Transcribed from the recording and lightly edited for readability. Speaker names appear where the recording makes the speaker clear; a few short exchanges are left unlabelled. The presenters’ views are their own and do not represent the ARC-PA. Confirm specifics against the current ARC-PA Standards.
0:00 — Part One: the nuts and bolts, from the program director's chair
Jennifer Hixon: Welcome, everyone. We really appreciate you spending time with Dr. Moynihan and I to talk about the great success that we’ve had using remote faculty, and what we’re going to do today. And really, my job is to talk about the nuts and bolts and the operations perspective, from a program director’s role. The pieces we’ll talk about are how it satisfies the ARC-PA standards, old and new: both the Fifth and Sixth Editions.
Jennifer Hixon: We’re going to talk about the structure of how it actually works, some of the ground rules that need to be discussed and enforced, the operations of how it actually works. Well, that includes the logistics, the video and the audio, and then the needs of the program. So what is it that your program may need, where a virtual faculty member can help you be successful?
1:04 — What a virtual adjunct brings, and what the role demands
Jennifer Hixon: So, the benefits of a virtual… I’m going to use the term adjunct. I know some of you may call them guest speakers, depending on your budget, but what’s important is this gives an opportunity for a stellar teacher to bring expertise into your program. And because they’re virtual, they can come from all over the United States and maybe even internationally, depending on your reach. It may be a way to recruit a new faculty member into your principal faculty.
Jennifer Hixon: So I think that is one of the strongest benefits of using a virtual faculty member. A virtual faculty member has to have strong virtual teaching skills, of course, and be able to manage your learning management system, whatever it might be. They need to be able to engage with the students. Teaching virtually is not the same as standing up in front of the classroom. So it does take some extra skills and talents to be able to virtually connect with the students.
Jennifer Hixon: It is a flexible faculty option, so this could be a very attractive way for recruitment of new faculty, or having your faculty present in a virtual way, if there is space and commuting issues. It certainly can help with that. We might all be feeling a little extra pain with the price of gas now, and would appreciate teaching from home. And again, it’s not the daily grind, not for the students and not for the faculty member.
2:45 — B2.02 and B4.01: content, application, outcomes and objectives
Jennifer Hixon: So the considerations from the standards. So these two standards are both from the Fifth and Sixth Editions. And these are the courses that, of course, need to be taught, and their application needs to be taught. So I’ll use an example. One of my virtual faculty members was a clinical pharmacologist. So he had a working knowledge of the topic, but he was also in the hospital every day seeing patients.
Jennifer Hixon: And so he had a direct impact with the clinical applications of that particular topic. Also, for B4.01, as you know, you need to present any faculty member, whether they’re virtual or adjunct, with the program learning outcomes and the instructional objectives you wish them to teach. So this is an important piece that must be provided with any virtual faculty member.
3:47 — Say it in the syllabus when part of a course is virtual
Jennifer Hixon: In the Sixth Edition Standards, there’s a new standard, A3.11d, I think, is the standard that talks about reporting all of your courses and their delivery method. So even if you’re using a virtual faculty member only for a short period of time, maybe one session, so four hours a week, I think it does need to be reported in the syllabus: that part of the course is on the ground and part will actually be held virtually.
Jennifer Hixon: So keep that in mind.
4:20 — Two-way video and audio, and why Zoom beats the classroom camera
Jennifer Hixon: The structure does include providing a video and audio, and a way of two-way communication. I’m going to talk about that in a little bit. You’ll need a classroom that has a camera that works both ways, and of course Zoom does. And through my experience of this for many, many years, I find that Zoom works better, and I’ll explain that. You need to establish rules of engagement with the students, as you would with any class conduct.
Jennifer Hixon: And often pre-class presentations help with engaging the virtual faculty member in all of the topics that are being presented. So, the video and audio of two-way communication. If you have a huge classroom that has the ability to present both coming and going, so the virtual faculty member can see all of the students, and of course the students can see the presenter, it works okay. Yet when there’s a student in the back of the room with a question, or somebody’s face that’s struggling, you can’t see them as well as when you’re on Zoom.
