Measuring Faculty Learning

in Curriculum and Teaching Capacity (CCT) in Online Courses

Luis M. Villar

Departamento de Didáctica y Organización Educativa

Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación

Universidad de Sevilla

Olga M. Alegre

Departamento Didáctica e Investigación Educativa

Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación

Universidad de La Laguna
 

Abstract

Online education is used for a variety of purposes in higher education. Two such purposes are improving one’s performance over time and elucidating one’s professional development in the context of online teaching and learning. Relying on data from online staff development courses delivered in five universities, this article explores online faculty learning through the lens of staff development theory. This theoretical perspective emphasizes the universities’ quality assurance contexts and offers an empirical examination of the ways in which faculty members learn curriculum and teaching capacities (CTC) in online staff development programs. At the core of this analysis is the contention that faculty members understand and respond to quality teaching. Finally, this study highlights the points deemed important when designing, implementing and evaluating Internet training courses.

According to the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area report, released by the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education in Helsinki (2005), academic staff are critically important to student learning and that academic staff know how to teach effectively in a variety of settings.

Internet learning is a growing trend in today's educational system. The definition of learning encompasses the quantitative increase in knowledge, memorization, the acquisition of facts or methods, the abstraction of meanings, and the interpretative process leading to the comprehension of reality. Learning should be regarded as well as a social process of interaction. It is one of the many psychological constructs featured in textbooks, and one that recently has become a metaphor for the modern vision of the University as an organization (Brockbank & McGill, 1998).

One of the essential characteristics of a learning organization is that it should be knowledgeable about the strengths required for, and the internal tasks involved in, constructing the ability to learn. This can be synthesized in the integration idea that unites the mission and vision in the values expressed by the organization, the leadership, experimentation, transfer of knowledge, teamwork and cooperation. The university as an organization learns through creating, acquiring and transferring new information and knowledge, and changes its actions to reflect these (Patterson, 1999). In a learning organization, no one shrinks from the task of collecting information about the gap that exists between present actions and desired performance. On the contrary, organizational curiosity keeps the door wide open, and is concerned with measuring the key factors within the institution (including student satisfaction) (Allan, 1996). The learning organization offers its end-users the key to keep the door permanently open through new means of communication, including the Internet. To understand learning activities in online environments we therefore need to locate those activities within degree program contexts that endow them with value, status, and expectations (Raz & Fadlon, 2006). In the modern vision of professional faculty we project the image of policy-maker of their personality, of their interaction with the other agents – lecturers and students, administration and service staff, and social representatives – to whom they are morally committed (Evans, 1997).

When it truly becomes part of the fabric of a human organization, quality, in the form of experimentation and improvement, turns itself into the real text of the University context. The assessment of quality in universities represents an attempt to discover the opportunities available through teaching, research and management to respond to the prescribed institutional objective of promoting the personal development of students. Its purpose is to identify those elements in an apparently diverse flow of organizations, developments and teaching meanings that are in or out of tune for the individual student.

The present study of online staff development courses in five Spanish universities is the product of a scientific need – the emergence of a wealth of research in program quality assurance (Harman, 1998). Fine strands of quality interweave in a process of staff development based on a style of learning that solves problems, learns from past experience and from the experience of others, and which transfers knowledge quickly and efficiently throughout the organization.

On the whole, each of these evaluation models suffers from conceptual shortcomings. Consequently, the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education is calling for more research and training on principles and methods regarding quality assurance.

Hence, professionalization is an important issue in the field of faculty evaluation and degree program quality assurance. Besides, the understanding of the formal system of a university quality policy is complex and multilayered. Moreover, theoretical underpinnings are needed in order to understand such processes as the planning, enactment and personnel commitment in the degree program review, as well as the analysis of the results and implementation of the pertinent changes (Lennie, 2005). This article presents the experiences of being involved in an online learning format from a faculty perspective.

Purpose of the Study

Designed as a multiple-case study, we try to replicate the online course and thus make use of the research evidence gained from a cross-analysis of all the multiple cases (Yin, 1994). This study assesses changes in the new and old public universities’ landscape, particularly those effected by quality-led accreditation demands, by the rising demand for faculty evaluation and improvement, the convergence with European universities, and by recent developments in Web-based technologies. Furthermore, other researchers have explored the online activities and justified their use at the community college level in the United States (Cox, 2005).

