An investigation into the role of professional learning on the online teaching identities of higher education lecturers (original) (raw)

The impact of professional learning on the teaching identities of higher education lecturers

EURODL (European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning), 2012

Higher Education is currently undergoing some of the most profound changes in its history. Against a backdrop of increasing marketization, rising levels of student debt and far greater fully online offerings, the higher education lecturer is grappling with new ways of working and high expectations of teaching quality. This 3 year qualitative study based in The Open University UK investigates the ways in which HE distance learning lecturers are approaching professional development and learning, identifying what type of learning ...

Online Learning: “In Between” University Studies and Professional Work

Nordic Studies in Education, 2019

This study explores learning when professionals return to education and use their professional work experience to fulfil their study objectives. The research question is: How do students learn from experiences in two contexts—a master’s course at a university and their organizations of employment—by attending a blended learning course? The study builds on Engeström’s (2001) expansive learning model of two interacting activity systems, namely, the students’ master’s degree program and their professional workplaces. As the study context is an online learning environment it follows a “netnographic” approach. The findings show that the students integrated requirements from their university studies with interventions in their professional work situations. The online learning environment enabled reification of reflections which the students could use later in their study and supported them to become more skilled professionals and influencers in their organizations of employment.

Self-Perceptions of University Lecturers Who Teach in Live and Online Contexts

2000

This paper reports on the self-perceptions of two university lecturers who teach via a combination of face-to-face and online modes. Interpretative analysis of case study material (based on conversations with the researcher and participant-selected online teaching extracts) is providing insights into how experienced lecturers perceive their teaching selves in the different contexts and how their teaching identities are being transformed through the experience of online teaching. By telling stories, we make identity claims (Ronai, 1997). In this study, narrative elicitation procedures offer participants the opportunity to articulate and reflect on their teaching selves in website material, computer-mediated communication and face-to-face teaching/learning contexts. Several extracts from the many stories told by two of the participants in this study are revealed and discussed to exemplify the approach and to highlight some of the research issues. The paper concludes with an outline of...

Transformative Experiences of EFL Lecturers' Professional Identity in Online Education

European Journal of Educational Research, 2022

English teachers had to retrain and build a new normal in order to prepare for an online classroom while keeping their teaching pedagogy and professional identity as a result of the sudden changes brought by the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in education. In this study, the effect of English teachers' professional identity transformations, attitudes toward online teaching was explored. The study's sample comprises 130 English as a foreign language (EFL) lecturers from a state and a foundation university in Turkey. The research data was gathered from a questionnaire, the Teacher Professional Identity scale, and a semi-structured interview with 12 volunteers. Qualitative data collected via semi-structured interviews were apportioned into pattern coding and analyzed through content analysis. EFL lecturers did not appear to be properly prepared for their online pedagogical and technological difficulties, which had a deeply corrosive effect on teachers' professional identities as they shift away from face-to-face education. The results showed that participants who were educated on EduTech during their undergraduate education or as professional development affected their perceptions of professional identity throughout the transition to online language teaching. Future studies can broaden the field of study by making use of exploratory action research, awareness of the teaching community, and continued professional development.

Lessons for Staff Development: Lecturers’ Transition from Face-to-Face to Online Teaching for Masters Courses in Higher Education

International Journal of Contemporary Education

During the COVID-19 pandemic there has been an almost universal pivot to emergency online teaching in higher education, requiring staff development as online teaching differs from teaching face-to-face. The transition has been at short notice, with rapidly created training and little time to engage. Past research into the transition to teach online is scarce. The study described here, carried out in the year before COVID-19, aimed to investigate the how previous experiences of learning and training affected transition, and how staff made sense of the experience, adding to knowledge on successful transition to teaching online distance learning courses. Interpretive phenomenological analysis was carried out after interviewing five experienced online teaching staff in a Graduate School, using semi-structured interviews and open-ended questioning. The overarching themes found were connections to online learning and teaching communities, and developing membership of, and activities in, t...

