Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Educational Leadership / Sarah Jane Fishback / This exploratory study investigated the level of satisfaction that faculty members have with their new faculty orientation experiences during their first year of employment at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, in Ft. Leavenworth, KS. The study solicited data from new faculty at this graduate-level military service college to help determine whether new faculty members were satisfied with their new faculty orientation experience; whether there were differences in the dependent variable, satisfaction, for any of the independent variables of campus location, teaching department, employment category, academic rank and educational level; and how the CGSC new faculty orientation program might be improved. Surveys were distributed to 297 new faculty members from January 2006 to December 2007. The survey instrument included Likert-scale questions to support quantitative statistical analysis. The study used non-parametric analysis methods to examine the dependent variable, satisfaction, with respect to independent variables. These results indicated that faculty members were satisfied with their new faculty orientation experiences and that there were no significant differences in satisfaction for campus location, teaching department, employment category, academic rank or educational level. Open-ended questions provided respondents an opportunity to add additional information; these comments were categorized by topic and then examined for themes or trends. Despite their overall satisfaction with the orientation program and processes, 84.80% of respondents indicated that inadequate institutional support was the greatest detractor to their success. They cited delays in meeting fundamental new employee needs such as providing a suitable work location, computer access, and information about institutional policies and procedures. Additionally, 35.67% of respondents indicated that either their sponsor was not helpful or none was assigned. Results of this study provided insight regarding unmet or inadequately fulfilled information and support needs of new faculty members at CGSC, informed further research in the area of faculty orientation, and highlighted areas for improvement of practice at CGSC and comparable institutions.

The steady and consistent growth of online learning and the rapid development of Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis and blogs have led to innovative methods of training and instruction. As a result, continuing research is needed to develop and validate instructional design theories and models that support teaching and learning in today's technology-rich learning environment. The goal of this research was to refine the Creating Online Learning Communities for Adults (COLCA) instructional design (ID) theory by using the theory to design an online faculty development course. A formative research design guided the investigation. Formative research seeks to identify improvements for an instructional design theory based on a designed instance of the theory, in this case an online faculty development course in Web 2.0 tools and techniques. This research is a designed case applying the COLCA instructional design theory to an online faculty development course. Data sources included course documents and observations, email messages, and participant interviews. These data were used to determine which methods prescribed by the COLCA ID theory work well, what methods could be improved, and in which specific situations each method works best. As an original contribution to the discipline of information technology as applied to teaching and learning, this study sought to improve upon an instructional design theory currently in its early stages of development and informs the design of online learning communities for adults. This research is important to continued growth and advancement of contemporary instructional design theories that provide support for emerging technologies, adult learners, and online learning methods that facilitate the development of online learning communities and communities of practice.

This study examined the effect of active learning seminars and a mentoring program on the use of active learning teaching techniques by college faculty. A quasi-experimental study was conducted using convenience samples of faculty from two private Christian supported institutions. Data for the study were collected from surveys and faculty course evaluations. The study lasted one semester. Faculty volunteers from one institution served as the experimental group and faculty volunteers from the second institution were the comparison group. The experimental group attended approximately eight hours of active learning seminars and also participated in a one-semester mentoring program designed to assist faculty in application of active learning techniques. Several individuals conducted the active learning seminars. Dr. Charles Bonwell, a noted authority on active learning, conducted the first three-hour seminar. Seven faculty who had successfully used active learning in their classrooms were selected to conduct the remaining seminars. The faculty-mentoring program was supervised by the researcher and conducted by department chairs. Data were collected from three surveys and faculty course evaluations. The three surveys were the Faculty Active Learning Survey created by the researcher, the Teaching Goals Inventory created by Angelo and Cross, and the college edition of Learner-Centered Practices by Barbara McCombs. The use of active learning techniques by the experimental group increased significantly more than the use by those in the convenience sample. No statistical difference was found in the change of professors' teaching beliefs or the course evaluation results.

