Most faculty groan at the idea of the required hours or credits each year to take Professional Development classes. Some faculty are lucky and they get paid extra to take these classes. Other faculty (the ones who groan the loudest) have to take these classes and are not paid extra at all, but these classes are a required part of their annual contract.
I like taking Professional Development classes because these classes teach me new teaching skills, motivates me to teach better, keeps me aware of the latest trends in my field, encourages me to try new ways to teach students writing and literature, keeps me from getting 'bored' using the same old same old. And most of all, I like these classes because I get to network and connect with other online professionals.
I have taken teaching classes that have taught me how to be more engaging in forum discussions, how to give better student feedback on papers and forums, how to create rubrics that result in standardized reliable grading, how to have a more professional tone, how to better motivate students to learn by learning the latest cognitive trends, how to stay current in the ever changing world of technology by introducing me the newest Web.20 ways to create a graph, create images, and to also keep me current on what the young students are into etc.
I have taken both self-paced online professional development classes, online faculty directed professional development classes, one hour webinars, in service face to face faculty training and professional development classes at my local university to keep my teaching credential updated.
Self paced online classes were the easiest because I could rip through those classes at warp speed. If i can sit at my computer for several hours, I can easily finish the self-paced class right away. I used to like how all the self-paced classes at my last online university were all housed on the same web page making it very convenient for me to take classes 24/7 365 days of the year for free.
I also took one hour webinars off teaching websites like Faculty Focus, or you can take online professional teacher directed classes at places like QM (Quality Matters) or OLC Online Learning Consortium. When I first started teaching at AMU, AMU used to pay for me to take one OLC class per year. I used to love taking my OLC class every year in January as was my yearly routine. If you are an online teacher, OLC gives great online training classes and they also offer a Online Teacher Certificate which looks good on your resume.
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