Faculty Development in Online Instruction

The rapid transformation of courses in higher education from the classroom to the Internet has surpassed the ability of many colleges and universities to properly prepare faculty to competently teach in an online environment. Literature supports that there are many differences between face-to-face and online courses, but faculty are often asked to teach online courses without any previous formal training in those differences or given strategies to successfully engage students in the online environment.

As a strategy to address the perceived gap in practice, a faculty needs assessment survey was completed by online faculty at a private nursing college that identified a need for education in online instruction pedagogy, best practices and resources.  The findings from the faculty needs assessment survey were similar to findings in the comprehensive literature review. To provide the education needed, it was requested by faculty that the modality be self-paced, easy to navigate, and provided in a series of short sessions. Faculty also expressed the desire to have some kind of reward for completion, so three hours of Continuing Education Credits (CEUs) were obtained from the Ohio State Nursing Association.  A series of three faculty development modules were then created to provide all college faculty with training on how to teach online prior to beginning online instruction.  The three modules were interactive, allowing faculty to experience what students experience in an online course, and included homework assignments and reflection through online threaded discussion with their peers. The modules provided education on online pedagogy, best practices, strategies for student engagement, and a wide variety of online resources for course development.  Upon completion of all modules, faculty were asked to complete a program evaluation that assessed how well course objectives were met using a 1-5 Likert Scale and allowed for faculty to share any additional comments. Thirty-one out of 57 faculty completed the modules, with 22 completing the program evaluation. The results were positive in both numeric and narrative responses.  All faculty that completed the modules received a Certificate of Completion and Continuing Education Units (CEUs).

Chou, C. C. (2012). Creating a performance-based faculty development process for online teaching. In P. Resta (Ed.), Proceedings of the Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference (pp. 2258-2263). Chesapeake, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/39921.

Clark, D. (2013). Designing online learning activities. In K. Frith & D. Clark (Eds.), Distance education in nursing (pp. 135-143, 3rd ed.). New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company.

Meyer, K. A., & Murrell, V. (2014). A national study of training content and activities for faculty development for online teaching. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 18(1).