Marketing professionals use Twitter extensively for communicating with and monitoring customers, for observing competitors, and for analyzing chatter concerning brands, products, and company image. Can professors use Twitter to engage students in conversation about a marketing course? The authors argue that Twitter has many benefits for marketing educators who are interested in engaging students in experiential learning. In a real-time environment for student learning, professors may use Twitter for direct communication with students to generate discussion and interest in the course topics and examples. Just as marketers use Twitter to generate interest, discussion, and brand image, educators can use Twitter to generate this interest in a course through social media. Furthermore, Twitter is a fast, easy method for making announcements, solving student issues, and performing course-related administrative duties. In three studies, both quantitative and qualitative data suggest that when students engage in Twitter use with the professor, students feel better prepared for future careers. In addition, students indicate that Twitter facilitates achieving traditional educational goals. The qualitative data offer insights into potential problems. Suggestions for educators interested in using Twitter are offered.

In addition to traditional roles, educational developers increasingly find themselves considering their involvement in issues of institutional change. However, this evolution leads to new challenges as educational developers attempt to discern whether and how to be involved in particular organizational change efforts. This chapter provides a framework that can help centers of all types reflect on the broader risks and rewards of institution‐level leadership. Through a series of context‐based reflective questions, the authors hope to promote strategic thinking among educational developers (particularly center directors) and to spur new questions and research as our field continues to evolve.

Often working in multiple roles and operating at multiple scales, educational developers deal with layered tensions and a complex context that can be difficult for an individual or team to reconcile. In May 2020, the authors participated in a cross-institutional scholarly project (XXXXX) designed to explore the impact of multiple crises (e.g. the COVID-19 pandemic and our collective civil and political unrest) and associated large-scale instructional changes on educational developers and their work. The contexts for agency framework reflects the project's emergent theme that the circumstances in which we act have considerable influence on our decision-making. Specifically, the framework identifies identity, institution, and impact as critical contexts for the decisions educational developers make. The authors highlight multiple benefits to analyzing what we know--and what we don't know--about our respective contexts and offer suggestions for applying the framework using a template for structured reflection.

while it is important for faculty developers to build trust in consultation relationships, many of us find ourselves in challenging situations. With what we call the provocative consultation approach, the faculty developer adopts a more direct role and attempts to address perceived challenges in a frank discussion. This chapter uses three case studies—one focusing on a graduate student, one a pretenured faculty member, and one a multidisciplinary course—to discuss how faculty developers can effect change in difficult consultations through use of a more confrontational style.

Few studies have examined instructor responses to negative feedback and their interplay with gender, but faculty developers must be cognizant of and sensitive to the needs of the instructors with whom they work. This chapter identifies six general patterns of response among male and female instructors to negative feedback from students and consultants, based on survey results, interviews, and observations. A combination of empathy, resources, and time is the key to understanding and responding to those patterns and meeting the needs of individual instructors. Further, comparisons across gender reveal interesting differences related to language use, internalization versus externalization of feedback, and holistic versus specific approaches to reflective teaching.