The Online Academic: Case Study Narratives of Change and Resistance

By telling stories, we make identity claims (Ronai, 1997). This paper presents' a case study exploring the stories (or narratives) of one university lecturer who teaches using a combination offace-to-face and online modes. The case study has been drawn from the pilot phase of research I am undertaking into how experienced lecturers' perceive their teaching selves in live and online teaching contexts' and how their teaching identities are being trans:formed through the experience of online teaching. In conversations with me, the lecturer participants' are encouraged to articulate and reflect on their teaching selves as represented in website material, computer-mediated communication andface-to-face teaching/learning contexts'. The case study reveals some of the emergent themes in my research and it enables a demonstration of the 'top-down'and 'bottom-up'discourse analysis procedures which I am developing to explore academics' stories and identi...

Teaching the Lecturers: Academic Staff Learning About Online Teaching

2012

Developing online teaching skills can occur through involvement in learn-by-doing strategies, which incorporates informal, organic or need-driven strategies. Such processes are sometimes labeled as “bottom-up” staff development processes. In other contexts, teaching staff are formally directed to develop online teaching skills through a series of compulsory staff development workshops or courses. These approaches typically include “top-down” staff development processes. This paper describes how a group of tertiary teaching staff extended their on-campus and distance teaching repertoire of skills to include online teaching skills. In this case, the process of staff development began with collecting data about the concerns and practices of the teaching staff involved. An analysis of the data informed the development of a “middle-out” staff development strategy which comprised a mixture of informal and formal strategies, and acknowledged the ethos of the institution and the specific ne...

From ‘Good Teaching’ to ‘Better Teaching’: One Academic’s Journey to Online Teaching

Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice, 2016

For many educators, the adoption of learning technologies as part of a ‘technology-enhanced’ approach to learning and teaching implies change. Technology takes on a disruptive role. Therefore, it is important to understand the pedagogical commitments associated with current practices in order to better understand any change implied by the use of particular technology ‘enhancements’. This article reports on a case study of the change experienced by one tertiary educator in the shift from successful on campus to flexible online teaching in an undergraduate Numeracy course. The study addresses the question: How do teaching academics translate a robust, proven on-campus course into a successful, flexibly delivered technology-enhanced course? The case employs an autoethnographic approach to recording and analysing the educator’s experiences to highlight comparisons between on-campus (face-to-face) and online teaching practices. The findings support the conclusion that ‘good teaching is g...

University teacher roles and competencies in online learning environments: a theoretical analysis of teaching and learning practices

The aim of this article is to clarify the university teacher roles and competencies in online learning environments, with a view to assisting in the design of professional development activities. This referential framework results from an extensive review of the literature and from analysing professional development designed in different European universities. It is worth mentioning that the definitions that will be produced do not refer to standards of teacher performance; on the contrary, we would like to emphasise the notion of socially situated competencies which are derived from the roles and tasks attributed to university teachers in online learning environments, without losing track of the dialectics and integrity of their exercise.

Phenomenological Analysis of the Lived Experiences of Academics who Participated in the Professional Development Programme at an Open Distance Learning (ODL) University in South Africa

Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology

Since online delivery of education has become a major approach to teaching in Open Distance Learning (ODL) institutions, it becomes critical to understand how academics learn to teach online. This study was designed to explore the lived experiences of academics who had participated in a professional development programme aimed at moving them from traditional distance teaching to online facilitation of learning. Giorgi's phenomenological psychological method was used to analyse and retrospectively examine the learning experiences of the participant academics in order to establish how they lived, behaved and experienced the training programme. The participants described their experiences in relation to distinct lived worlds that included the world in relation to self, others, time, and their environment. The academics' experiences and concerns provide insight into their skills development needs and the adequacy of the programme provided in addressing these and equipping academics for online teaching. The perspectives identified could serve to guide the development and promotion of professional development programmes for online teaching and learning.