Jennifer Hixon: You see every student, and you can see the impact of your presentation, whether it’s good or bad. So it is my personal preference that Zoom works better. I’m sure Dr. Moynihan, who is a virtual faculty member, can fill in some details about what has worked best for her. Do you want to do that now, Dr. Moynihan?
Vivian Moynihan: I would completely endorse the Zoom approach. It’s just much more straightforward. And it just allows every student to log in separately. So you know that, when they’re populating, you can count the number of students in your class.
6:17 — Ground rules: cameras on, scheduled as class time
Jennifer Hixon: So, as we would in any class session, there needs to be some rules of engagement. So I think what’s simple is they parallel in-class policies. So the students have to have their cameras on. The class time is scheduled. So this is not asynchronous. This is class time. And that keeps them engaged. And you know that they’re in their seats and going to be absorbing the presentations both for the virtual faculty member’s benefit and the students’ benefit. So I think that really requiring their cameras on is very important.
Jennifer Hixon: And if that becomes an issue, schedule them in the classroom, and I think that does resolve their desires to keep their cameras off or on. By the way, this is very well received by the students. At several points, I have given classes choices to decide if they want to come in or if they want to leave their cameras on, and they were fully in agreement to leave their cameras on, and participated.
7:36 — Pre-class preparation and the five-question quiz
Jennifer Hixon: So, helping with these presentations, and this is probably true even if you were in a formal lecture mode, some of the preparation we’ve used are recorded PowerPoints. So the students actually participate in their PowerPoints before the presentation is virtually given. There are some audio files. There were many, many times I saw the students jogging around campus, and they’d point to their ears, listening to our pharmacologist. Video files work great too, and we often give what I call participation quizzes.
Jennifer Hixon: So when the virtual faculty member arrives, there is a very short quiz, you know, five questions, just to encourage them to make sure they did their preparation before the presentation or lecture began. And then it gives the opportunity for the virtual faculty member to just review it, and to answer questions that may have come up.
8:54 — Benefits: expertise, workload relief and perceived sufficiency
Jennifer Hixon: So, the benefits of this option are, again, you really get to call on stellar faculty for these medical sciences, patho, anatomy topics that may not be in the abilities or interests of your principal faculty. It can contribute to workload relief. So it allows the faculty expanded teaching in the medical module. So this works best in your medical module teaching, so that the principal faculty can concentrate on the, I’m going to say, clinical medicine portion of the module, rather than the medical science portion.
Jennifer Hixon: But these virtual faculty, you can use for anything. It meets the requirements and your learning outcomes for all the medical science courses. And it can help with your faculty sufficiency. Now, if you have a very small role as a virtual faculty member, it really doesn’t increase your student-faculty ratios, your student numbers, but it does increase the perception of what the students and the faculty feel about your sufficiency.
Jennifer Hixon: And we all measure that in our administrative survey. So I think, with that in mind, it does actually help.
10:28 — The program owns the learning outcomes
Vivian Moynihan: Just one small comment, to go back to the previous slide, just thinking about learning outcomes, which are going to be established by the program.
Jennifer Hixon: Yes, the learning outcomes are established by the program and then given to the virtual faculty member. Okay. Anything you want to add, Dr. Moynihan?
Vivian Moynihan: I don’t think so. Let’s see. I’ll look at my notes. I think it’s essential to either provide to the virtual faculty member, or have them generate on their own and cross-check, clear objectives for what they’re approaching.
Jennifer Hixon: Okay. So next week, Dr. Moynihan’s going to discuss the results of how it works as a virtual faculty member. She’s been doing it a long time and very successfully. And I think she will have a lot of input directly from the students, and from herself, that will help your thoughts around using a virtual faculty member.
11:39 — Q&A: what makes a good virtual faculty member
Jennifer Hixon: And so, Jacqueline, can we look and see if there are any questions that are being generated?
Jacqueline Meneses: All right, folks, so feel free to submit your questions in the Q&A box. And we do have some questions here. What characteristics make someone a good faculty member? Dr. Moynihan, do you want to conquer that one?
Vivian Moynihan: Well, luckily for me, I was able to meet everyone who was faculty before I started virtually. That’s not always the case, but I was fortunate to do that.
