Effective professional development for e‐learning: What do the managers think?

Abstract

teaches on the Bachelor in Education and Post Graduate Diploma in Education (E-Learning) for Massey University. She has spent the last 8 years developing both online and web-supported courses and teaching. Dr Wilson has served as the convener of a national forum, facilitated international online conferences and served on national e-learning projects and has also served on bachelor programme accreditation panels as an e-learning adviser. In 2005/06, she was selected for a national professional development scholarship. AbstractIntroducing new methods of teaching and learning requires an institutional approach to professional development in order to cater for the different levels and requirements of staff. The increase in e-learning use has prompted many institutions to adopt a whole organisation approach to professional development for lecturers. This paper proposes to answer three related questions. How do institutions of vocational education within New Zealand structure their institutional provision of e-learning professional development? What training or other development opportunities are provided by institutions? What do e-learning managers feel are the types of e-learning professional development that work best in terms of lecturer development and support?A literature review was completed and interviews were held with e-learning managers from 13 institutions. The data collected from the interviews were then analysed using a grounded analysis approach. The analysis process yielded concepts that were related to different types of professional development training, information and support. The analysis provided a structure of professional development. Furthermore, the efficiency of the types of e-learning professional development was analysed based on e-learning managers' perception and evaluation models. Professional development with opportunities for skill acquisition and collaboration was deemed the most effective. IntroductionProfessional development has long been perceived as a way to effect change in the educational sector and is used at both the compulsory and post-compulsory stages. There are often centres in tertiary institutions that are charged with all forms of academic and professional development, ranging from short courses to teaching qualifications. In considering an institution's approach to professional development, it is important to determine which forms of professional development are useful in effecting changes to teaching and student outcomes. This paper examines managers' perceptions of professional development approaches with particular focus on e-learning use in the vocational institute sector.

Tutoring Executives Online: What Drives Perceived Quality?

“…Aside from offering a list of constructs that could usefully be measured in a quantitative study to determine what factors influence satisfaction the most, our findings have some implications for directors of online MBA programs. Recent evidence suggests firstly that tutors' beliefs about effective tutoring vary across disciplines (Jelfs, Richardson, & Price, 2009), and secondly that e-learning managers mainly focus the professional development of tutors on technical skills (Wilson, 2012). Our analysis shows that the perceptions of tutor support on the online executive MBA are affected by the attitudes and behaviors of the tutor, their theoretical and/or industry expertise, contextual understanding, and cultural sensitivity.…”

Tutoring executives online: what drives perceived quality?

“…Recent evidence suggests firstly that tutors' beliefs about effective tutoring vary across disciplines (Jelfs et al 2009), and secondly that e-learning managers mainly focus the professional development of tutors on technical skills (Wilson 2012). IT self-efficacy has an obvious impact on both a tutor's ability to teach effectively online, and a student's ability to learn online (Diep et al 2017).…”

Open Praxis vol. 11 issue 2

“…Moreover, a recent review of the literature evidence that BL appears to facilitate learner empowerment more than either face-to-face or fully online courses, with a greater chance of succeeding (Owston, 2018). This condition is valuable if we consider a thoughtful duration (Consuegra & Engels, 2016), the need for professional and peer support (Desimone & Garet, 2015), active learning (Consuegra & Engels, 2016), link and relevance between theory and practice (Wilson, 2012) and the implications for professional identity (Baran, Correia & Thompson, 2011).…”