Like many large research institutions with busy, tenure-seeking faculty, the Penn State University World Campus has faced its challenges in getting faculty actively engaged in their development programs that teach faculty how to teach and learn in an online environment.

"Getting faculty to be skilled and competent in the online environment is sometimes easier said than done," says Larry Ragan, director of instructional design and development for the World Campus. "Faculty who are more experienced, tenured, and are closer to retirement tend to participate more (in online faculty development). They tend to have a freer agenda." It is more difficult for younger faculty, who are engaged in getting tenured and are conducting a lot of research and may have a number of consulting projects, to become actively involved in learning how to teach online.

Ragan’s years of experience in the faculty development arena have given him a good sense for what would be a truly innovative model for training faculty how to teach and learn online. His four requirements for a faculty development program that will engage busy faculty are:

1. Faculty development activities have to be customized to the faculty member’s system. So, for instance, if an instructor is teaching in an independent learning modality or in an online cohort modality, the development program must reflect that modality.
    
2. The material has to be written from a faculty orientation point of view. It has to address issues of time management, administrative needs, and how it impacts their lives, not from the perspective of "try this if you want to save some time."
    
3. Faculty development activities must be very concise and efficient.
    
4. Faculty development activities must be just-in-time. In other words, don’t give faculty everything at once. Give them subject modules that they can pick and choose from as they need them.

Ragan adds that the Penn State World Campus is working on redeveloping its faculty training and support programs to include a system that adapts to faculty members’ needs though the use of learning objects and/or easily-digestible modules that are broken down by categories, such as authoring, teaching, and technology. "We have a lot of energy going on grabbing modules, and we are discussing internally how to assemble them," says Ragan. "We are trying to capture and quantify things that we can put around learning nuggets that we can pull out and construct for the faculty member, on the fly, that addresses only the needs of their model. It is going to take us a long time, but it is the path down which we are heading."

Penn State World Campus Faculty Resources
www.worldcampus.psu.edu/pub/home/fac/index.shtml