And I think it’s really important for this faculty person to be, first of all, of course, thrilled to be teaching and very interested in the students and their topic. Again, these are experts in their field that may not necessarily want to be a full-time faculty member, or may just want to start dipping their toe into it so they’re motivated by what they know. They need to be able to manage your learning management system, which, of course, we’ve all had to adjust to.
And I think those are really important pieces of recruiting a virtual faculty member. I would absolutely reinforce the fact that you have to be thrilled to be able to teach, and specifically to be able to teach PA students, the greatest student audience in the universe. In my…
13:16 — Q&A: where to find them
Jacqueline Meneses: Another question: what resources are out there
To help find these faculty? That’s a great question. I think probably I would start with, of course… So, meeting all of your colleagues at a meeting to talk about any resource that they might have. I think another option is all of your preceptors. So your preceptors are all really instructional faculty in themselves, and so is it an option for them to think about taking a half a session a week, to want to begin to start teaching?
What is interesting, I was just recently working with a community member who is an urgent care physician assistant, young. And she turned to me and she said, you know, everybody wants to be a teacher, wants to be a faculty member. How do I go about it? And so I think those kinds of conversations, both in your clinical practice or around with your preceptors, would really help develop those resources.
But that’s a great question. And I think if you’re very active in your regional association, your state association, that helps too, because then you know who’s out there.
14:46 — Q&A: the pitfalls, from budget to time zones
Jacqueline Meneses: What are the potential pitfalls of using an adjunct virtual faculty member?
Jennifer Hixon: Well, I think there are some things you have to make sure you’re prepared with. And of course, as always, the first thing is the budget, right. So you have to either have prepared your budget with some portion of an FTE that can be used for adjunct faculty or guest lecturers. Naturally, technology isn’t always foolproof, and if it’s across time zones, that gets even weirder. That is something I personally am not very good at.
Jennifer Hixon: So that all has to be arranged carefully and there has to be a plan. So, you know, if there’s a technology failure, the students need to know what to do. So: wait until next week, communicate with their class schedule so they understand it. The approach to the work plan: So how does a program director use that adjunct time to support their current principal faculty? So you have to really think through your work plan and where that fits.
Jennifer Hixon: Scheduling is difficult. So, you know, the course directors want to schedule pathophysiology on Tuesday afternoons from 1 to 4, and that’s it. So you, as a virtual faculty member, need to make yourself available all the time for that particular time. So I think that can be tricky. I think student conduct can be tricky. But as I said, if there is an issue, you know, the result is you may want to think about bringing them back into the classroom.
Jennifer Hixon: So I think those are potential things you just have to consider.
16:42 — Instructors who rewrite your objectives, and the pets
Jennifer Hixon: This is, as this goes on… What do you think, Dr. Moynihan?
Vivian Moynihan: I think one of the issues, of course, which I think everyone in education has run into, is having a sense of what you want, the objectives you want the virtual faculty member to achieve, and that they decide they know better than you, and they’re going to come up with a completely different set of objectives, so there can sometimes be some conflict there.
Jennifer Hixon: Yeah, that’s a great point. Thanks for adding that. But I think you have one positive pitfall that we all have enjoyed since Covid. The pets.
Vivian Moynihan: Oh, yeah. That’s absolutely… It’s one of my favorite parts of doing Zoom with the students, seeing the… I now recognize the cat, and I know the name of the dog.
Jennifer Hixon: So those are just some of my thoughts that need to be thought through before you start. So your virtual faculty member has to be very comfortable with the flexibility of pets.
17:47 — Part Two: a recap of the model
Jennifer Hixon: Thank you all for returning to visit with us again this week on a Friday afternoon. I’m just going to take a minute to review some of the things we went over last week from a program director’s perspective, using a virtual instructional faculty member. So the first part we talked about was satisfying the ARC-PA standards. So we all have to look there first to be sure that any new initiatives meet the standards in the best way possible.
Jennifer Hixon: The second part was the structure. So what does it actually look like and how many hours a week? And how is it going to help the students meet the learning outcomes that you expect of your courses? We talked about the ground rules. So, what does it take for this to be successful? For instance, we ask that all students have their cameras on. We treat it as though they are in the classroom, so that you can have great success in the presentation, both for the student and for your virtual faculty member.
