Increasing Access to Education through Online Professional Development for Academic and Support Staff: Opportunities and Challenges

• In Event: A Multinational e-Learning Partnership: Coordinating New Opportunities for Student Learning Across 10 Higher Education Institutions

Proposal

Overview
Broader populations can be served when institutions have an increased capacity to reach individuals through e-learning experiences (Muftahu, 2020; Agormedah et al., 2020), especially if those experiences focus on access, inclusion, and equity. With the realization that COVID-inspired interest in e-learning may lead to sustainable advancement in access to education, funding was allotted to a large public university in the United States and a private university in Africa to create a development path of e-learning training for faculty, support staff, and administrators in ten institutions across Africa, the Middle East, and Central America. Written within the funding requirement was a focus on equity, accessibility, and diversity. This training consisted of a two-week program to establish common language and experience in best practices for 131 e-learning champions, including practices of equity and inclusion, for teaching online (offered by the public U.S. institution) along with a ten-week coaching session to help a smaller portion of participants (n=82) contextualize the learning for their unique use cases (offered by the private African institution). In this paper, the researchers present the training program’s success in increasing access, equity, accessibility, and diversity, the challenges, and opportunities for future training.

Methods
The research team invited, via email, the 131 e-Learning Champions who participated in the training to participate in the surveys. The survey received 79 responses (59% response rate). The team also conducted follow-up interviews with 37 participants. The survey and interview focused on their overall training experiences, application, and sharing of skills and knowledge gained, enabling factors and challenges, and sustainability of online learning at their institutions.

Results
The findings indicate that the training improved faculty and support staff’s ability to design and deliver course content and to use online assessments and feedback. Further, modules and lessons on accessibility and inclusion increased awareness and focus on support for marginalized populations and students with special needs. Moreover, the inter-institutional community exchange of ideas and implementation helped them offer additional training to peers outside the initial network, thereby increasing the learning impact. However, some of the challenges the participants faced include Internet connection and electricity, time restraints, difficulty navigating multiple Learner Management System platforms as different entities conducted the instruction, and a need for differentiated instruction between faculty and support staff along with increased contextualization.
To model efforts of thoughtfully increasing access to learning for this group and a potentially expanding network, the participants suggested that program implementers need to 1) increase sensitivity to connection issues through downloadable and offline options, 2) spread out the instruction over a longer period to address time constraints, and 3) increasing mentorship and modules that ensure differentiated instruction and contextualization.

Significance
This paper provides feedback on how a faculty and staff professional development program intent on increasing access to education empowered participants to teach online and helped them navigate challenges posed by their unique contexts. Further, in line with the conference theme, it provides an example of what stakeholders can do to promote equity, inclusion, and diversity in learning institutions.

Authors

• Kim Welch, Arizona State University

• Pauline Mbesa Wambua, Arizona State University