Blog: Individual Development Plans for Career College Faculty

Individual Development Plans for career college faculty should include developmental goals and objectives, suggested professional affiliations and activities, recommended training, and classroom observation to evaluate transfer of training. An effective plan should encompass the instructor's own ideas for ongoing development of effective teaching, and be supported by the responsible manager/mentor through coaching, supplying the necessary resources, and mutual discussion of results.

Individual Development Plans should link the results of training to improved performance. For example, classroom observation should show how the instructor has applied and implemented the training received and the resulting improvement in identified developmental areas such as successful instructional planning, interactive teaching techniques and effective classroom management.

To make the Individual Development Plan more meaningful, the observed improvements in faculty performance should be assessed against the desired student outcomes. Those outcomes could be measured from student course evaluations and class student retention data after instructors have had the opportunity to apply their new knowledge and skills on a routine and consistent basis.
For a career college instructor, a properly devised Individual Development Plan is the foundation to increased teaching performance yielding positive student outcomes.