Understanding Lived Experiences of Faculty in an Increasingly Digitized World

Understanding Lived Experiences of Faculty in an Increasingly Digitized World

Tiffany Wong, Selen Turkay and Drew Lichtenstein

Abstract

Although universities and their faculty design courses for periodic learning, the “new learning society,” an increasingly diverse, mobile population is inexorably shifting to a model of continuous, self-directed, lifelong learning. Hence, the effective instructional practices that emerge through the role of the MOOC instructor have lasting value, whether the trend of MOOCs endures, or not. Understanding faculty experiences can inform online teaching as well as facilitate the success of MOOCs and other online offerings within and beyond the university. It can also help both faculty and learners thrive in a new learning society. As part of a larger study, this paper reports on the impact of online teaching on instructors’ pedagogical approaches. A key finding is that instructors improved their residential teaching by incorporating MOOC material into their courses; online format also forced instructors to think of both their subject matter and the presentation of their content in better and more inclusive ways.

Keyphrases: blended learning, flipped classroom, higher education, Instructor Experiences, MOOC, online teaching, qualitative research, Universal Design Learning

In: Claudia Urrea (editor). Proceedings of the MIT LINC 2019 Conference, vol 3, pages 269--273