We espouse a theory of teaching as a learning enabler, which goes beyond the transmission of academic content towards a co-operative process in which faculty and students are encouraged to engage actively in the subject matter. Curriculum and teaching capacity (CTC) involves teaching a subject at hand, being acquainted with students and classroom situations, and having personal knowledge, as factors that underpin competent performance (Uhlenbeck, Verloop & Beijaard, 2002). Here, the proposed set of CTC’s does not evolve so much around authoritative training as around speculative questioning and inquiry, with academics becoming reflective practitioners who listen to their students (and colleagues) regarding teaching issues that require reconceptualization. They are broad descriptions of what academics need to know and be able to master: (1) Knowledge of student motivation and ability to promote students’ positive attitudes, (2) Awareness of students’ diversity in all its forms, (3) Capacity to solve students’ problems, (4) Capacity to develop metacognitive skills in the trainee, (5) Capacity to provide effective and free curriculum time, (6) Knowledge of area being supervised (learning tasks, research, assessment, etc.), (7) Teaching and didactic skills for large groups, (8) Grasp of questioning skills, (9) Knowledge of formative and summative evaluation, and (10) Capacity to conduct own self-assessment process.  Thus, teaching is seen as context-related, recognizing different ways of encouraging individual students to learn to use a variety of learning tasks (Badley, 2000).

For the focus of this study, success in faculty online training needs to be specifically evaluated through the learning quality of participants. Therefore, the general research question for the online faculty development study is the following:

• How are different Spanish faculty members responding to the challenges of online CTC learning courses?

Methodology

We have divided the five public universities into two main categories to compare participants’ attitudes and CTC learning. Old universities are considered to be those established between 1505 and 1988 - Seville (1505) and La Laguna (1701) -, and New universities comprised those established between 1989 and 1994 – Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (1989), Jaén (1993), and Burgos (1994) -. This comparative approach has been followed by different researchers in previous studies as a means to report variables according to university type (Tytherleigh, Webba, Cooper & Rickettsa, 2005).

One hundred and sixty-two faculty members (88 men and 74 women) enrolled in the five online CTC courses participate in the study: 40.1% (N = 65) from the University of Jaén, 18.5% (N = 30) from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 17.9% (N = 29), from the University of La Laguna, 13.6% (N = 22) from the University of Seville, and 9.9% (N = 16) from the University of Burgos. The participant age distribution is as follows: 37.7% (N = 61) of the faculty members are 45 years old or above, 29.6% (N = 48) between 30-34, 19.1% (N = 31) between 40-44, and 13.6% (N = 22) between 25-29. Typically, faculty members hold higher education degrees: sixty-three per cent (N = 102) have a doctorate degree, and 37% (N = 60) a Bachelor’s degree. Faculty members are hired at a lower rank: thirty-two per cent (N = 53) are Contracted teachers, 24.1% (N = 39) Lecturers, 21% (N = 34) Assistant teachers, 11.7% (N = 19) Professors, and 10.5 (N = 17) Probationary doctors. Indeed, many academics feel job insecurity because they are appointed on fixed-term contracts.

Briefly put, 71.6 % (N = 116) of respondents have from five years of teaching experience onward, and 28.4% (N = 46) have up to four years of experience. When disciplines are broken down into scientific areas, participants are diverse, with 34% of faculty members (N = 55) teaching in the Social Sciences; 22.2% (N = 36) in Technical Sciences; 19.8% (N = 32) in Experimental Sciences; 15.4% (N = 25) in Humanities, and 8.6% (N = 14) in Healthcare Sciences. Weekly workload adds another layer to the teaching job diversity among participants: 43.2% (N = 70) of faculty members have excessive teaching workload with more than 13 hours per week; 24.7% of the faculty members (N = 40) also reported long working hours (10-12); 19.8% (N = 32) of the participants reported normal working hours (7-9); and others, 12.3% (N = 20), have a somewhat unusual academic workload (4-6 hours per week).