Jennifer Hixon: The operations piece is just as important. If you have a great two-way system in your classroom, that can certainly work. But we found, trying out both options, the Zoom option really worked the best, because you can see every face. The students can interrupt you, they can use the chat box. Dr. Moynihan will go over all of those successes and failures a little later on today. The logistics, video and audio, we just talked about. And really, it allows you to find expertise for your program needs, to meet the learning outcomes that you expect of your graduates.
19:46 — From clin med to pathophysiology: start with the end
Jennifer Hixon: So, Dr. Moynihan, tell them all about what it’s like to be a virtual faculty success.
Vivian Moynihan: Well, in a word, it’s delightful. But, and I’m thinking about, you know, how I got to this point, really I taught primarily clin med in my history of teaching PA students, and from that clin med teaching, I got very interested in what the pathophysiological basis of disease processes were. That made a high impact on me. And now I teach pathophysiology in a modular curriculum. But this slide really kind of talks about the fact that we need to start with the end.
Vivian Moynihan: First, we need to think about how we’re going to assess the students, and then be sure we’ve provided them sufficient and adequate learning resources. And then think about our teaching. But really, the other issue that’s important too is learning outcomes. We have to start with the end: what are our learning outcomes desired for the students.
20:56 — B2.02, B4.01, and the syllabus again
Jennifer Hixon: So let me just mention quickly about the standards that we talked about last week. And again, what’s important is B2.02 and B4.01. And Vivian will talk a little bit about how important the application piece is. But also, just from a structural perspective, there’s now, in the standards, I think it’s A3.11, that talks about the syllabi. And you must identify the methodology of the course. So if you’re going to use a virtual faculty member for part of your modular course, you might want to mention in the syllabus that the course will be partially virtual.
Jennifer Hixon: Vivian, you want to talk about the application that you brought so wisely to your topic?
Vivian Moynihan: I think that’s the great thing about having someone who’s been a clinician in the position of thinking about any course topic, including pathophysiology, is that really you’re always thinking about application and clinical practice, what facilitates the learning thereof, and how you’re going to apply it.
22:14 — Fit the expert to the program's need, and the joy of pure teaching
Vivian Moynihan: So, the consideration of the program’s strengths and needs is crucial. And I currently work for a program that does a modular curriculum, so that allows me to find my slot, pathophysiology, very easily. And program strengths are always the faculty. That’s always the case. And having a good dialogue, an excellent dialogue with the faculty, is crucial. It’s very, very fun to purely teach, to just do a module, because you’re kind of removed from some of the nitty gritty of grading and advising and all the different components that you need to do as principal faculty.
Vivian Moynihan: So it’s really a nice just purely teaching, which is delightful.
23:18 — We only learn from what moves us
Vivian Moynihan: And this just embodies my whole philosophy, part of my philosophy: feeling is very important. We only learn from what moves us. I think that’s very important. And it’s crucial.
23:40 — Step back to jump further: what students said about a virtual day
Vivian Moynihan: I like this phrase. So you’re sort of pulling back so you can jump even further. I’m not going to try it in the French accent. And we got some quotes from students about what it means to have a virtual day, or a virtual session. And you can read their comments here. And we were just talking earlier about weather conditions and 50-mile-an-hour winds. So that keeps you from driving in 50-mile-an-hour winds.
I think, too, from a student’s perspective, you know, the day at home for class on a Tuesday brought them back for a huge on-the-ground day on Wednesday with such energy and delight, rather than slogging through another day. I think the impact, you couldn’t really document, but it was very visible when the students arrived back on campus. So that’s the embodiment of that sort of take a step back so you can jump further.
So you’ve taken your Tuesday to step back a little bit and stay at home, and then Wednesday, boom, you’re on campus, full of energy.
25:17 — The bowl of affirmations
Vivian Moynihan: I came to my bowl of… I actually had a physical enameled bowl, in which, when I was in person, I would fold up little affirmations for the students, and I would make sure I had more than enough for the whole number of students. So nobody had to pick the last one. And I realized later where I came to this thought about affirming the students. And I remember once looking at these brilliant PA students in that classroom and asking, has anyone ever felt that they don’t belong here?
