Faculty development to design effective online courses: Responding to requirements

Kamil Arif Kırkıç; Zehra Sedef Korkmaz; Selçuk Doğan; Ümran Yazıcılar Nalbantoğlu; Sina Güzin Cengiz

doi:10.18543/tjhe.2597

Kamil Arif Kırkıç İstanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, Turkey https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8902-437X
Zehra Sedef Korkmaz Artvin Çoruh University, Turkey https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3466-8119
Selçuk Doğan Georgia Southern University, USA https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0527-8453
Ümran Yazıcılar Nalbantoğlu Oldendorff Carriers GmbH & Co. KG., Germany https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5535-9075
Sina Güzin Cengiz İstanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, Turkey https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1503-5711

Keywords: Faculty development program, centre of excellence, online teaching, online instructional design, professional development in higher education

Abstract

Since the pandemic, the importance of faculty development has been taken much more attention and has gone from being an ‘expectation’ to a ‘requirement’. Therefore, universities have started to step toward faculty development, which is also necessary. A wide variety of professional learning activities has been used for faculty development purposes in universities, but the research examining its effectiveness is limited. Our goal is to investigate the experiences of faculty from diverse backgrounds regarding technology-based, high-quality professional development programs in terms of their effectiveness. The faculty working at a foundation university participated in high-quality professional development programmes implemented in this study. The data were collected through focus group interviews. Using a qualitative methodology, we have found that faculty improved their knowledge and skills in designing and teaching online courses, with some faculty even reporting active use of what they have learned in their class and finding it valuable and effective. Program features such as feedback, facilitation, and best examples are helpful for having faculty grow pedagogically. The faculty has demonstrated that they can participate in learning activities that are meaningful to them in their daily lives. For the professional development programmes designed for the faculty to be effective in future studies, it is recommended that the programmes should be designed in a meaningful way for the faculty.

Received: 3 November 2022
Accepted: 5 February 2024

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Author Biographies

Kamil Arif Kırkıç, İstanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, Turkey

PhD,is an associate professor of Curriculum and Instruction in the Department of Educational Sciences, İstanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, İstanbul, Türkiye. His research interests include curriculum development and evaluation studies, teacher education, design of learning environments, innovative learning, and teaching methods in K-12 schools and higher education. He has been the vice dean of İstanbul Sabahattin Zaim University (IZU) education faculty since 2017. He has also founded and directed the Centre of Excellence in Learning and Teaching at İstanbul Sabahattin Zaim University since 2020. He has 26-year experience in private K-12 schools as a teacher, head teacher, and general director of a group of schools in İstanbul, Türkiye, and 15-year experience in two universities of Türkiye, Boğaziçi University, and İstanbul Sabahattin Zaim University. He is a Turkish Association of Curriculum and Instruction (TACI/EPÖDER) member. He is also responsible for the faculty’s institutional accreditation process and the program accreditation of the eight faculty programs.

Zehra Sedef Korkmaz, Artvin Çoruh University, Turkey

Assistant professor of education in the Department of Educational Sciences, Artvin Çoruh University, and Artvin, Türkiye. She teaches effective teaching and curriculum development. Her research areas are curriculum development and evaluation, teacher education, teachers’ professional development and thinking skills. In her doctoral thesis, Dr. Korkmaz developed and implemented a program that supports critical thinking skills for primary school teachers and examined the effects of the program. As a member of the education and training commission of the university where she works, Dr. Korkmaz examines the programs planned to be opened at the university and provides guidance in the development of the curriculum. She also designs and implements professional development programs for faculty members under the name of “training the trainer”.

Selçuk Doğan, Georgia Southern University, USA

He works at Georgia Southern University as an associate professor. His research interests lie in three main fields: teachers’ professional development, instructional design, and technology. He uses quantitative methods to analyse different variables in multiple levels. He currently works on expectancy-value theory to explore the outcome of teachers’ professional development experiences. He collaborates with other researchers to conduct qualitative and mixed-methods studies to evaluate the effect of professional learning experiences of teachers after they attended programs. His focus is on online, synchronous, and asynchronous professional development.

Ümran Yazıcılar Nalbantoğlu, Oldendorff Carriers GmbH & Co. KG., Germany

She works as a Learning and Development Manager in an international company and has a postdoctoral research fellowship at European Science Institute. She has been working on the topic of curriculum adaptations for seven years. To extend the literature on this topic, she designed a professional development program for in-service teachers in her Ph.D. thesis and developed a scale to measure which adaptation patterns are used in classroom settings. Besides curriculum studies and teacher professional development, her research interest includes analysing teacher learning and teacher change. She uses some analytical tools to analyse the teacher change process during and after the professional development programs.

Sina Güzin Cengiz, İstanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, Turkey

She is working as a research assistant in preschool teaching education in the Primary Education Department, İstanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, İstanbul, Türkiye. She has worked also as the research assistance of the Centre of Excellence in Learning, İstanbul Sabahattin Zaim University since 2020. She has worked as the research assistance of the Web-Site Editing Committee, İstanbul Sabahattin Zaim University since 2020.– She has a 5-year experience in private and governmental K-12 schools as a teacher in İstanbul, Türkiye. She has also a 5-year experience in the university of Ayvansaray University, İstanbul, Turkey as the lecturer in the Department of Childhood Development. Her research interests include early childhood curriculum, early literacy development in 0-6 ages, online classrooms in the preschool learning system, e-classes for learning foreign language for children and the design of preschool learning environments.

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