Academics are intrinsically motivated to participate in the online courses by context factors such as insufficient CTC knowledge: 84.6% (N = 134) of the participants have not attended previous teaching courses, and only 15.4% (N = 25) of the respondents have some prior knowledge. The role of academics is nowadays faced with demands for greater accountability, efficiency and quality, particularly due to some of the principles of the 1999 Bologna Declaration: 88.9% (N = 144) of the faculty members do not have previous European convergence knowledge, and only 11.1% (N = 18) have some knowledge. We consider that these faculty members try to be teaching innovators or aim to adopt a teaching quality described in the innovation literature as “aliocentrism”, in other words, a process in which ‘professors-as-teachers come to see themselves primarily as facilitators of learning rather than as disseminators of knowledge’ (Robertson, 1999: 280).

Demographic and professional measures are used as independent variables in analyses. The online courses took place during the year 2005, and lasted 11 weeks each.

Procedures

The critical design issues behind the rationale of all five courses include online CTC planning, organizing, structuring, implementation, tracking, impact reporting to institutions, communicating assessments to participants, and many other principles that take time and require orderliness on the part of the online program advisers (Nijhuis & Collis, 2003). Thus, is the online program used to deliver an educational training that supports teaching efficiency, degree program changes and classroom strategic capabilities for agents to manage and implement CTC changes in universities’ organizational cultures, with classroom-based activities being considered of high value (Homan & Macpherson, 2005).

Enrolled faculty members read weekly assignments, review the weekly course CTC’s including the Microsoft PowerPoint and hyperlinked material, and complete the corresponding quizzes. All correspondence is sent to the advisors or mentors via the course email account. Faculty members are discouraged from sending email to the mentors’ university account. In addition, faculty members are required to take timed online activities that are linked to the weekly CTC’s. Software allows mentors to grade and post the scores instantly upon completion of each CTC test.

Each course consists of ten CTC’s that correspond to the typical 11-week semester. Each CTC is pilot tested by several university teachers in previous online courses to ensure the connectivity of the hyperlinks, appropriateness of the CTC assignments, and accessibility to the Microsoft PowerPoint slides and online tests. The course is password protected, so only registered faculty members have access to the course materials, Microsoft PowerPoint slides and online tests.

A CTC consists of an instructional sequence of activities structured around a problem-solving model that serves to guide participants through the learning experience. The problem-solving model constitutes the CTC learning object and prescribes the instructional sequence through a series of ten phases. Also, the online course is scalable and requires designing activities to accommodate the range in the number of faculty members or university groups (Murphy, 2000).

The CTC learning model is illustrated in Figure 1. Here, learning is viewed in terms of ‘situated action’, where meaning is embedded in context and knowledge is not ‘objective’ but rather inter-subjective. Learning activities emphasize basic adult learning views of: (1) encouraging active participation in reading lessons and answering activities and quizzes, (2) learning for action in inquiry tasks, (3) building CTC’s on faculty’s prior experience by means of reflecting on colleagues’ case studies or vignettes, (4) developing an environment of respectful communication between mentor-participants, (5) employing collaborative asynchronic forum discussions, and (6) reinforcing participants by instant feedback. Supporting, motivating and developing are the aims of this mentoring function (Sosik & Godshalk, 2000; King, 2002).

Figure 1. Learning Development Stages of a Curriculum and Teaching Capacity (CTC)

Throughout the duration of the 11-week course, faculty members sent many emails that were not a part of their assignments. Mentors responded to each email and printed out copies for the accumulation of qualitative data. Text information received from all five courses was combined and is presented cumulatively, such as designed by other researchers, under online learning formats (Perrin & Mayhew, 2000).

