Having your cake and eating it too: The rhetoric and reality of redesigning staff professional development

Despite significant change in higher education, the structure of professional development for academic staff has remained largely unchanged, consisting primarily of workshops and other forms of face-to-face development. While this is the accepted and often demanded mode of delivery, workshop-based programs are resource-heavy and often unsustainable. Until 2012, the central support unit at the University of New England had been offering a traditional program based on workshops. While the program attracted positive reviews, it was becoming increasingly apparent that there were significant issues in the structure that could no longer be ignored. An alternative, innovative solution was sought, which would allow far more flexibility and scalability while improving the experience and outcomes of professional development. This paper outlines the design of a new program according to the above rhetoric, and then examines the reality of analytics and participant experience data to draw conclusions about the success and viability of such a redesign.