Mental health issues serve as a leading barrier to academic success for college students. As mental health issues among college students continue to escalate, there is an increased likelihood in the manifestation of demonstrable distress and disruption among college students within the classroom. However, there is dearth of research surrounding faculty's confidence and competence related to college students' mental health experiences, namely experiences with students in distress or those whom are disruptive. This qualitative research study will focus on examining faculty's confidence and competence in responding to distressed and disruptive college students through an interpretevist lens. Using Noddings's (1999) Ethic of Care theory and Johnson's and Bany's (1970) Classroom Management theory, this research study seeks to address and assess faculty's confidence and competence within these theoretical frameworks. The ability to better understand undergraduate faculty experiences with disruptive and distressed college students has the potential to inform institutional training opportunities for faculty, as well as provide insight into how student affairs administrators can build collaborative bridges in supporting students through key partnerships with faculty. Furthermore, improving upon faculty competence and confidence through comprehensive training programs can contribute to early intervention strategies with potential to positively impact student retention and completion rates.

All too often faculty are asked to implement technology into their teaching without the knowledge necessary to use the technology effectively. Due to the evolution of technology in everyday settings, students have come to expect to be engaged through technological means. This often creates undue stress on faculty members. The purpose of this study is to investigate technology integration by exploring the relationships between a faculty member’s technology preferences and educational beliefs. Through a mixed method, this study attempts to address the question of why faculty use the types of technology they do. More importantly, this study investigates if a faculty member’s educational beliefs have any influence on the technology they choose to use. Thirty-two medical, clinical, and healthcare faculty members participated in the study. They responded to a Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI) survey and a Technology Preferences survey with open-ended questions. Data analysis revealed multiple statistically significant findings between different beliefs and different types of technology. The results indicated that personal epistemic beliefs influence the types of technology faculty use. The technology choices faculty make are largely related to tools they are comfortable with and ones they believe effectively fit their teaching materials. The study also found statistically significant differences between age, gender, and reported technology use. It is suggested faculty development programs should consider faculty members’ educational beliefs and personal preferences when supporting faculty with their uses of technologies.

<p>In Colombia, as in the US, higher education institutions are charged with the twofold responsibility of training well-rounded professionals and pushing the boundaries of knowledge. Faculty enact this dual responsibility through their teaching and research duties, among other job-related functions. Also like in the US, research has increasingly become the foremost function of faculty at most prominent Colombian universities. As the emphasis on research increased, teaching became regarded as a simpler activity that requires less effort and resources. Moreover, while discussions about the importance of quality teaching and the need to better train faculty to enact their teaching function are common, promotion and rewards systems at Colombian universities fail to reflect a real commitment to quality teaching. Research has taken precedence over teaching, and often is perceived as the only scholarly function of faculty. While this continued perception cannot be attributed to a single reason, I hypothesize that how faculty conceive of their teaching role impacts our ability to make a compelling case for the scholarly nature of teaching.</p> <p> </p> <p>Testing this hypothesis requires a systematic approach to exploring faculty’s conceptions of teaching within a context. To that aim, I pose this research question: What are conceptions of teaching held by Colombian engineering faculty interested in improving their teaching? I advance a framework for exploring conceptions of teaching drawing from Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory and previous scholarly works on faculty’s conceptions and beliefs about teaching. Drawing upon this framework, I explore the beliefs, practices, and contextual factors of Colombian engineering faculty at three institutions. While these faculty members differ in terms of their disciplinary backgrounds, teaching experience, and research activity—both disciplinary and educational, they all share an interest in improving their teaching practice. This exploration first takes an analytic approach to identify the pieces that constitute participants’ conceptions of teaching, and then knits those pieces together to look at participants as wholes.</p> <p><br></p><p>The literature on conceptions of teaching has usually classified them between traditional teacher-centered to more sophisticated student-centered views. However, I believe that there is a continuum worth exploring defined by these extreme views. In fact, I argue that there are multiple continua—or dimensions—that merit exploration. Such dimensions include perceptions about the role of teachers, the role of students, the nature of knowledge, the purpose and means of assessment, and the outcomes of education—previously explored in the relevant literature—and views of the interaction between college teaching and research—a dimension distinctive of the present study. My findings suggest that while the role of the teacher and of students, and the nature of knowledge can be described by the teacher- to student-center and knowledge-transmission to knowledge-construction continua, the latter three dimensions are better described along different scales. Moreover, while there are certain correlations between these dimensions (e.g., perceptions of the role of the teacher as a guide correlate with perceptions of a more active role of the students) none of them alone can accurately describe the nuances of an individual’s conception of teaching. </p> <p> </p> <p>Conceptions of teaching uncovered and characterized in this multidimensional way can inform professional development programs that go beyond the diffusion of pedagogical innovations to a perspective transformation among participants. Specifically, my findings corroborate that changes in faculty views of assessment toward more formative stances foster positive transformations in faculty’s overall conception of their teaching role and duties. My findings also suggest that faculty members intrinsically interested in improving their teaching constitute the seed to start educational reform. Community-building efforts to bring together these faculty should, in the long term, help transform the views of academic administrators, thus fostering lasting reform in the perception and recognition of teaching as a scholarly function of faculty.</p>

