Supporting the Development of Online Teachers Through Continuous Professional Learning and Development (CPLD)

Richard Walker, Head of Programme Design and Learning Technology at the University of York

Richard Walker, Head of Programme Design and Learning Technology at the University of York

The Covid-19 pandemic has underlined the importance of online teaching within higher education and encouraged institutions to develop their fully online course provision. This trend has been gathering pace over recent years. It has challenged universities and colleges to consider how they support their faculty in developing the competencies and strategies to teach effectively online.

Traditionally the focus of staff development has been on the mastery of digital tools and their practical application in teaching encounters with students (Tschida, Hodge & Schmidt, 2016) – a technical proficiency with less emphasis placed on pedagogical content knowledge (Rapanta et al., 2020) - what works and why within an online teaching context. Indeed, as we saw during the emergency remote teaching phase, the leading institutional effort was directed towards helping staff to make the transition from classroom teaching to online delivery, getting them up to a level of basic competence to manage the delivery of synchronous class sessions, as well as the creation of digital content resources (Bond et al., 2021).

But this has only been a partial solution to staff development for online teaching. Looking to the future, how do we support online instructors' continuous professional learning and development (CPLD), addressing the needs of both new and more experienced online practitioners, with equal attention to their pedagogical knowledge and technical skills development? This was a question explored by Dianne Forbes (University of Waikato, New Zealand) and myself in a co-edited publication (Forbes & Walker, 2022), drawing on examples of effective CPLD interventions presented by staff developers and online practitioners from across the world in their chapters on online teaching activities. We have found that there is no one way of providing CPLD for staff – individual requirements will vary over time in response to evolving teaching contexts. Teachers must actively manage their own development, drawing on the full range of informal and formal development opportunities within and outside their institution.

"These opportunities are not curated for staff but require individuals to proactively self-organize these activities, pursuing risk-taking and research to drive their own development."

The case examples from contributing authors show that this can be achieved in myriad ways. External development may be realized through participation in open teaching communities of practice (e.g., #OpenTeach), MOOCS and professional accreditation schemes such as CMALT, which have served as frameworks for staff to develop their approaches to digital practice. Internal sources of support can involve conventional 'top-down' training courses, such as the self-study Tutoring Online resource and facilitated training sessions on the theory and practice of online tutoring that is offered to fully online tutors at the University of York—and may also include institutional curriculum design frameworks and toolkits modelling 'best practice' in the design of digital learning and use of digital tools. However, internal CPLD opportunities are offered at the programme level through individual networking and cross-disciplinary practice sharing. These types of opportunities are not curated for staff but require individuals to proactively self-organise these activities, pursuing risk-taking and research to drive their own development. This is a challenging undertaking for a time-poor team with high workloads, but the payoff for this effort can be considerable. Self-organised staff development of this kind can deliver rich learning experiences that encourage individuals to reflect deeply on the values influencing their online tutoring practice and consider new techniques and approaches to tutoring.

Dianne and I have seen this working best through 'unguided' peer observation between Waikato and York tutors, where partners determine the issues for exploration and feedback on their tutoring practice rather than follow a prescribed development pathway (Walker & Forbes, 2017). This has led to rich personal learning outcomes. In some cases, these insights have been fed back to online programme teams, enabling colleagues to benefit from the lessons learned and apply new techniques to their own online teaching practice. This team-based practice-sharing promotes organisational learning to progress and provides fertile ground for new tutoring approaches to take root within an evolving programme culture.