Online teaching requires faculty development and support to effectively meet the needs of students. Universities should widely recognize that having self-assured and competent online adjunct instructors greatly influences professional sustainability, learning outcomes, and student achievement. The objective of this descriptive study was to gain insights and perspectives on confidence and instructional effectiveness of online adjunct faculty as compared to those who taught on campus or in a blended format, after they participated in an online faculty orientation course. Survey data was collected, and correlational analysis was used to identify relationships between adjunct faculty’s perceived confidence and their instructional preparedness in their respective teaching modalities. Results indicate faculty may increase their confidence and instructional effectiveness after participating in an online training course.
Tag: faculty training
Reading Effectively Across the Disciplines (READ): A Strategy to Improve Student Success
This paper describes the structure and activities of READ (Reading Effectively Across the Disciplines), a pilot initiative to improve students’ critical reading skills, disciplinary literacy and academic success. READ employs a multimodal design that consists of faculty training in disciplinary literacy instruction and curricular enhancement, development and implementation of active reading assignments and assessments, peer-led team learning, and the dissemination of discipline-specific teaching and learning resources on an Open Lab site to provide an interactive teaching and learning environment for students and faculty. Empirical evidence of the initial effectiveness of the pilot in three gateway courses in Biology, Electromechanical Engineering Technology, and Marketing showed improvement in student pass rates after implementation of reading strategies and instructional approaches that guide students through the reading process.