Archive for the ‘Faculty Development’ Category

How Faculty Learn To Teach Online: What Administrators Need to Know

Research shows most teachers teach as they were taught.  However, distance educators lack a model or benchmark for online teaching because many of them have not taken online courses as students.  Indeed, many studies on teaching online point to the importance of training for online instructors.  Few studies go into specifics about exactly what that […]

An Examination of Adjunct Faculty Characteristics: Comparison between Non-Profit and For-Profit Institutions

Institutions must understand the unique characteristics and motivations of adjunct faculty teaching online to more effectively support a diverse faculty population. The current study examines faculty characteristics and motivations to explore differences in the types of adjunct faculty teaching at non-profit or for-profit institutions. A survey of 859 part-time, online instructors found no statistically significant […]

Faculty Technology Usage Resulting from Institutional Migration to a New Learning Management System

Research literature is flush with articles discussing how teachers use individual learning management systems. However, very few studies examine how faculty are affected as they move from one platform to another. This study addresses that gap and examines how faculty adapt their online teaching practices as they migrate systems. In doing so, faculty usage levels […]

Faculty Personality: A Factor of Student Retention

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between student retention and faculty personality as it was hypothesized that faculty personality has an effect on student retention. The methodology adopted for this study was quantitative and in two parts 1) using linear regression models to examine the impact or causality of faculty personality […]

Investigating University Educators’ Design Thinking and the Implications for Design Support Tools

All university educators perform design work as they prepare and plan learning experiences for their students. How such design work is undertaken, conceptualised, and optimally supported is the focus of ongoing research for the authors. The purpose of this article is to present the results of a research study that sought to gain a richer […]

Download Report: GOING DIGITAL: Faculty Pespectives on Digital and OER Course Materials

Quality and the cost of course materials for students emerge as the key factors that drive the decisions of college faculty about textbooks and other course materials. And although the movement to digital course content seems inevitable and a majority of the surveyed faculty express interest in adaptive technologies for their courses, it is also […]

Working beyond the confines of academic discipline to resolve a real-world problem: A community of scientists discussing long-tail data in the cloud

This project interrogates a workshop leader and whole-meeting talk among a group of scientists gathered at a workshop to discuss cyberinfrastructure and the sharing of both ‘light’ and ‘dark’ data in the sciences. This project analyzes discourses working through the workshop talk to interrogate the social relations, interdisciplinary identities, concerns, and commonalities in the sciences […]

“And the walls came a-tumblin’ down…”

This case deals with a university program which is well respected but requires changes to be made to it as enrollments dwindle. Pressure from administration is making the Program Head and Program Committee members as well as Senior Instructional Designer LeFort consider new options for its delivery. Online learning is not a well-established practice among […]

Faculty Professional Development for Quality Online Teaching

Meaningful technology use in education continues to improve given an increase in access to available technologies and professional development. For educators, professional development has focused on approaches for technology use that foster content-specific best practices and improve student learning in traditional classroom formats. Meaningful technology integrations are not, however, limited to traditional classrooms. In fact, […]