ACM Logo  An ACM Publication  |  CONTRIBUTE  |  FOLLOW    

Professional Development

See All Professional Development Articles

Shining the Light on Learning: A recap of Training magazine's 2023 conference and expo

By Les Howles / May 9, 2023

This article reviews Training magazine's 46th Annual Conference and Expo held February 13 through 15 in Orlando, Florida. It summarizes highlights from keynote presentations, expo hall events, and numerous concurrent sessions relevant to learning and development professionals » [Full Article]
REVIEW: EVENTS, TYPE: PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Transitioning to and Navigating Virtual Conferences as a Result of COVID

Special Issue: Blended Learning Technologies in Healthcare

By Jamie Geringer / March 9, 2023

Conferences offer a venue to share ideas, present and hear about current research, and network. Medical conferences include an added dimension of being a form of continuing medical education. The COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible to conduct traditional in-person conferences, and, out of necessity, everyone had to transition to a virtual platform. Organizing a conference requires a tremendous amount of planning, preparation, and persistence to ensure the intended vision is met. But there is insufficient evidence and guidance on conducting effective conferences. This paper will discuss my experience planning and conducting a virtual medical conference. » [Full Article]
TYPE: HIGHER EDUCATION, PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Cross-institutional Leadership Collaboration: Toward the development of a peer-mentoring framework of practice in adult online education

By Haijun Kang, Rachel Ohmes / August 25, 2022

Because of high economic volatility, ongoing competition intensification, and the recent COVID-19 global pandemic influence, more and more education institutions are looking for efficient ways to serve their adult learner population. This article introduces a peer-mentoring framework of practice to help education institutions develop healthy cross-institutional leadership collaborations. This framework builds on three pillars: Developing a shared vision, respecting diversity and differences, and streamlining communications. An adult distance education consortium located in the U.S. is discussed as an example to illustrate how this three-pillar peer-mentoring framework of practice can be used to help make cross-institutional leader collaboration a success. » [Full Article]
TYPE: HIGHER EDUCATION, PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, MANAGEMENT

Outsourced Professional Development for Online Instructors: Recommendations from research

By Ling Zhao, Raymond Dixon, Tonia Dousay, Ali Carr-Chellman / April 18, 2022

To improve the quality of online teaching, institutions typically provide structured professional development in the form of institutional teaching or learning center programming. This programming typically focuses on teaching and learning quality, transitions to online teaching, pedagogies, and new technologies. This article reports on the use of outsourced professional development along with faculty responses to the program. Use of an outsourced program was attractive to faculty who wanted to have another institution's name on their vita. Seventeen faculty completed the professional development program and eight shared their reflections on this inquiry. » [Full Article]
TYPE: HIGHER EDUCATION, PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Exploring performance testing in certification: lessons learned and key insights from Microsoft

Special Issue: Advancing Beyond Multiple Choice eAssessment

By Liberty Munson, Manfred Straehle / September 30, 2021

An overview of performance testing and key considerations before adding performance elements to an assessment process. A real-world example is provided as the authors describe why and how Microsoft launched labs in their technical certification program, and lessons learned. » [Full Article]
TYPE: CORPORATE LEARNING, PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Meeting Online Learners Where They Are: e-Learning during a time of pandemic

By Ana-Paula Correia, Sean Hickey, Traci Lepicki, Alicia Willis / August 12, 2021

While adult and workplace training were quick to adopt the use of online learning, many of these efforts have not advanced far beyond taking presentation slides or video recordings from formerly in-person training and making them available on learning-management systems. Compared to formal education, adult and workplace training has been much slower to iterate and improve upon early digital and virtual educational methods, leaving online learning that is viewed as neither engaging for the end-user nor effective at achieving intended outcomes. The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdown added urgency to this problem, with many organizations being forced to either improve upon existing virtual training methods or finally completely replace in-person training with online options. » [Full Article]
TYPE: PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Listening to the Sound of Silence in Supporting Instructors' Transitions to Remote Teaching During COVID-19

