Does Participation in a Faculty Distance Education Mentoring Program Comprehensively Improve Teaching Methods?

摘要

The Distance Education Mentoring Program (DEMP) is an initiative designed to assist faculty in learning the technology and instructional design principles necessary to develop and teach quality online courses. This paper describes the results of a survey assessment of 92 faculty members who completed the program over the last four years. Participants in the program not only developed high quality online courses, but also changed their beliefs and learned skills and methods that could be applied to their teaching practice in the classroom. This suggests that faculty members participating in the DEMP experienced a transfer of learning from their immediate task of online course development to other teaching contexts. Regression results show that the program's success was strongly related to its collaborative atmosphere. These findings have implications for other institutions seeking to use a mentoring approach to successfully help faculty develop high quality online and traditional teaching practices.