Following are some other key features of the multi-medial platform, http://gid.us.es:8083. According to this model, faculty: (1) use a CTC handbook (Villar, 2004), which reviews several sources on college teaching and identifies the critical CTC’s related to class preparation, classroom structure and organization, with a focus on teaching innovation and student learning, (2) Interpret materials – CTC’s – which are segmented into ten weekly lessons and released on a weekly basis with ongoing updates. All 156 pdf and htlm documents, 114 Web sites, and ten Microsoft Power Point presentations are hyperlinked, (3) Discuss two topics in asynchronous forums: ‘European Convergence issues’, and ‘Student mental effort to cope with the new European credit system’. These are organized and released on a fortnight basis, but remain accessible throughout the course. The last forum includes postings positing reflective questions (Socratic questions). Also, we believe that faculty participation is crucial for learning in asynchronous online training courses. Regarding faculty postings to asynchronous discussions in online courses, Blignaut & Trollip (2003: 152) have remarked: ‘Determining the elements of faculty participation and involvement can lead to the development of improved skills, which in turn may lead to improved learner satisfaction, instructor satisfaction, and the lowering of attrition rates’,  (4) Access e-mail from the browser for one-on-one interactions with mentors or other participant instructors, (5) Browse the curriculum materials containing URL links to related articles and institutions, notes and grades from any location, at flexible time schedules, (5) Download Microsoft Power Point presentations, key concept maps and study guides and resources onto their personal computer, (6) Submit online learning activity assignments using Web forms interface, or via e-mail; these assignments are meaningful activities that have real-university relevance and which present complex teaching-learning tasks to be completed over a sustained period of time, (7) Assess activities with the aim of presenting realistic representations of the tasks we want to assess capacity in; allow faculty substantial freedom in selecting activities, as they are features of authentic assessment, according to Uhlenbeck, Verloop & Beijaard (2002), (8) Complete ten online tests using Web forms with answers recorded in the appropriate database on the server. Each CTC test is programmed (random selection) to be unique and to provide instant feedback to the participants with the results. In other words, there is an authentic assessment, which is seamlessly integrated into the learning activity assignments, and which provides a formative assessment of their understanding of basic concepts, aiding them to gain a sense of progress, (9) And finally, assess the quality of materials and of the training process as a formative evaluation for course revision.

Data Analysis

The data providing information on quality online courses come from three primary sources. First of all, we administer a CTC needs scale to all participants. Second, mentors design and analyze CTC online quality scales. Third, mentors qualify a variety of CTC activities underlining the importance of learning, as a kind of digital portfolio. Finally, mentors analyze and disseminate the online CTC test results of participants.

As other researchers have previously emphasized, there is, overall, no more widely used source of data for judging CTC quality in the evaluation of university teaching and communities of practice than faculty opinion, even across faculty groups, disciplines or universities (Pratt, 1997; Supovitz, 2002). Scales that are used as the basis for investigation in this article are briefly described underneath:

1.            CTC needs scale (10 items)-Assess the extent to which faculty members need CTC’s for improving their teaching.

2.            CTC quality scale (10 items)-Measure participants’ ability to understand and the degree to which individuals or groups wish to use the CTC’s.

3.            CTC activities (4 items)-Qualify the level at which an individual faculty member understands knowledge and skills, and values underpinning activities.

4.            CTC learning tests (10 items)-Appraise participants’ knowledge and understanding of CTC’s.

A sample set of scale items for obtaining participant feedback ratings of their perceptions of CTC quality is given in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Sample Rating of CTC Quality.

Using these scales and tests, a variety of analyses were completed using appropriate statistical methods. T-tests were used to compare the means of participants. Chi-square analyses were used to examine differences in the proportion of participants and their levels of needs. Finally, analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to uncover the main and interactive effects of categorical independent variables (demographic and professional measures) on interval dependent variables.

Results

This section is patterned to address the four specific and operational research questions of this article: (1) What are the differences in CTC needs among university participants? (2) How can extended online CTC training positively affect participants? (3) How do faculty participate in various kinds of learning activities and how are these graded? (4) How different are faculty members from different universities in academic attainment?

All five online courses introduced faculty to the best training in CTC learning, by assessing online contributions and organising useful online group activities: ‘Training, therefore, should result in the implementation of a programme that gives lecturers what they need when they need it’ (Gerrard, 2005: 152).

Relationship Between Demographics and CTC Needs

The first questionnaire is an online three-point scale of ten declarative statements used as a teaching diagnostic tool. The scale is 1-3, with values of “1 = Not So Necessary,” “2 = Moderately Necessary,” and “3 = Very Necessary”. On average, as Figure 3 indicates, participants consider professional training in CTC 5 (Capacity to provide effective and free curriculum time) and CTC 7 (Teaching and didactic skills for large groups) as moderately necessary.

Note: Participants from the University of Burgos did not respond to the scale.

