An analysis of the research on faculty development for online teaching and identification of new directions

Abstract

This article presents the results of an extensive review of the published literature on faculty development for online teaching. This review included 68 articles and five books, which were reviewed to identify elements of the training and the findings (e.g., theoretical bases, training aims and organization, content of training, nature of sample (number and type of participants), outcome measures used. The emphasis was not on the recommendations of the authors, but the methods of arriving at the findings. The review produced seven insights, from the importance of basing faculty development on theory, the frequency of publications that present models of faculty development for online teaching, the need to disentangle treatments, the need for rigorous evaluations, and the importance of considering individual faculty differences, designing and evaluating faculty development with specific outcome measures, and considering cost (either cost-efficiency or cost-effectiveness) when evaluating faculty development programs.