One of the many lessons learned from the early years of distance education is the fact that you cannot simply pluck an instructor out of the classroom, plug him into an online course, and expect him to be effective in this new and challenging medium. Some learned this lesson the hard way, while others took a proactive approach to faculty training. All of us continue to refine our approach and discover our own best practices.
Today, it’s possible to learn much from the mistakes and successes of those who blazed the trail before us. Faculty development for distance educators is a critical component of all successful distance education programs. Well thought-out faculty development weaves together needed training, available resources, and ongoing support, and carries with it the same expectations for quality teaching that institutions of higher education have for their face-to-face
classes.
This special report, Faculty Development in Distance Education: Issues, Trends and Tips, features 12 articles pulled from the pages of Distance Education Report, including:
• Faculty Development: Best Practices from World Campus
• Developing Faculty Competency in Online Pedagogy
• A Learner-Centered, Emotionally Engaging Approach to Online Learning
• How to Get the Best Out of Online Adjuncts
• Workload, Promotion, and Tenure Implications of Teaching Online
• Four Steps to Just-in-Time Faculty Training
This report is loaded with practical strategies that can help you build a comprehensive faculty development program, helping ensure that instructors stay current in both online pedagogy and practical technical know-how. No matter what the particular character of your program is, I think you’ll find many ideas you can use in here.
Christopher Hill
Editor
Distance Education Report
chill@magnapubs.com
In 2009, a 50-year-old worker could expect to continue working for an average of 16 more years, which means retiring at the age of 66. In the late 1990s, expected working life at age 50 was 13 years. Workers have therefore increasingly been delaying their retirement. These findings from a previous study are analyzed at greater length in this article, as are the unexpected personal and economic factors that push some workers to retire early. When such ‘involuntary’ retirements are taken into account, are workers still more likely to retire later than in the late 1990s?
Ontario is Canada’s largest provincial destination for immigrants. Language barriers, lack of recognition for foreign credentials and lack of work experience in Canada prevent many from gaining employment in their field of expertise.
There is an urgent and growing need for occupation-specific language training in Ontario. Immigrants cannot apply their experience, skills and knowledge without the level of language proficiency needed in the workplace, but there are not enough language training opportunities to meet their needs. Shortages of skilled workers in many sectors will increasingly hinder Ontario’s economic prosperity.
Educational disparities in U.S. adult mortality are large and have widened across birth cohorts. We consider three policy relevant
scenarios and estimate the mortality attributable to: (1) individuals having less than a high school degree rather than a high school degree, (2) individuals having some college rather than a baccalaureate degree, and (3) individuals having anything less than a laureate degree rather than a baccalaureate degree, using educational disparities specific to the 1925, 1935, and 1945
cohorts.
The New Technologies: New Pedagogies project endeavoured to take an innovative approach not only in the creation of new, authentic pedagogies for mobile devices but also in the action learning approach adopted for the professional development of participants. The project involved 19 people including teachers, IT and PD personnel. It was a large and ambitious project that resulted not only in a range of innovative pedagogies, but in the creation of more knowledgable and confident users of mobile technologies among teachers and students in the faculty of Education at the University of Wollongong.
Reading instruction has been reformed successfully in the primary grades, but with no consequent improvement in adolescent literacy. This commentary asks the question: What changes can the states and federal government make to education policy that will boost adolescent reading achievement?
This paper examines the implications of expanding the number and scope of college-to-university transfer arrangements as a means of meeting the demand for undergraduate degrees in Ontario. It focuses on two research questions:
1. What are the differences in the learning outcomes of students in college-to-university transfer arrangements compared with those in four-year university programs?
2. What are the differences in the cost per student for college-to-university transfer arrangements compared with four-year university programs?
Over the last decade the global economy has become more competitive, and the jobs needed in that new economy have grown more technologically complex. As a result, educators, education researchers, and national and state policymakers have emphasized that students must graduate from high school “ready for college and career.” While college and career readiness has become the goal for all individuals, opinions have recently begun to differ about what college and—especially—career readiness actually means and how best to assess it.
As laptops become smaller and more ubiquitous, and with the advent of tablets, the idea of taking notes by hand just seems old-fashioned to many students today. Typing your notes is faster — which comes in handy when there's a lot of information to take down. But it turns out there are still advantages to doing things the old-fashioned way.
For one thing, research shows that laptops and tablets have a tendency to be distracting — it's so easy to click over to Facebook in that dull lecture. And a study has shown that the fact that you have to be slower when you take notes by hand is what makes it more useful in the long run.
“Pop leadership” philosophy abounds in our culture today. Book stores have shelves full of books on leader ship. Leaders and leadership are discussed daily on tele vision, radio, newspapers, magazines and on the web. As a result, many mixed messages about leadership are expressed. So – how do you decide what is accurate?
MCMASTER UNIVERSITY’S VISION/MANDATE
Vision Statement
To achieve international distinction for creativity, innovation, and excellence.
Mission
“At McMaster, our purpose is the discovery, communication, and preservation of knowledge. In our teaching, research, and scholarship, we are committed to creativity, innovation, and excellence. We value integrity, quality, inclusiveness, and teamwork in everything we do. We inspire critical thinking, personal growth, and a passion for lifelong learning. We serve the social, cultural, and economic needs of our community and our society.”
