Activities and methods of faculty development: Experiences of the world's top universities

Introduction: The goal of professional development centers is to enhance the skills and knowledge of faculty members. Therefore, the professional development center offers a range of services. Purpose of this article was to study activities of the professional development center in the top world's universities. Methods: The Brady model used in   this comparative study. Fifteen world top universities, based on the Shanghai ranking, was selected by targeted sampling method on five continents of the world, and studied the activities and services in professional development centers. In this method, the needed information for the research is collected by using existing documents and then, they were categorized into separate categories and analyzed and compared. Results: In addition to workshops and seminars, the most important activities and services of professional development centers in selected universities are studying and researching in  teaching and learning, teaching grant, teaching awards , evaluation of teaching, materials and educational environment Conclusions: Although the services provided by the centers of professional development are different, depending on the conditions and facilities of the universities , But by studying the centers of the top universities, it is possible to achieve common points and use their successful experience.