By Kayon Murray-Johnson, Anna Santucci, Diane J. Goldsmith / February 28, 2021

While online education has been with us for more than 20 years, and many faculty are proficient at designing and teaching highly interactive, intellectually stimulating asynchronous classes, other faculty have chosen to remain focused on their teaching in the classroom. However, COVID-19 has rapidly and without warning ushered all higher ed teaching and learning into emergency remote environments. By now, many who support faculty in transitioning courses have received varying levels of participation and are examining ways to increase support opportunities. » [Full Article]
TYPE: PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, MANAGEMENT

Strategies to Build Student-to-Student Rapport in Online Adult Learning Courses

By James Kennedy / February 24, 2021

Students in online classes may have difficulty or believe they cannot develop a rapport with fellow students. There is significant research that indicates that this rapport greatly increases the student?s success in a class. Students can easily build rapport in an in-person classroom and often the instructor is not involved. However, in the online classroom, the problem becomes how do students build this rapport when they only see each other in a virtual space in the classroom to help increase their learning and course success. » [Full Article]
TYPE: DESIGN FOR LEARNING, HIGHER EDUCATION, PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

How Instructors Learn to Teach Online: Considering the past to plan for the future

By Steven Schmidt, Elizabeth M. Hodge, Christina M. Tschida / October 22, 2020

The onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic had major effects on all aspects of higher education, including the way in which courses were taught. Literally, overnight, courses that were taught face-to-face were moved online, and face-to-face instructors of those courses became online educators. Now, several months into the pandemic, it has become clear that instructors at colleges and universities today must be able to teach both online and face-to-face, and they must be able to move from one medium to the other as circumstances dictate. However, that is not easy to do, as learning to teach online takes time, and involves a good deal of effort. » [Full Article]
TYPE: HIGHER EDUCATION, PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

A Challenging Reality: Transitioning from the classroom to e-learning among English language learners

By Joel Floyd / October 9, 2020

In the wake of COVID-19, both K-12 and post-secondary institutions have had to transition from traditional learning in the classroom to teaching and learning through various online and or e-learning platforms. With such an abrupt transition, it's important for educators to explore the effectiveness of e-learning among their student populations. Moreover, this narrative discussion is facilitated by a program director who oversees an adult education English as a second language program located in Atlanta, Georgia. The director maintains the opinion that various modes of online learning are not the best learning method for all student populations and specifically adult English language learners. » [Full Article]
TYPE: OPINION, PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

How a Vocational Center Changed its Way to Train Adults: A Case Study on Computer-Based Learning and Vocational Training

By Yves Messier / August 31, 2020

EFFA (Ecole de Formation Funéraire Alyscamps), through a seven years development plan, introduced an offer including blended learning, 100% e-learning solutions, and virtual classroom. Our happy students are adults from 18 to 65 years old who have now the option to choose how they want to attend their training based on their availability and learning possibilities. Three project phases allowed us to integrate new pedagogical technique and to develop a framework for teachers to introduce new ways to teach, to handle a virtual classroom, and to redefine the own teacher's role and self-image. This case study explains how EFFA completed first an analysis to understand if our way of teaching, our goals, and our offer were still aligned with society and the labor market; and then we worked on deciding and implementing what was required to provide our clients with the best skills possible to gain employment and remain in ... » [Full Article]
TYPE: PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Internationalizing Teacher Education through Virtual Connections and Blended Learning

By Mary E. Risner, Swapna Kumar / July 23, 2020

This project used blended learning and virtual connections to infuse global perspectives in U.S. curriculum by preparing pre-service teachers with intercultural competence, understanding of global issues from diverse viewpoints, and the ability to use online technologies to develop critical thinking and digital literacy. Global themes were addressed in online synchronous sessions with teachers in other countries and purposefully combined with pre-readings and online and classroom discussions. » [Full Article]
TYPE: PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, INTERNATIONAL ONLINE EDUCATION, K-12 BLENDED AND ONLINE LEARNING