Virtual Professional Communities: Integrative Faculty Support to Foster Effective Teaching (original) (raw)

2019, Journal of Instructional Research

Enrollment in traditional and online courses and degree programs continues to rise (NCES, 2019), resulting in the need for more faculty. Due to the high volume of students enrolled, more faculty are needed; however, because of budgetary restraints, institutions of higher education (IHEs) rely heavily on contingent, adjunct faculty (Barnes, 2017; Stenerson, Blanchard, Fassiotto, Hernandez, are a consideration of IHEs (Anft, 2018). Therefore, the increased reliance on adjunct faculty mandates that institutions seek additional strategies that result in effective teaching, student retention, and are uniquely relevant to this faculty population. which teaching contracts to accept and the hours of availability, many adjunct faculty are working partor full-time elsewhere. The pay for adjunct faculty is less, yet many of the expectations are the same, and the preparation to teach a new course is extremely time-consuming. Some IHEs reported adjunct faculty turnover (Ramasamy, 2017). To minimize turnover and retain quality adjunct faculty, IHEs offer professional development (PD) opportunities adjunct faculty may not be able to participate in traditional PD offerings, such as Communities of Practice (CoPs) due to their circumstances with timing and location. "…professional development needs and circumstances of adjunct teaching faculty can enhance scholarly approaches to university The remote nature of the online adjunct faculty position warrants the need for various means of communicating what PD offerings are available and offer alternative modes of collaborating.