Faculty Development in Digital Spaces

Author(s):  
Russell G. Carpenter

The 21st-century faculty member is faced with numerous challenging tasks. Teaching must be current and highly engaging. To ensure the highest quality faculty development focused on digital teaching and learning, higher education academic institutions need to identify innovative new ways to address these challenges, often through digital methods and deliveries. Too often, however, faculty are pressured with diminished time and resources. That is, teaching, scholarship, and service dominate faculty members' schedules and time for faculty development is limited. To confront this serious issue, higher education academic institutions should develop applicable and digitally enabled faculty development programs designed in online, modular environments. This chapter provides an overview and analysis of the concept, design, and implementation of the DEEP (Developing Excellence in Eastern's Professors) online, modular faculty development system as a model for digital teaching and learning.

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Heather Herman

Online education is no longer a peripheral phenomenon in higher education: over one-third of faculty have taught or developed an online course. As institutions of higher education expand their online education offerings, administrators need to recognize that supporting faculty through the use of incentives and through effective faculty development programs for online instruction is important to the improvement of the quality of educational programs. This quantitative study used an online survey to investigate the types and frequency of faculty development programs for online instruction at institutions with an established teaching and learning development unit (TLDU). The average TLDU offered about fifteen different types of faculty development programs, the most common being websites, technical services, printed materials, and consultation with instructional design experts.


Author(s):  
Ela Akgün-Özbek ◽  
Ali Ekrem Özkul

With the phenomenal developments in information and communication technologies, higher education has been facing an unprecedented challenge that affects all the stakeholders. Faculty is no exception. The authors synthesize the demographic, economic, and pedagogical factors that lead to a paradigm shift in higher education and the global trends in digital technologies that impel digital transformation in higher education. They then provide a snapshot of how higher education institutions respond to this challenge and change, and the impact of these factors on the roles and competencies of faculty that need to be covered in faculty development initiatives in the digital age. Finally, examples of faculty development programs and initiatives that address the digital competencies of faculty are provided along with a summary of faculty development models for teaching and learning in the digital age.


2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Terri Johnson ◽  
Mary Ann Wisniewski ◽  
Greg Kuhlemeyer ◽  
Gerald Isaacs ◽  
Jamie Krzykowski

The reluctance to design and teach online courses in higher education is often attributed to technology anxiety in faculty. This article documents a faculty development model that has successfully helped faculty overcome this obstacle. “Bootcamps,” faculty development programs held at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI, were specifically and intentionally designed to be consistent with the principles of andragogy and transfer of learning to assist faculty in technology adoption for teaching and learning in an online environment. The faculty development “Bootcamps” can be easily adapted for implementation at other higher education institutions.


Author(s):  
Monica Fedeli ◽  
Anna Serbati ◽  
Edward W. Taylor

This article looks at theories and practices related to faculty development and innovation in teaching and learning methods in Higher Education, in order to respond to the European 2020 Strategy, in which the High level group on the modernisation of higher education has been established, whose aim focuses on improving the quality of teaching and learning in Europe's higher education institutions (2013). The paper is framed within the context of the project PRODID (Preparazione alla professionalitŕ docente e innovazione didattica), funded by the University of Padova, Italy with the major goal of creating a permanent and effective academic center for research on learning and teaching and faculty development. The theoretical framework of PRODID is informed by constructivism and social constructivism, and the student centered approach, encouraging student-teacher partnerships as a dimension for faculty development and teaching and learning innovations. The University of Helsinki and Michigan State University are mentioned as relevant examples of organizational settings integrated in higher education institutions that offer a great variety of practices consistent with the chosen theoretical framework. They also offer the Italian program of University of Padova models for critical reflection in how their teaching strategies can be created and developed on the basis of this international experience. The final discussion aims to highlight the strategies adopted during the first year of the project, characterized by the Italian culture and revealing new insights and ideas to create an Italian model of teaching and learning center.


Author(s):  
Tehila Kalagy

For about a decade, ultra-Orthodox and Bedouin women have been applying to higher education academic institutions in Israel in order to study despite bans from their conservative communities. Academic studies instill learning and culture, create an encounter with knowledge for the individual and thus carry a high degree of threat to the rigid conservative enclave. This article examines how conservative societies cope with the wheels of change as the process of higher education for women expands. The case studies in this article are 60 educated women from Jewish ultra-Orthodox society and from Negev Bedouin groups in Israel. As shown by the findings, a theoretical flow model based on three parameters emerges: value-constraint-maneuver. In summary, it appears that this model reflects the development of a new conservative female model that combines traditional values with contemporary indicators.


Author(s):  
Erik Brogt ◽  
Kerry Shephard ◽  
Bernadette Knewstubb ◽  
Tracy Leigh Rogers

This chapter discusses how Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) can be used to foster a research approach to teaching and learning and how faculty development that supports colleagues to engage in SoTL can support the development of scholarly faculty. Both the process and the product of SoTL are discussed, conceptualised as different levels of SoTL engagement. The role of the faculty developer in such scholarship is discussed, drawing on Pedagogical Content Knowledge as a framework for engagement in SoTL projects. Last, implications for the work of a faculty developer are drawn and future avenues of research in faculty development proposed.


2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Veronica Diaz

The number of instructional offerings in higher education that are online, blended, or web-enhanced, including courses and programs, continues to grow exponentially. Alongside the growth of e-learning, higher education has witnessed the explosion of cloud-based or Web 2.0 technologies, a term that refers to the vast array of socially oriented, free or nearly free, web-based tools, has represented a transition from institutionally-provided to freely available technology tools. This paper addresses the numerous teaching and learning opportunities and challenges that institutions face in adopting and implementing cloud-based technologies into their eLearning programs and provides a guide for forming implementation decisions.


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