Learning to teach online: a study of faculty's lived experiences in transformative professional development

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Date
2014
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Publisher
University of Alabama Libraries
Abstract

Given a burgeoning focus on faculty professional development and faculty participation in technologically mediated instruction, it is increasingly important to understand how faculty members learn to teach online. It is critical to know the types of learning experiences that faculty deem as meaningful. The purpose of this study is to examine retrospectively the learning experiences of faculty who participated in formal professional development for online instruction and stated that they made an instructional change(s) based on their learning. In this study, I used the transformational learning theory (Mezirow, 1991, 1997, 2000a, 2000b, 2009a, 2009b) as a framework for interviewing the faculty participants and interpretive phenomenological analysis to examine the data. To understand more about the learning experiences that faculty have that transform their instructional practices, this study explores the learning experiences of higher education faculty who participated in professional development provided by Blackboard personnel at Blackboard/institution sponsored Blackboard Days and Never Stop Learning Tour events (details regarding the nature of these events are described in Chapter 3). Over 600 evaluations were collected from faculty who participated in 47 sessions at Blackboard sponsored Blackboard Days and Never Stop Learning Tour events. One of the six questions faculty participants were asked is "How likely are you to change your teaching practices based on this session?" Greater than 90% of the faculty's responses indicated that they are "very likely" or "somewhat likely" to change their teaching practices. I arrived at a purposive sample of six faculty who stated that they did change their instructional practices. Two of the faculty participants had informational learning experiences while four participants had transformational learning experiences. Although there were similarities, catalysts for learning varied for each participant. Prompts for faculty learning may occur during the professional development session(s); however, learning may occur during or after the event. The results of this study provide knowledge about what types of learning transforms faculty's instructional practices and are important for online learning administrators, various academic administrators, and others who help to prepare faculty for online teaching.

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Electronic Thesis or Dissertation
Keywords
Higher education administration, Teacher education, Higher education
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