Supporting faculty adoption of technology and online learning: Pandemic inspired possibilities

For decades there have been multiple conversations about the need for change in higher education, yet achievement of systemic and individual change continues to transpire slowly. Learning technologies have continued to grow, and the information explosion has meant that the need to revise in-person, place-based teaching and learning has increased proportionally. These learning environments, once limited by space, time, and simple technologies, are no longer constrained in the same way. The expansion of information and communication technologies provides teaching and learning opportunities previously unavailable. The current pandemic has moved what many of us have been experimenting with for decades into the limelight.

Faculty members control the learning environments and choose their desired areas of professional development. The COVID-19 pandemic required a pivot to online course delivery and provided faculty an opportunity to build and grow their practice to meet the needs of future education delivery. This session reports preliminary results of a mixed method study that uses appreciative inquiry and shared experiences for faculty engagement about online delivery and changes in their teaching practice. Interactive in design, this will be of interest to educational developers and higher education leaders interested in a potential process of individual faculty development in reference to the larger requirements of organization change in education institutions.