scholarly journals Faculty development needs assessment for online teaching

Author(s):  
Ayman Z. Elsamanoudy ◽  
Rasha Abou-Kamer ◽  
Fatma M. Ghoneim ◽  
Sherif El-Saadany ◽  
Mona A. Soliman ◽  
...  

Background: Academic staff members, who are responsible for teaching and training, should be aware of the principle of online course design, development, and implementation. The aim of this study is to evaluate instructors’ skills and needs for conducting distance learning healthcare courses, including the level of assistance they need to implement and use online and software tools in online courses.Methods: The current study applied online faculty survey used by the Center for Teaching Excellence, University of South Carolina to assess the faculty’s instructional technology needs for training and support. The survey asked faculty staff about a broad number of classroom and online technologies, with a helpful response scale that reveals not only what the faculty is already using, but also what the instructors want to use and what they need help with.Results: The results of this study revealed a significant need of faculty staff members for the training and development of their skills in almost all tools used for conducting online courses. The female responder was higher than males. Regarding the use of software, although the majority of participating staff members in this study use almost all software tools required for conducting online healthcare courses, they expressed a need for help in developing new ideas to use the software effectively.Conclusions: From this study, it could be concluded that it is essential to organize comprehensive faculty development training courses for staff members to help them in conducting their online courses or converting their face-to-face courses to blended courses effectively.

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Patricia Danyluk ◽  
Amy Burns

The shift to online learning that occurred in March of 2020, created an unprecedented period of intense work for faculty and sessional instructors at the post-secondary level. This shift necessitated courses be adapted under short timelines, new technology be integrated into course design and teaching strategies and assessment methods be adapted for an online environment (Van Nuland et al., 2020). This study examines how sessional instructors, referred to in this chapter as contract faculty, and continuing full-time faculty members delivering the same online courses experienced this shift. While the demands of a continuing faculty position call for balancing of teaching, research and service responsibilities, contract instructors have their own unique stressors (Karram Stephenson et al., 2020). Contract faculty lack job security, are paid by the course and often receive their teaching assignments with short notice. By examining their perspectives on delivering the same courses online, we learn that the shift to online teaching resulted in additional work in order to adapt courses to the online environment, with faculty describing the challenges of balancing the additional work with other responsibilities of their position. Concerns of participants focused on a perceived inability to develop relationships with students in an online environment.


Author(s):  
Pham Ngoc Thach ◽  
Do Quynh Huong ◽  
Tran Minh Thanh

The COVID-19 pandemic had a great impact on almost all aspects of life, especially in the field of education and training. In response to this challenge, most schools and universities worldwide made online courses available their students according to the policy ‘School is Out, but Class is On’. In this study, we used mixed methods approach, frequency analysis, correlationand multivariate regression techniques to explore the factors that affect lecturers satisfaction when teaching online during the period of COVID-19 pandamic at a big university in Vietnam. The ‘study results showed that the main factors affecting faculty satisfaction were their interaction with students, their skills to operate available applications, support from institutions and students’online behaviour. The results of qualitative data analysis (open-ended questions and interviews) reinforced the above findings and indicated the need to deploy blended-learning, which combines online and face-to-face modes to ensure quality of teaching.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-43
Author(s):  
Claudia Moessenlechner ◽  
Regina Obexer ◽  
Maria Pammer ◽  
Julia Waldegger

In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic turned into an urgent priority for higher education institutions in that they had to move to remote teaching within a matter of weeks. This paper presents the results of a quantitative survey looking at the challenges university faculty were facing when moving their course(s) online during the first semester of the COVID-19 crisis.The survey looks specifically at course design and formats used in online teaching during the crisis and compares differences occurring between disciplines (STEM and management education). The outcomes overall mirror a sense of achievement due to the successful delivery of online courses with little preparation. Difficulties lecturers identified were related to promoting student interaction and engagement, technical issues, the effort required to plan and prepare online learning materials, and challenges with regard to online assessment. Having access to training and support in various forms was highlighted as an important success factor.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Florence Martin ◽  
Kiran Budhrani ◽  
Swapna Kumar ◽  
Albert Ritzhaupt

