This section further discusses in detail the findings, which are categorized into the usefulness of the Pathway, the participating faculty’s role as learners, and the pedagogical strategies and technology learned and applied in their own classrooms.
4.4.1 Usefulness of the Pathway
The participants found the Pathway useful in learning about the best practices of teaching, engaging in discussion with other participants, and receiving feedback on their ideas. They enjoyed the Pathway and most of them would definitely recommend it to a colleague. It seemed that their decision to recommend was not based on the small financial incentive given upon successful completion. This finding is encouraging as the participants were motivated to learn in the program not because they would get paid. Since financial incentives may not always be provided, any faculty professional programs that rely on monetary incentives as a way to attract participants may not be sustainable.
4.4.2 Faculty as Online Learners in the Pathway
Faculty members participate in various professional development programs in different formats, such as workshops and faculty learning communities. Putting faculty in the shoes of a student in a formal semester-course is uncommon in the literature of faculty development. The participating faculty in this Pathway were students in a hybrid course, completing deliverables, providing and receiving peer feedback, and receiving instructor feedback. The participants’
feedback showed appreciation of their role as online learners in the Pathway, which focused on how to teach online. They reported that they gained perspectives of the student and instructor, and realized that both the student and instructor need to be engaged in the online teaching and learning process. The participants’ role as online learners helped them understand what learning online was like. Since most of them did not have experience in teaching or learning online, which is in accordance with what is reported from the literature as online instructors’ prior online experience, the exposure of learning online was able to empower the participants to gain important insights into this unfamiliar learning environment.
Several participants from the two cohorts reported that they gained empathy for students, since they were students in the Pathway, and that they realized dedication, commitment, and time management skills were necessary. The participants experienced learning activities that were engaging, and they adapted them for their own teaching. These realizations helped them prepare for teaching online as instructors, who would need to utilize technology and design engaging activities that foster the three types of presence in the CoI framework (Garrison, 2007).
Compared to teaching how to teach online in a workshop format, the Pathway was much more intensive and in-depth. This hybrid, semester-long course, centered the participants as learners. I stressed that the participants would ‘wear two hats—a student’s hat and teacher’s hat’ because they would experience everything, including consuming content, generating content, doing in-class and asynchronous activities, and completing deliverables, in the Pathway as learners. The faculty learners constantly reflected on their learning experience with the mindset that they would evaluate the effectiveness of the organization and presentation of the content, as well as activities and technology use for their own teaching in a F2F or online course. I modeled the learning activities and teaching strategies for engaging them throughout the Pathway, enabling
them to evaluate those activities and strategies for the purposes of adapting them in their own courses, as recognized by a participant.
4.4.3 Learned and Applied Pedagogical Strategies and Technology
In terms of what the participants learned and applied to their teaching, almost all the course design principles and notions were applied in the participants’ teaching. Backward design, an important curriculum design principle, seemed to be remembered and applied by multiple participants. The icebreaking activity Two Truths and a Lie conducted at the beginning of the Pathway was quickly applied by several participants in their courses, showing thoughtful consideration of how to help their students to bond with each other. This reflected their establishment of social presence in their courses. It also reflected that this particular icebreaking activity was relatively easy to take and use right away. It seemed that some participants became aware that their students might have special needs that they were unaware of. Therefore, accessibility was a topic to which they would pay attention in designing courses. For instance, three participants reported that they added captions to their recorded presentations. The participants also learned about copyright laws and best practices. As a result, some reported that they requested permission to use other people’s materials, whereas they were unaware of the need to do so before the program.
The participants also adopted a wide range of technologies, such as wiki, blog, journal, Web 2.0 tools, and Panopto, among others. Based on their descriptions of how these technologies were used, the technology use appeared to be pedagogical. Three participants respectively used Camtasia, Piaaza, and Socrative, which were not taught in the Pathway. Their adoption of the new technologies might be due to their exposure to the wide variety of technologies they were required
to use in the Pathway. Their self-efficacy might have been increased as they felt confident using the different technologies introduced in the Pathway.
Some pedagogical activities and technology use were applied earlier and more often than others. Such examples were the icebreaker Two Truths and a Lie and wiki, as discussed in this section. The scattered mentions of other items reflected in Tables 7, 8, 9, and 10 showed that the faculty did not acquire and apply the same knowledge or technology. This might be due to their individual teaching and learning experiences, preferences, tech savviness, and teaching beliefs.
It appeared that the sub-themes of what was learned and applied under the category of teaching presence were more than those under social presence and cognitive presence. It was possibly due to the fact that the main content of the Pathway was about how to teach online, and many facilitation strategies were demonstrated and explained in this course. The participants, as learners, might have remembered them more since they experienced those facilitation strategies.
Initially, I asked separate questions about what participants applied in F2F teaching and online teaching. All the interviewees expressed that they felt that almost all that they learned could be applicable to teaching in both environments. Therefore, in reporting the findings, I did not separate the specific content they applied in terms of traditional F2F teaching and online teaching. Overall, the data presented a wealth of knowledge learned from the Pathway and applied in the participants’ own teaching.
4.5 Chapter Summary
This chapter reported findings based on data drawn from the surveys, focus groups, and semi-structured one-on-one interviews, addressing the inquiry questions. The participants’ ratings
showed that they found the Pathway very useful, and their comments about their role as online learners were very positive. They developed empathy and realistic expectations for students as a result of assuming the learner’s role in the Pathway. It seemed that the faculty’s experience as online learners helped them understand online students’ challenges.
The two cohorts also reported implementation of a wide range of instructional design principles, notions, best practices, and technologies in their F2F and online teaching. Three of the participants tried new technologies that were not introduced in the Pathway. All 11 of the respondents of the One-Term-Later Survey stated that their approaches to teaching F2F and/or online had changed since the enrollment of the Pathway. They also reported that they made changes to their courses or teaching based on what they learned in technology use, course activities and materials. The exception was one person who reported that s/he planned to make changes because s/he had not taught a course after the completion of the Pathway. In summary, the results indicated that the participants appreciated learning in the Pathway and were able to implement what they learned in their teaching, although when and what they applied greatly varied.