Faculty Professional Learning: An Examination of Online Development and Assessment Environments - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 67

with the basic elements of quality assurance in
this chapter, by focusing on the following:

Education Area , released by the European Asso-
ciation for Quality Assurance in Higher Education
in Helsinki (2005), faculty are “the single most
important learning resource available to most
students. It is important that those who teach
have a full knowledge and understanding of the
subject they are teaching, have the necessary skills
and experience to transmit their knowledge and
understanding effectively to students in a range
of teaching contexts, and can access feedback on
their own performance”. University government
bodies planning and organizing more flexible
learning delivery systems focus their attention,
efforts and investments on allocating resources
to maintain quality requirements and defining the
scope of authority and responsibility of faculty at
the university level.
Moreover, policy makers are concerned with
developing faculty job descriptions (duties and
responsibilities), providing technological training
and continuing education programs and assess-
ing teaching competence on each procedure and
teaching activity staff teachers perform. Within
universities and departments, experienced scholars
are increasingly looking to providers of faculty
professional learning and development for evi-
dence that activities, specifically workshops about
web course designs, contribute to improvements
in the performance of students. More particularly,
higher education institutions, national ministries,

a. The university as a learning organization.
b. The university staff and students as the most
essential part of higher education institutions.
c. The facilities and equipment as a critical
component in planning for online teaching
and learning.
d. Policies and procedures as the set of docu-
ments providing guidance for fair and con-
sistent staff learning and development.
e. Process control that deals with mechanisms
for controlling learning outcomes of specific
teaching processes.
f. Documents and records, specifically profes-
sional electronic records, or digital portfo-
lios, and
g. Audits and process improvement, or how to
enhance the continuous faculty improvement
cycle.

FACULTY DeVeLOPmeNT

Quality management of
Academic Development

According to the report Standards and Guidelines
for Quality Assurance in the European Higher

Figure 1. Faculty e-development and portfolio model