The premise of this chapter is that higher education online faculty have a pivotal role in student retention; faculty participation is key to student engagement and engaged students tend to complete courses in which they are enrolled. However, frequently faculty members are unaware of the impact their active participation and visibility has on student engagement and retention. In addition, online courses are an important source of revenue for many institutions of higher education and attrition results in loss of revenue. Given that faculty have a pivotal role in retention, institutions of higher education can benefit fiscally from guiding and supporting online faculty in strategies of student engagement and retention. Faculty support is needed during the process of change inherent in faculty adapting to teaching online, through providing on-going faculty professional development and by creating a teaching culture inclusive of informal scholarly investigations related to instructional effectiveness in online course delivery.

The premise of this chapter is that higher education online faculty have a pivotal role in student retention; faculty participation is key to student engagement and engaged students tend to complete courses in which they are enrolled. However, frequently faculty members are unaware of the impact their active participation and visibility has on student engagement and retention. In addition, online courses are an important source of revenue for many institutions of higher education and attrition results in loss of revenue. Given that faculty have a pivotal role in retention, institutions of higher education can benefit fiscally from guiding and supporting online faculty in strategies of student engagement and retention. Faculty support is needed during the process of change inherent in faculty adapting to teaching online, through providing on-going faculty professional development and by creating a teaching culture inclusive of informal scholarly investigations related to instructional effectiveness in online course delivery.

A majority of PK-12 teachers are White, middle-class woman who speak only English (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2012); many of these teachers report a lack of confidence to adequately meet the needs of a diverse classroom of students (Hollins & Torres-Guzman, 2005), particularly those with background different from that of the teachers (Helfrich & Bean, 2011). The perceived lack of preparedness to serve diverse students, whether factually based or not, has been attributed to poor training provided by teacher preparation programs (Cho & DeCastro-Ambrosetti, 2005). This chapter suggests that teacher preparation programs, regardless of geographic location and demographics of their teacher candidates, model a spirit of inclusivity and be intentional in offering an integrated approach to preparing teacher candidates to be highly-effective in working with all students regardless of diversity represented.

Teacher preparation programs are expected to prepare teacher candidates to integrate technology with instruction in meaningful ways to support PK-12 student learning (U.S. Department of Education, Office of Technology, 2017). Consequently, teacher candidates must experience technology in their teacher preparation coursework, including modeling by faculty, experiencing opportunities to practice integration through course assignments, and observing technology integration being implemented in K-12 classrooms. To accomplish these tasks, faculty must develop knowledge, skills, resources, and professional learning networks for themselves, including actively developing K-12 partnerships.

Virtual reality (VR) is a continuously evolving technology that is gradually being integrated into the teaching-learning process, within institutions of higher education. VR has the potential to transform the instructional process, enhance student learning, and engage students in a more interactive manner than has occurred historically. While technology integration within the instructional process has been initiated within institutions of higher education, mass adoption among faculty has not yet occurred. This chapter provides an introduction to VR, discusses the evolution of VR, applications in higher education and other fields, and a progression of features, tools, and functionality that can be used to innovate learning in higher education.