Figure 3. University Participants’ CTC Needs

Chi-square difference tests are used to compare whether two independent variables have significantly different distributions across participants’ CTC needs. Capacity to provide effective and free curriculum time was very necessary for participants from the University of Jaén (χ ² = (9, N = 146) = 17,071, p < .048), faculty members among 30-34 years of age (χ ² = (9, N = 146) = 17,618, p < .040), Social Sciences academics (χ ² = (12, N = 146) = 28,719, p < .004), and participants who did not have previous CTC knowledge (χ ² = (3, N = 146) = 9,931, p < .019). Also, faculty members among the 45 and over age-range perceived much need in two CTC’s: Awareness of students’ diversity in all its forms (χ ² = (9, N = 146) = 17,422, p < .042), and Capacity to solve students’ problems (χ ² = (6, N = 146) = 23,379, p < .001). Finally, Social Sciences academics perceived much need in Knowledge of area being supervised (learning tasks, research, assessment, etc.) (χ ² = (12, N = 146) = 21,385, p < .045).

T-test assessed that men and women were statistically different from each other in the following CTC’s: Knowledge of student motivation and ability to promote students’ positive attitudes (t (144) = 8,707, p < .004), Capacity to provide effective and free curriculum time (t (144) = 4,180, p < .043), Knowledge of formative and summative evaluation (t (144) = 6,127, p < .014), and Capacity to conduct own self-assessment process (t (144) = 5,270, p < .023). Besides, participants with some previous CTC knowledge and those with no knowledge were statistically different from each other in the Capacity to provide effective and free curriculum time (t (144) = 5,204, p < .024).

We conducted an analysis of variance (ANOVA) to test for significant differences between means of different groups in some of the demographic variables. Participants’ life cycle was significantly different regarding needs corresponding to eight out of ten CTC’s: Knowledge of student motivation and ability to promote students’ positive attitudes (F (3, 142) = 2.834, p <.040), Awareness of students’ diversity in all its forms (F (3, 142) = 4.011, p <.009), Capacity to solve students’ problems (F (3, 142) = 2.774, p <.044), Capacity to develop metacognitive skills in the trainee (F (3, 142) = 3.206, p <.025), Capacity to provide effective and free curriculum time (F (3, 142) = 2.752, p <.045), Knowledge of area being supervised (learning tasks, research, assessment, etc.) (F (3, 142) = 3.542, p <.016), Knowledge of formative and summative evaluation (F (3, 142) = 3.728, p <.013), and Capacity to conduct own self-assessment process (F (3, 142) = 3,081, p <.029). There was also a main effect depending on participants’ scientific areas in the Capacity to provide effective and free curriculum time (F (4, 141) = 2.474, p <.047), and in Teaching and didactic skills for large groups (F (4, 141) = 2.694, p <.033). Finally, participants’ workload proved to have a main effect with regard to Knowledge of formative and summative evaluation (F (3, 142) = 3.006, p <.032).

Impact of CTC Training in Participants’ Attitudes

All CTC’s were evaluated with the same instrument (Cronbach’s  value =.969). An ANOVA and the post hoc Tuckey-HSD test were applied to determine differences between groups in CTC quality scale items (see Table 1). Participants from all universities had significantly different opinions with respect to CTC readings (F _{(4, 161)} = 3.13, p < .033). Also, participants’ scientific areas led to significantly different attitudes concerning CTC readings (F _{(4, 161)} = 3.13, p < .033). A Tuckey-HSD test revealed that there was a reliable mean difference between the Experimental Sciences and Humanities (ps <.041). Finally, with regard to Old and New university participants’ opinions on CTC time-consumption, the means show a significant difference (t (160) = 5,700, p < .018). 

Table 1. Means and Standard Deviations for Quality Scale Items

Participation in Various Types of Learning Activities

Authentic assessment calls for participants to demonstrate their capabilities through engaging in deliberation and reasoning about activities (Uhlenbeck, Verloop & Beijaard, 2002). Underlying proficiency is inferred from the activity. The activities/tasks assessment, the scoring criteria and the rubrics used by the mentors reflected the complexity of the activities/tasks. The results of participants’ activities are illustrated in Figure 4. Faculty from two new universities (Jaén and Las Palmas) show a high fulfilment rate of activities. On the contrary, an even-levelled line can be seen reflecting the limited number of activities completed by participants of an old university (Seville). Also Fig. 4 shows a tendency of moderately restricted response in the number of activities from CTC 1 to CTC 10.