Given the explosive growth of online learning in institutions of higher education, we are in dire need of guidelines for instructing new and continuing online instructors on how best to teach in online spaces.  The purpose of this study was to identify the roles of the online instructor and categorize critical competencies for online teaching based on a review of research, and the perspectives of award-winning online faculty. We interviewed eight award-winning online faculty members from across the United States. Based on interviews, it was found that online instructors were assuming five different roles: Facilitator, Course Designer, Course Delivery, Subject Matter Expert, and Mentor.  Participants’ common tasks when designing and teaching an online course fell in two areas, either Course Design or Teaching. This research has clear implications not only for the literature research base, but for our institutions as well as we continue to offer increasing numbers of effective online courses and programs to our students.


2012 ◽  
Vol 239-240 ◽  
pp. 1637-1640
Author(s):  
Qi Jun Du

Based on the design theory of internet course teaching, combined with the course of operation system, some key technology has been introduced, such as the development process of teaching, network system, the curriculum and various network elements: learners, teaching objective, contents of teaching, learning environment, teaching strategies, evaluation, etc. Some construction of network course building should be noted, which all has strong and practical significance for others. With the rapid development of Internet and the gradual perfection of the modern education technology, the education philosophy and approaches have been keeping innovated. The Internet-based courses have aroused many people’s concern. Compared with traditional courses, it is much more flexible, efficient, interactive, and convenient. It can also meet the need of individual-tailored service. With regards to the target learners, forms of the contents, course arrangement and studying methods, online education is incomparably superior. Thus the application of online teaching is one of the most effective ways to improve the teaching level. Based on the online courses teaching design theories, combined with the course of the computer operation system, the paper introduces the key technologies related to online course design and development, which is suggestive to other online courses studies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 5038
Author(s):  
Amanda Chu ◽  
Connie Liu ◽  
Mike So ◽  
Benson Lam

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has affected educational institutions and instructors in an unprecedented way. The majority of educational establishments were forced to take their courses online within a very short period of time, and both instructors and students had to learn to navigate the digital array of courses without much training. Our study examined factors that affect students’ attitude toward online teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is different from other online learning studies where online courses are mostly a method of choice, with suitable support from institutions and expectation from instructors and students, rather than a contingency. Under this specific environment, we utilized an online survey to collect students’ feedback from eleven universities across Hong Kong. Using partial least squares for analysis on the 400 valid samples we received, we found that peer interactions and course design have the most salient impact on students’ attitude, whereas interactions with instructors has no effect at all on students’ attitude. Furthermore, we also provide suggestions on using the existing technologies purchased during COVID-19 for a more sustainable learning environment going forward.


Author(s):  
Hitesh Kathuria ◽  
David Wayne Becker

Designing high quality, interactive online courses in a technologically rich environment can be a daunting task even for experienced faculty. This process becomes more difficult when faculty are teaching multiple classes, juggling service and research/creative scholarship. In order to help faculty focus on key aspects of online teaching and course design, we developed a checklist with links to institutional resources which help faculty meet several best practices for online teaching. Use of checklists and rubrics to meet quality assurance standards is common (e.g. - OLC OSCQR Course Design Review Scorecard, 2018; Quality Matters Higher Education Rubric, 2018), however they vary significantly with the time required to review a course (Baldwin, Ching, & Hsu, 2018). Our goal was to create a checklist that helps faculty design basic elements of the course and expedite the self-review process.  Given the current COVID-19 situation, when instructors were suddenly asked to teach remotely, this Course Quality Checklist will help faculty self-review their existing or new online course via multiple lenses such as course orientation, policies, organization, alignment, as well as Universal Design for Learning and interaction. Faculty may use this checklist to create a clear and consistent structure within their course. The checklist also links to several online, just-in-time resources (e.g. course templates, design and pedagogy training, and standards for interaction and accessibility). This will ensure they meet essential standards, save time, reduce cognitive load, and meet specific compliance requirements. 


