructor complete any needed revisions.
- If an instructor is unable to complete the competency demonstration tasks, the instructor is not eligible to teach the common course.
What are Open Educational Resources, and Why we should care?
The MC Open initiative focuses on faculty redesigning courses using Open Educational Resources (OER) to leverage pedagogy that fosters student success while reducing costs and increasing access to course materials. Montgomery College is committed to providing OER course options leading to degree completion (commonly called Z-degrees).
Learn more about the MC Open Initiative new window.