Figure 4. Frequency of Participation in CTC Activities

To determine whether there was a difference in university participants’ activity qualifications, an ANOVA was performed among University groups on the average activity qualifications of each CTC. (See Table 2). Findings reveal differences in Knowledge of student motivation and ability to promote students’ positive attitudes (F _(4,161) = 8.60, p < .000), Awareness of students’ diversity in all its forms (F _(4,161) = 16.15, p < .000), Capacity to solve students’ problems (F _(4,161) = 17.48, p < .000), Capacity to develop metacognitive skills in the trainee (F _(4,161) = 10.01, p < .000), Knowledge of area being supervised (learning tasks, research, assessment, etc.) (F _(4,161) = 9.81, p < .000), Teaching and didactic skills for large groups (F _(4,161) = 10.74, p < .000), Grasp of questioning skills (F _(4,161) = 12.90, p < .000), Knowledge of formative and summative evaluation (F _(4,161) = 3.99, p < .004), and Capacity to conduct own self-assessment process (F _(4,161) = 3.02, p < .020). A Tuckey-HSD test also revealed that all five university means reliably differ from each other (ps <.05).

Besides, for Knowledge of student motivation and ability to promote students’ positive attitudes there was a difference between participants’ age (F _(3,161) = 3.56, p < .016), participants’ genre (t (160) = -2.06, p <.041), and faculty’s teaching experience (t (160) = -2.86, p <.005).

Table 2. Means and Standard Deviations for CTC Activity Scores

Academics are curriculum makers: they filter their personal experiences through their personal practical knowledge. When participants respond to activities they provide information on their curriculum making and reveal their personal practical knowledge in action (Van Driel, Verloop, VanWerven & Dekkers, 1997). Faculty’s professional knowledge landscapes for all participants in this study are summarized in 8,245 completed activities or fragmented personal stories. A learning activity is a kind of narrative, a mode of academic thought that is in constant states of formulation and reformulation. Seven hundred and eighty-four stories were narrated while mastering the capacity to provide effective and free curriculum time. For example, a Statistics and Operations Research participant from the University of La Laguna engaged in a form of reflective corroboration, reported a time-free curriculum activity linked to his discipline:

It is my intention to take my subject matter – Sampling – and give it a functional purpose. A visit to a zoological park, botanical garden, or thematic park where animals and plants are protected is a multi-phase endeavour. During the visit, students will gather data on animals and their number, behaviour, etc. All plans incorporate numbers. This note-taking can be the very foundation for a later brainstorming with the purpose of designing a statistical piece of research for inquiring about the characteristics of animal or plant populations that might have aroused the interest of students during the first visit to the park. It would be necessary to select a sample design on this population, in order to design a sample and a questionnaire for, in later visits to the park, gathering more precise data. This would enable the student to develop a deep statistical study, which would be of very good practice for the Sampling discipline. This free activity removes the student from the confines of learning within the enclosed traditional university milieu to the outside environment.

Effects of Demographics on Faculty Attainment

Faculty judge their own learning performance at the end of each of the ten CTC lessons. An online test consists of ten close format items, (Cronbach’s  value =.988). Online tests require academics to select the best answer. Answers are scored right or wrong. Reported scores in all CTC tests are averaged to generate a composite score. This dependent variable is used to identify course attainment. (See Table 3). No significant differences were found between participants when demographic and professional variables were compared. Participants from old and new universities exhibited differences in Knowledge of student motivation and ability to promote students’ positive attitudes (t (160) = 5,119, p < .025), and Knowledge of formative and summative evaluation (t (160) = 4,031, p < .046).

Table 3. Means and Standard Deviations for CTC’s Attainment Tests

Discussion

These online courses considered the kinds of teaching knowledge and learning that are emerging from innovatory sites at which higher education is delivered. With regard to a degree program, the faculty’s Capacity to provide effective and free curriculum time ought to focus on ‘action learning’ involving the professional working world. This needed CTC unfolds a degree program to commit academics to the creation of new learning opportunities and the expansion of those opportunities (Davies, 1998).

This study reveals that online system reliability (accessibility 24 hours) is an important factor in the flexibility and appropriation of CTC’s. Also, it shows that faculty are concerned with learning activities: text readings seem to be excessive, taking into account that many of them are delivered to faculty in a second-language (English). Online reading and learning has not yet emerged among some participants, partly due to the unsettled nature of pedagogy towards the efforts of distance learning (Natriello, 2005). The faculty with whom we have correspondence felt that the online course gave them a lot of work, although others felt that faculty work became more meaningful and self-initiated (‘empowered’) (Wong & Tierney, 2001). Faculty highly valued their participation in relevant and useful learning tasks and collaboration with mentors (tips, email and chat room systems). In addition they also claimed merit (diplomas) or external motivations (overtime), for attending this intensified online course. Some participants manifested that their academic workload and the online course expectations had a strong emotional impact on their teaching. In this sense, future research should measure interactions between two sets of variables: occupational expectations of contracted university staff and emotional anxiety brought about by intensified online courses (Ogbonna & Harris, 2004).

When discovery learning activities are carefully planned and structured, faculty are led to make correct interpretations of information and are provided prompt feedback by the advisers. The study shows a high number of quality activities (8,245) carried out by participants (N = 162) indicating a more than an ‘‘adequate’’ faculty involvement, which is one of the components of the basic online capacity of a college or university (Cox, 2005). Fifty one faculty participants from the old universities – Seville and La Laguna – engaged in 2,172 activities, while one hundred and eleven faculty respondents of the new universities - Jaén, Las Palmas and Burgos – were involved in 3,373 activities. We combined eleven extended and more time-consuming tasks, practices and strategies that assessed depth of understanding, with shorter CTC activities, in order to reach acceptable levels of CTC content validity (Uhlenbeck, Verloop & Beijaard, 2002). Reliability in judging activities to provide consistent estimates of the same phenomenon was guaranteed with the use of a pair of trained assessors with extensive knowledge of the CTC online course. Improving and renewal of activities are an approach to quality assurance management (Harman, 1998).

This multiple-case study evidences that learning is transformational – that is, the online CTC organization operates proactively in the classroom-learning environment involving a process of deconstruction and reconstruction. Accessibility to grades was one of the key characteristics: participants frequently checked the website for updates on grades and questioned missing grades: ‘I like to check my progress to know where I stand and where I need to improve’, was a common participant’s remark. Voluntary faculty participation in online CTC courses is ranked as higher performance in relation to the stated criteria of constructing teaching excellence identities (Raz & Fadlon, 2006).

Academics have acquired and transferred new CTC knowledge to their classroom and have changed their behaviour to reflect these changes. Moreover, this study assumes the ‘collaborative model’ approach because all university groups benefited from the same online training program (Patterson, 1999). This new course environment is shifting university organizational culture, illustrating a movement towards social responsibility and academic renewal (Middlehurst, 2004).

Conclusion

Broad demographic and academic characteristics provide the basis for profiling the 'typical' online faculty participant in Spanish higher education. Speaking as a whole, faculty need training in CTC’s. The hypotheses of the differences in CTC needs based on demographic and academic variables, gain support from empirical information.

The purposes of the CTC online faculty development program are explicitly stated, the methodology incorporates elements of self-study and feedback, and places emphasis on teaching improvement, professional renewal and the application of good teaching practice standards.

The authors note some limitations in the study. Faculty and universities comprising our sample are voluntary. Therefore, generalizations of findings to other Spanish universities should be approached with caution. Nevertheless, suggestions for future research are the following: (1) To enlarge the multi-institutional faculty sample to support sophisticated statistical analyses, (2) To keep a longitudinal research with the participants, (3) To analyse text activities more thoroughly in the qualitatively scientific and technological aspect.

This study has several strengths, however. Mutual interaction between autonomous, persistent and independent participants and mentors, CTC’s, technology and related platform resources is the key to methods of accepting the Internet course. Faculty participants talk about what they are learning, write about it, relate it to previous teaching experiences and apply it to their degree programs. Training faculty in classroom CTC’s, in handling the collaborative forum discussions with colleagues, and raising awareness of the diversity of learning approaches, creates a positive virtual environment and helps find the deep meaning behind learning to teach.

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