E-teachers collaborating: Process based professional development for e-teaching

This paper is the final report on this research project as required by the ASCILITE research grant conditions and outlines the research project background, rationale and methodology, and discusses results and conclusions. The project initiated the process of collegial development of a theoretically informed framework which enabled lecturers to retrospectively analyse what they did to create an effective online teacher presence and thereby facilitate a more productive online learning environment for their students. The project involved a pilot group of tertiary e-teachers interacting with an established theoretical framework seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education (Chickering and Gamson, 1987). They developed, by a consensus process, using a mixture of face-to-face interaction and an online wiki, an extended version of this framework to analyse online interactions for evidence of their teacher presence. Working as a collegial group, lecturers then formulated a process which facilitated peer analysis and review of this data to identify both strengths and areas for further professional learning. Lecturers were invited to self-review an online course which contained examples of online interaction – these were discussed in triads with two other colleagues acting as peer reviewer and interviewer. Several themes emerged from the project conclusions – the framework developed had much in common with other existing evaluative frameworks, staff involved generally reported the process as a positive one, with greater commitment and ownership because of the collegial development, and one of the difficulties participants encountered was the time commitment required.