Seamless Pathways: A Symposium on Improving Transitions from High School to College gathered prominent Ontario educators, policy-makers and government leaders in Toronto on June 6, 2006. The purpose of the symposium was to bring together an expert group of education leaders to:
• learn about other jurisdictions’ approaches to building meaningful pathways that contribute to higher success rates in secondary school and higher participation in post-secondary education
• discuss what has been learned from current research; the School/College/Work Initiative projects; and the unique role of colleges and apprenticeship pathways in student success
• identify systemic issues and develop policy advice for creating better school-college linkages in order to raise both participation and success rates for post-secondary students.
Problem-based learning (PBL) is an instructional method where student learning occurs in the context of solving an authentic problem. PBL was initially developed out of an instructional need to help medical school students learn their basic sciences knowledge in a way that would be more lasting while helping to develop clinical skills simultaneously. Although PBL ad- dresses this specific need, it is also based in sound educational theories and paradigms. The author addresses those theoretical foundations of PBL, which, in turn, help readers to understand why PBL can be effective as well as enable them to diagnose and improve PBL applications when things are not going quite as planned.
Background/Context: The rapid pace of technological change, undergirded by near ubiquitous access to the web, is producing a new learning ecology—a new ecology of information, of knowledge, of reading, of teaching, and of thinking. This instant availability of digital resources frees both time and cognitive energy that may be used to facilitate higher order thinking. This article provides a framework through which to better understand, evaluate, and scaffold the generative synthesis of knowledge in a web-mediated world.
Purpose/Objective: The purpose of this article is to describe a theory that can stimulate additional scholarly work examining higher order, or generative, thinking in web-mediated environments.
The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore faculty and administrators’ perceptions of multicultural initiatives in higher education. A demographic survey was used to select the study participants, which consisted of 10 faculty members and 10 administrators with at least two to five years of experience working with diverse student populations in Maricopa County, Arizona. Data was obtained through the use of focus group sessions and coding was done by utilizing Liamputtong and Ezzy’s (2005) three column format and NVivo10. The four major themes that emerged were: 1) Leadership support is needed to facilitate diversity policies and programs, 2) Curriculum and programming need to be adapted to
engage students and enhance learning beyond the classroom, 3) Incorporating multicultural education created a welcoming environment in which students felt respected and safe to express themselves, and 4) No special instruction needed because incorporating culture does not necessarily enhance learning or the retention of knowledge. Findings indicated that faculty,
administrators, and those in key leadership positions are at odds when deciding how best to meet the needs of diverse students. As the diversity of students increases on college campuses, it will be important for academic affairs professionals to be prepared to meet the needs of these diverse student populations by constructing learning environments in which a diversity of perspectives are represented (Bolman & Gallos, 2011; Kuk & Banning, 2010). Study results suggest that important steps institutional leaders can take to achieve this goal are to: (1) carefully draft definitions and policies of what constitutes a multicultural program, (2) ensure that these definitions and policies are clearly communicated, understood, and implemented by all members
of the academic community, and (3) provide ongoing education to students and staff about the
benefits of multicultural initiatives within the campus and the community at large.
ACT has been measuring college readiness trends for several years. The Condition of College & Career Readiness
is ACT’s annual report on the progress of the graduating class relative to college readiness. This year, 54.3% of the graduating class took the ACT® college readiness assessment. The increased number of test takers enhances the breadth and depth of the data pool, providing a comprehensive picture of the current graduating class in the context of readiness levels as well as offering a glimpse of the emerging educational pipeline.
The provision of blended learning strategies designed to assist academics in the higher education sector with the knowledge, skills, and abilities required for effective teaching with technology has been, and continues to be, a challenge for teaching centres in Canada. It is unclear, first, whether this is an ongoing issue unique to Canada; and, second, if it is not unique to Canada, whether we might be able to implement different and/or more effective strategies based on what others outside Canada are doing. Teaching centre leaders in Australia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Britain, Scotland, and the United States (n=31) were interviewed to explore how their units used blended learn- ing strategies. Findings suggest that, as in Canada,
there is a “value gap” be- tween academics and leaders of teaching centres regarding teaching development initiatives using blended learning strategies.
Before you even print off the application forms to request funding for your research project, take some time to review these tips.
Community college systems were established across North America from the early 1960s through the early 1970s. The new systems had two principal models: in one model, the college combined lower-division, university-level general education with technical education programs; in the other, most or all of the colleges were intended to concentrate on technical education. Ontario was the largest of the provinces and states in North America that opted for the second model. Many of the issues that planners confronted when designing these college systems have either persisted or re-emerged in recent years. This article re-examines the debate on the design of Ontario’s colleges that took place when they were founded and considers its implications for the present.
The internationally recognized NMC Horizon Report series and regional NMC Technology Outlooks are
part of the NMC Horizon Project, a comprehensive research venture established in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact over the coming five years in education around the globe. This volume, the NMC
Horizon Report: 2014 Higher Education Edition, examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative inquiry within the environment of higher education. While there are many local factors affecting the practice of education, there are also issues that transcend regional boundaries and questions common to higher education; it was with these questions in mind that this report was created. The NMC Horizon Report: 2014 Higher Education Edition is the
11th in the annual higher education series of reports and is produced by the NMC in collaboration with the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI).