This is how administrators can support faculty to develop their online teaching

While online courses were not new to the pandemic, they proliferated dramatically out of necessity. There was little time for reflection or preparation. Even as pandemic circumstances wore on after the spring of 2020, the pace of moving from one semester to the next probably meant that faculty didn’t have the time, space or energy to take stock and make substantial revisions to how they were structuring online learning.

As we shift from crisis to a more everyday mode in higher education, however, many are suggesting that we take stock and think about what we want to keep, what we want to change, and what we want to discard.

This is especially true for online learning. A mode that may have been completely unfamiliar to some faculty has become part of their repertoire. Faculty already adept and comfortable with online instruction may have discovered new tools and employed new strategies to shift from asynchronous to synchronous teaching, for example.

Both groups are poised to take their online instruction to the next level. So how might deans, department heads and others support faculty as they continue to refine their online teaching?

The first step is to recognise the need and wish for such engagement. Though that might seem obvious at first, the urge to simply rush out of the pandemic and back to the way things were risks trampling or obscuring the idea that continuing professional development may be desired and desirable. We should not assume that 16 months of crisis-mode teaching means that everyone is comfortable and satisfied with their online teaching. Even seasoned online instructors may have learned things during the pandemic that would let them refine their work going forward. Administrators should acknowledge this and make opportunities for development available and accessible.

I would argue that this should start with communities of practice. Before we rush headlong into new courses and seminars, faculty should have the opportunity for reflective conversations about the experience of online teaching. Note that I said “conversations”: please, no more surveys! Faculty (and students, for that matter) have been surveyed to death about their pandemic needs. Instead, what we need is a pause and a space for reflective conversations about online teaching.

We need to bring faculty together in small groups to exchange ideas about the answers to questions such as: what worked? What didn’t? What surprising things did we discover? What would we absolutely include in every online course going forward? Would we have more assignments or fewer assignments? What do we need to learn before we teach online again?

When we are ready to move towards resources and professional development, we will need to acknowledge that faculty are arrayed across a spectrum of experience and need. This professional development should take a variety of forms. Some may be curious about building an online course from the ground up, as opposed to adapting a face-to-face one for virtual delivery. Others may need smaller modules designed to address certain modalities or skills such as how to promote more discussion in online courses or how to build community in online courses.

All of these efforts will ultimately be short-lived or have limited impact, however, unless administrators truly demonstrate that they value online instruction and the work that goes into making it possible. Administrators can commit to this in various ways. Giving resources is one, as is offering incentives. Creating online courses, developing and refining the components of online courses, and sustaining a vibrant culture of online teaching all require an investment. These things cannot simply be added on to faculty’s workloads and objectives. Faculty will need robust IT support. They will need time and course releases and stipends to devote themselves to this work.

But the most powerful way institutions can show that this work is important is to acknowledge the fundamental place of online instruction and learning in tenure, renewal and promotion processes. As I have argued elsewhere, we measure what we value. Even institutions where teaching is acknowledged as a vital part of these decisions may need to revise their policies to incorporate the ever-expanding role that online teaching plays in higher education.

If we fail to recognise that online teaching is valid and rigorous and requires effort and creativity on the part of faculty, then we will have failed the larger enterprise. Our commitment to this work cannot be something that we simply tout on our websites. It also needs to be an investment in the individuals who make it meaningful.

Elizabeth Lehfeldt is a dean and a professor of history at Cleveland State University.