Vivian Moynihan: And a tremendous number of hands went up, and I was… I was stunned. I was just stunned. And I realized a lot of those folks, brilliant as they are, and dedicated as they are, have imposter syndrome. So that’s where I started to think about overtly creating affirmations for the students.
Jennifer Hixon: And how do you use that virtually, Vivian?
Vivian Moynihan: I have an affirmation slide, usually linked to whatever the topic is. So in neurology, I said, “You give me the gift of thinking,” and I forget what else it was. I had something else for endocrinology and cardiology. So I try… And I think for musculoskeletal, I’m going to say, “You have strength and stamina.” But I always try to make the affirmation link to whatever the topic is.
26:54 — Visual learning, video, and real-time interaction
Vivian Moynihan: I’m actually very much a visual learner, and it looks like the data says the majority of people are visual learners, and that’s particularly helpful when you’re doing a virtual module, because you can illustrate significantly. And this is not an endorsement necessarily, but there’s a lot of Osmosis material that’s available even without a subscription. And it’s usually very clear. I like Osmosis videos. And I think students, the demographic of students says that they usually like video learning as well.
Vivian Moynihan: And real-time interaction with students is just one of the best things that happens in the universe. And I like to say to students that they’re welcome to even call out questions as they’re thinking about them, because sometimes if you wait too long, you forget why you ask the question in the first place. You can’t remember what your thought processes were. But I also use the chat, the chat function on Zoom.
Vivian Moynihan: And in my lectures, I use comprehension questions at the end of every lecture. So the students have become used to that, and they have a chance to review those lectures ahead of time. So they’re already thinking about what I might think is important. So they can use the chat box, or they can call out, or they can raise their hand virtually in Zoom.
28:41 — A way for clinicians to reinvent themselves
Vivian Moynihan: This kind of approach to virtual learning is the perfect way for especially someone who has been a clinician for a long time, or maybe exclusively a clinician, to reinvent themselves without immersing completely in being a principal faculty member. So you can think about how you want to maybe dip your toe into teaching, and you’re able to do that virtually, especially in a modular curriculum, especially taking a portion of that modular curriculum.
29:21 — The dialogue with the course director
Jennifer Hixon: All right. Are there… I might make one comment, or ask Vivian to comment on her relationship with the course coordinators, who actually are the principal faculty that run the module. Could you just direct that a little bit, Vivian?
Vivian Moynihan: Dialogue with the course director is very, very important, and I need to know from them how well the students are doing, how they have performed on clinical exams, how they have performed in other mechanisms, so that I understand whether I’m helping or not.
Jennifer Hixon: And I think they give you the learning outcomes and the instructional objectives. And you can comment, work back and forth with them to make sure that you get to their goal, too.
Vivian Moynihan: Or have, I guess, a unified goal, is the way I put it. Yes, the program needs to establish their learning outcomes, and then I need to know them well enough that I can provide sufficient instructional objectives for my talks that support those learning outcomes. So the dialogue is crucial.
30:33 — Fairy godmothers: what students make of a virtual instructor
Jennifer Hixon: I’m just going to say, from a program director’s perspective, virtual faculty members are sort of like fairy godmothers. The students just adore them. Incredible support from them. They don’t feel that scary… threatened, that this person’s going to be evaluating them. So I cannot tell you what a great, great addition to a program, if you have the possibility to add that.
31:08 — Q&A: the benefits, and a recruitment path
Jennifer Hixon: Are there any questions, Jacqueline?
Jacqueline Meneses: Yes. All right. So thanks again, Jennifer and Vivian, for that presentation. What are the benefits of using a virtual instructional faculty member? Vivian, you want to take that one?
Vivian Moynihan: Certainly. One benefit is that you can take knowledge that someone has clinically, exclusively, and incorporate that person into teaching with a relatively small role. So there you have the application immediately because it’s someone who’s been working clinically and it’s good. It’s so much fun. It’s just absolutely delightful. I mean, the students are fantastic, and if you affirm them, you will get it back in quadruple.