Thesis advisor: Karen D. Arnold / Faculty members in higher education typically have been trained in their subject matter but not in pedagogy (Austin, 1992; Healey, 2000). With increased concerns over the rising cost of college, traditional institutions of higher education face scrutiny and external challenges to their stability. Higher education groups and the public at large have called into question the teaching skills and preparedness of faculty members (Altbach, 2011), often criticizing their lack of interest in teaching and preference for research (Advisory Committee to the National Science Foundation, 1996). As a result, a growing number of institutions have developed means for supporting and enhancing teaching on campus. Despite studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of such programs (Coffey & Gibbs; 2001; 2004; Van Note Chism & Szabo, 1998), faculty participation in professional development for teaching remains low (MacKinnon, 2003; Sorcinelli, 2006). This mixed-methods study uses survey and interview data from full-time faculty (n = 432) at two research-intensive universities in the Northeastern United States to determine their attitudes and preferences regarding professional development for teaching in order to increase participation rates. Statistical tests showed significant differences by demographic groups; female and non-tenure track faculty are more likely to attend professional development, more likely to view it positively, and more likely to feel it is undervalued on campus. No significant differences were found by discipline or institution. Semi-structured, follow-up interviews were conducted with 11 faculty members. The findings showed that faculty perceive that their institutions do not value teaching. With limited time, faculty feel compelled to prioritize research over teaching, despite wanting to devote more attention to teaching. Other issues they discussed were: work-life balance, lack of preparation for teaching in graduate school, preferred topics and formats for programs, messages received from the administration, and the desire to collaborate with other faculty. The findings are analyzed using Bronfenbrenner's (1979; 1993; 1995) ecological systems theory to develop a full picture of faculty members' ecologies. The study concludes with recommendations for program facilitators, administrations, and future research. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