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Fredericksen ◽  
Alexandra Pickett ◽  
Peter Shea ◽  
William Pelz ◽  
Karen Swan

The State University of New York (SUNY) Learning Network (SLN) is the online instructional program created for the 64 colleges and nearly 400,000 students of SUNY. The foundation of the program is freedom from schedule and location constraints for our faculty and students. The primary goals of the SLN are to bring SUNY's diverse and high-quality instructional programs within the reach of learners everywhere, and to be the best provider of asynchronous instruction for learners in New York State and beyond. We believe that these goals cannot be achieved unless faculty receives appropriate support.This paper will examine factors that have contributed to the high level of faculty satisfaction we have achieved in the SLN. The analysis will be done on several levels. This first section will look at the SLN at a program-wide level and will provide information regarding the systemic implementation of our asynchronous learning environment.The second section examines issues that contribute to on-line teaching satisfaction from a faculty-development and course-design perspective. This section will present the evolution of the four-stage faculty development process and a seven-step course design process that was developed by SLN and comment on lessons learned.The third section presents results from the SLN Faculty Satisfaction Survey conducted in spring 1999. This section examines factors from a quantitative analysis that significantly contributes to faculty satisfaction with online teaching and offers recommendations for course and program design based on these factors.The fourth section examines faculty satisfaction at the level of individual institutions with examples from specific courses. This section will introduce the reader to local implementation of SLN courses at two college programs in the SUNY system: the Department of Educational Theory and Practice at the University at Albany (UA), and the Internet Academy (IA) of Herkimer County Community College (HCCC). These case studies present and examine important evidence of faculty satisfaction from a single-institution and individual-faculty perspective.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Upeksha Sajeevani Amarathunga

<p>Additional reading materials that are prescribed for undergraduate and postgraduate courses offered by the University of Auckland have a high demand. The Electronic Course Materials (ECM) service of the University of Auckland Library digitizes and provides online access to such materials. The demand for the ECM service varies between different staff members. Thus, this research project aims to investigate the factors affecting the staff demand for the Electronic Course Material (ECM) service provided by the University of Auckland Library. The current research revealed that - percentage increase in usage of the ECM Collection in 2008 was less significant than that in 2007 - there is a correlation between the academic staff awareness and the staff uptake of the ECM service - only 50% of the staff members who were aware of the ECM service used the service to digitize course materials - subject Librarians play an important role in promoting the ECM service in academic departments / units that had a high staff uptake - the Library ECM webpage was less significant in promoting the ECM service - the University of Auckland Library does not have a standard method of promoting the ECM service throughout all the academic departments / units - most preferred method of providing access to course materials was through nDeva, Cecil and WebCT. The ECM service was the third preferred method - there was no relationship between the timeliness of the ECM service, restriction on the types of materials that can be digitized through the ECM service, availability of distant or online courses and the staff uptake of the ECM service Recommendations mentioned in page 61 were made based on these findings.</p>


Author(s):  
Jennifer Brielmaier ◽  
Ying-Ying Kuo

Enhancing student engagement has been a goal of increasing importance in higher education.  This may be especially valuable in online courses, where face-to-face interactions and synchronous activities are often minimal or nonexistent. Students are thought to be engaged when they view course activities as meaningful, persist in the face of difficulties or obstacles, and wish to learn to achieve mastery of the material (Bomia et al., 1997; Schlecty, 1994). Given the importance of student engagement for effective teaching, it is important for instructors and course designers to understand the factors that foster engagement within the learning environment.The present study sought to measure and compare student satisfaction and engagement in online vs. face-to-face sections of Physiological Psychology taught in Spring and Fall 2015. An end of semester survey, adapted from the literature (Dixson, 2010; Ouimet & Smallwood, 2005), included 18 questions relevant to learner satisfaction, motivation and engagement.  The preliminary data analysis was based on Spring 2015 data collected from 56 students total (22 online, 34 face-to-face).  The findings indicated that there was no statistically significant difference between the online and face-to-face sections for student learning satisfaction and overall engagement levels. Results suggest that online teaching and learning can be comparable to the face-to-face environment on these parameters. More complete analysis of the data from the Spring, Summer, and Fall 2015 semesters, as well as a discussion of implications for course design, will be presented.  Faculty and course designers will learn about strategies for measuring and promoting student engagement within their own courses.


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