Review by: Hasanbegovic, Jasmina (2004-10-19)

Wilson concentrates on the importance of effective staff development to enable faculty to become confident and competent online teachers and especially to understand how to structure and facilitate interaction through a web environment.

As not all faculty enthusiastically embrace the technological and educational change, the author explains technology adoption patterns of academic staff by introducing the deep and dividing chasm between innovators and early adopters and mainstream faculty in relation to the uptake of information and communication technologies in teaching and learning. Considering an innovation through the eyes of the mainstream majority, staff developers have to reflect on the characteristics and features of an innovation such as its advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability. Moreover, the adoption of new learning technologies in learning and teaching across an institution demands different institutional approaches to achieve a critical mass of staff that are competent online teachers and to enhance the institutional capability to sustain the integration of new technologies into learning and teaching practices.

The author emphasises the pedagogical dimension of innovations by calling for teaching instructional design skills so teacher can integrate online the interaction that has traditionally been part of classroom teaching. Further, he describes major roles of a competent online teacher which are the basis for the design of qualification programs and certificates. Higher education institutions can embed formal, accredited courses for academic staff to increase the diffusion of staff development in new learning technologies by requiring some units as mandatory for new staff, linking completion of the course to a probationary requirement and marketing the course to institutional leaders. Wilson illustrates also the potential of online staff development and localised peer support with some examples at different universities.

Of particular importance in faculty development is the professional growth of teachers’ skills which demands to design the support aligned to the levels of need and/ or readiness levels of the academic staff. The author summarizes the stages in learning and staff development content appropriate for the particular stage and gives implications for demand-oriented staff development.

This article outlines the very important issue of demand-oriented professional development of academics for interactive online teaching focusing on the factors of mainstream faculty that influence adoption of innovation which are valuable for determining the design and content for staff development programs. However, more research is necessary to specify these factors and to link them to competence profiles.