Yeah. And a good recruitment tool. If you’re looking for a full-time principal faculty member, this may be a way in for them also. But maybe somebody who’s never even considered being a principal faculty member decides that they may consider it. Yeah, absolutely.
32:20 — Q&A: budget, rogue instructors and scheduling
Anything else, Jacqueline?
Jacqueline Meneses: And I think this is a follow-up question to that. So then, what are the complications of using virtual instructional faculty members?
Jennifer Hixon: Well, from, you know, a program director’s perspective, the first part, of course, is the budget. So you need to be sure you think through that you’ve allowed for this opportunity to occur in your budget, whether you have an extra FTE or a part of one, so that you can hire someone. I think, too, we might have all experienced the, I’m going to use a term, rogue instructional faculty member, and this includes preceptors where you give them the learning outcomes, you give them the objectives, and as you’re watching their presentations, they’re teaching something completely different, or something that they wanted to, and not using them.
Jennifer Hixon: So it is something that you have to watch over a little bit. I don’t think it’s ever done out of viciousness, but more out of enthusiasm for the topic that that instructional faculty member wanted to teach. So I think it’s something you have to watch over. I also think scheduling can be difficult. You know, it works better if this virtual faculty member is at the same time, the same day every week, or every other week or every third week, depending on when you want to use them.
Jennifer Hixon: So the scheduling of the cohort doesn’t get confusing. So I think those are some of the things you just need to make sure you have in place before you start to use a virtual instructional faculty member.
Vivian Moynihan: And I think really advance notice for me is important as far as the schedule. Yeah, as much advance notice as I can get.
34:15 — Q&A: guest lecturer, adjunct or principal faculty?
Jacqueline Meneses: Are virtual faculty counted as guest lecturers or adjunct faculty?
Vivian Moynihan: So, I think those are somewhat interchangeable in your budget. However, the standards require that a faculty member be 0.5 to count towards your actual number of faculty. So take a good look at the standards and make sure that you’re complying, if you want to count them as one of your principal faculty. A guest lecturer or an adjunct faculty member, sort of, those terms can be used interchangeably.
Vivian Moynihan: Honestly, they’re all instructional faculty, which is the correct term to be used when discussing the standards. And you do need to think about what your criteria for your instructional faculty are, how you document what you expect of them in terms of education and experience.
Jennifer Hixon: Great point, Vivian.
35:17 — Q&A: hybrid and on-ground cohorts
Jennifer Hixon: “Does your program have a combined hybrid and on-ground program, and is the same instructor teaching both?” So my experience has not had both parts. Vivian, any of your teaching experience?
Vivian Moynihan: No, I’ve always been either in person or virtual, but I can see that to be a very clear possibility that this virtual instructional faculty could teach almost both cohorts at the same time, if you were allowing the on-ground cohort to spend that day at home, or they could be in the classroom and actually do it. So I think it would be very successful to use that faculty in both of those settings.
Jennifer Hixon: “Are hybrid students streaming into the same class as on-ground? And when hybrid students return to campus, are they in the same lab as on-ground students?” So I could see both of those things happening again. I have not been a program director in a hybrid program, although I did use virtual faculty for that day. But you could have both sets of students in the same classroom. I could see where that could be difficult for the students required to be on the ground, if they wanted to be home, sharing that luxury.
Jennifer Hixon: But there wouldn’t… I couldn’t see any reason why you couldn’t do both.
37:00 — Q&A: do virtual faculty ever come to campus?
“Do you ask your virtual faculty members to come on site for contribution to advising, SP and OSCE events, faculty executive committee meetings, where live interaction may be favored?”
Vivian Moynihan: On campus, on more than one occasion, but not for any of those events. I’ve not done meetings necessarily, but I’ve come on campus for interview day on more than one occasion, and just to meet the students that I’ve known virtually for a semester.
Jacqueline Meneses: Okay. I think those are all the questions we have. So thank you all for the great questions. That brings us to the end of our Q&A. And thanks again to our presenters, Dr. Hixon and Dr. Moynihan, for sharing your time and insights with us. And to everyone, thank you for joining. We hope you found this session valuable, and we look forward to seeing you again at our upcoming webinars. Thanks, everyone.
Jacqueline Meneses: Have a great day.
