Online Faculty Development for Online Teaching and Learning- An Experience at the University of the Philippines
Nemah Hermosa, Patricia Arinto, Primo Garcia, Maria Lurenda Suplido
2nd National Conference on eLearning, August 2003, Manila
*Abstract only
Developing and delivering courses for the online environment is a new challenge for many University of the Philippines (UP) faculty members. They are aware that teaching strategies used in face-to-face classes need to be adapted, enhanced, and even reformulated if a course is to be taught online. UP faculty who are developing distance education (DE) courses discover that they require new skills in course authorship. Those who are delivering online courses find themselves inadequate in fulfilling their various roles as facilitators of an online class.
The Online Teaching and Learning (OTL) course was created mainly for UP Open University core faculty as part of faculty development efforts. The course, however, was also offered to faculty members in other constituent units (CUs) of the UP System for two reasons. First, because faculty members of other CUs are heavily involved in developing and delivering DE courses at the UPOU (in various capacities as course authors, readers, faculty-in-charge, tutors), and therefore must undergo training programs in the various aspects of DE also. At the same time, interest in online education is steadily increasing in other CUs since the Internet can be used to enhance face-to-face classroom instruction.
The OTL course was designed for online delivery in order to give participants the experience of being an online student. Also, online delivery ensures efficiency in training a large pool of geographically dispersed faculty.
This paper outlines the process of developing an online course for faculty development, as well as the design considerations in catering for such a specialized audience. Further, the paper presents successes and challenges in the initial offering of the course, and presents recommendations for future offerings of courses related to online teaching and learning.