This qualitative study examines expert instructors’ lived experienced with online pedagogy in order to (1) understand how teaching in a virtual environment influences pedagogical style, academic identity and student-instructor interactions and (2) to explore how the virtual teaching experience evolves as faculty continue to teach online. None of the existing empirical research has focused on accomplished instructors’ online teaching experiences and, as a result, there is very little information concerning how to sustain faculty approval, retain skilled instructors, provide adequate online teaching support and maintain a successful online learning enterprise over time (Coppola, et al., 2002; Bolliger & Wasilik, 2009; Betts, 2014). Using a constructivist design, this study employed interviews and content analysis techniques to explore the following research questions: 1) What challenges do experienced online faculty face when they teach in the virtual learning environment? 2) What new challenges have emerged as a result of their continued online teaching experience? 3) How do experienced instructors approach and address these challenges? Thirty-one self-identified experienced online instructors from across the nation and a variety of institutions participated. Findings show that continued online teaching experience has a profound impact on the way instructors perceive their pedagogical practice, their place in the academy and their role in students’ online learning experiences. The online environment presents instructors with a multitude of challenges. These challenges are complex and involve pedagogical issues as well as philosophical dilemmas that force instructors to reconsider their assumptions about teaching, learning and authority in the classroom. Wrestling with these issues puts instructors in a vulnerable position as they search for pragmatic solutions and simultaneously renegotiate their long-held academic assumptions and beliefs. The practical and philosophical challenges instructors experience in regards to their developing digital pedagogical practice, their changing relationship with students, and their evolving online academic identity are discussed as well as findings related to vulnerability in the online environment. Implications for online faculty development, limitations and areas for improvement are also considered.

Due to increasing societal demands, accountability and economic constraints, there has been a paradigm shift in the healthcare culture with a move to formally train medical educators. This has resulted in the professionalisation of medical education, with various development initiatives including postgraduate qualifications. The demand for these qualifications in medical education can be judged by the increase in providers, from 2 to 31 in the UK and from 7 to 124 worldwide over the last two decades. However, detailed information about the influence and effectiveness of such courses remains sparse. This study investigated the impact of postgraduate qualifications in medical education on graduates’ educational identities, practices and career progression. The study design is mixed methods using the explanatory model. The first study comprised of an online survey of graduates from the Centre for Medical Education, Dundee between 2008 and 2012. The data collected were sequentially explored in more depth through semi-structured interviews in the second study. To increase the range and scope of enquiry a third study was carried out, which involved a 10 month follow-up of a new cohort of face-to-face students (2013/14) through the course and to the workplace. The quantitative data were analysed using non-parametric statistics on SPSS 21, and constructivist grounded theory analysis was used for the qualitative data in ATLAS.ti 7. I found that a qualification in medical education enhances theoretical foundations in educational practices, with increased self-efficacy and engagement in scholarly activities. The qualification encourages transformational changes and epistemological development as a teacher, researcher, leader and learner. Many participants attributed their career progression to the qualification. The graduates were able to lead various educational changes in the workplace and they described substantial performance attainments. I also found their work environment and personal factors influenced the impact of these qualifications. A conceptual framework based on an increased understanding of the identity development of healthcare educators was also developed. This is the first study on the long-term effects of a degree-awarding course in medical education on healthcare professionals worldwide. The findings have implications for the educators, course directors, healthcare organisations and professionalisation of the speciality.

This multi-article dissertation explores the experience of becoming a professor who effectively facilitates students' identity formation. While the growing body of literature on student transformation suggests that faculty must transform themselves to authentically invite change in others, little research has been done on helping professors become mentors who facilitate students' movement toward their potential for meaningful contribution. To address this gap, this dissertation suggests a framework to facilitate transformative faculty development based on a review of the literature on learning as a process of becoming (Article #1). The major components of this framework are (a) facilitating meaningful engagement in communities of practice, (b) inviting community members to take on new responsibilities, and (c) construing learning as a process of identity development. I also propose several interventions in each of these areas that may increase the likelihood that professors will engage in transformational learning practices. This dissertation also explores the identity development of faculty who invite transformation in their students through narrative case studies of professors' transformative learning experiences (Article #2). Through a series of semi-structured interviews with highly rated faculty at various career stages—one from the humanities, one from the social sciences, and one from the natural sciences—we examined six turning points our participants' identified as pivotal in becoming the kind of mentor who helps create transformative experiences for others. The findings of this study suggest that transformative faculty formation is a process of moral becoming that occurs as professors take purposive stands in their communities of practice. Cross-case themes also suggest that transformative learning is most effectively invited through relational activities that are meaningful, authentic, and altruistic.