Multi-Modal Professional Development for Faculty

Introduction

Online course offerings are growing at an exponential rate. According to the national center for educational statistics, in 2006, 89% of public 4-year universities offered distance education courses for credit hours (Parsad, Lewis, Tice, & National Center for Education Statistics., 2008). There is an increased need for higher education institutions to offer more professional development for faculty who teach online courses due to the increasing offerings of online courses. To date, universities and colleges employ a variety of methods to teach/train faculty on new technology and pedagogy from group technology training supported by an Information Technology department to creating Centers for Teaching Excellence on pedagogy (Blair & Madigan, 2000; Brown, Maeers, & Cooper, 2000). Too often these professional development programs provide one method of training faculty with separate technology and pedagogy training. Often the teaching and learning styles between the trainer and faculty are misaligned or faculty expectations and the actual training content may be mismatched. As a result, this may lead to poor faculty experience with professional development (Lawlar, 2003). Utilizing multi-modality to design professional development for faculty applies several processes and models as well as integrates technology and pedagogy training. Multi-modality can eliminate known faculty barriers to integrating technology into their courses such as time constraints (Rutherford & Grama, 1995).

This chapter describes a multi-modal faculty professional development program designed using the Analyze, Design, Development, Implement, and Evaluation approach (ADDIE) combined with Community of Learning model. The program includes a general training series, one-on-one trainings, on demand training as well as social events. The Community of Learning model allows faculty to support one another through social events and colloquiums. This multi-modal approach creates an adaptable and flexible environment that allows the professional development program to meet the needs of a diverse group of faculty.