Developing online teaching in higher education - book overview

 This book is the most recent in the Springer Professional and practice-based series. It is edited by Dianne Forbes and Richard Walker. 

The book has 16 chapters, organised into 4 sections.

The book begins with an introductory chapter, written by the editors "A continuous professional learning and development (CPLD) framework for online teaching'. The focus of the book is to present many approaches undertaken, especially through the COVID-19 pandemic, to support CPLD in a time of rapid change. They argue for the importance of CPLD in ensuring integrity and appropriateness of how online teaching is enacted. 

The first section - Inter-institutional/societal CPLD has 4 chapters.

First up is 'Professional learning for open online educators: The #Openteach story" by O. Farrell, J. Brunton, C. Ni Shē, and  E. Costello. The authors present their experiences in developing a flexible and evidence-based approach to supporting online teachers. The key principles were: social presence, facilitating discussion, collaboration online, live online teaching and supporting online students.

Then, D. Dell, M, Cleveland -Innes, N. Ostashewski and D, Wilton, write on 'Inquiry MOOCs: Privileging constructive collaborative learning for continuing professional development'. Records the experiences of faculty and instructional designers from Athabasca University, working on a MOOC to support blended learning practice.The MOOC is evaluated in terms of professional development quality and participant responses.

The next chapter by E. Kennedy, S. Sherman, N. Weitz, S. Crabbe, V. Devaney, H. Tariq et al. details and discusses the project 'Get interactive: the value of a MOOC for CPLD'. The MOOC models social and collaborative learning with technology, has run since 2017 and has engaged 21,000 participants. The pedagogy draws on Diana Laurillard's 'teaching as design science'. The chapter reports on evaluation and continual work on the MOOC as it developed and matures.

Then a chapter on 'cross-cultural mentoring in tertiary education: Enhancing self-efficacy in online teaching through collaboration and openness in professional learning' by H. DeWaard and R. Chavhan. The experiences gained through the UNESCO Open education for a better world mentoring project are shared and evaluated. 

T. Cochrane and M. Jenkins contribute the last chapter in this section on 'professional accreditation pathways in higher education: enabler or block to technology-enhanced learning professional development?'. The chapter brings up a key CPL issue. Two professional accreditation frameworks - the Advanced HE Fellowship and the Certified Member of the Association for Learning Technology (CMALT) are compared. The Advanced HE Fellowship, a traditional framework requires updating to reflect the contemporary PD of HE educators. CMALT is proposed as a means to support the process of remapping.

The next section -Institutional CPLD - has 3 chapters.

L. May and J. Denton write on 'emergency designs: lessons from the rapid implementation of online teaching'. This chapter evaluates, through autoethnographic inquiry, the efficacy of ADDIE for responding to rapid developing of courses. An adapted version of ADDIE is proposed along with structured CPLD  to support the need for agile movement of courses into the online learning environment.

Then, S. Houston, C. Milligan, A. Nimmo and A. Robertson contribute on ' providing CPLD through a toolkit design'. The ABC curriculum design framework is adapted into a 'toolkit' to aid the rapid shift of f2f courses into the online delivery mode. Also reports on a study, a year later, to evaluate the efficacy of the toolkit and the steps taken to enhancing the toolkit for better fit.

S. Ngai, R. Cheung, S. Nr, A. Wll, P. Chik,and H. Tsang on 'swift preparation for online teaching during the pandemic: the pandemic experience sharing from healthcare teaching in Hong Kong'. Has a focus on the challenges presented by 'hands-on' learning, when a shift to online learning is required. The TPACK framework was used to guide the CPLD offered to lecturers. Drawing on their learning through the pandemic, future planning of CPLD provision is presented and discussed.

The section - Middle-out programme driven CPLD - has 4 chapters.

Firstly, 'co-design as professional learning: pulling each other in different directions, pulling together' by C. Vallis, S. Wilson, J. Tyrrell, and V. Narayan. Reports on the co-design CPLD process used to support the designing, development, teaching and evaluation of a range of diverse business subjects.

Then a chapter on 'share sessions: a solution to cross-disciplinary academic professional learning and development in higher education' by S. Zeivots, D. Wardak, and E. Huber. Describes the 'share sessions' whereby innovative online teaching practices were shared via zoom. Draws on interviews with lecturers, to find out how the share sessions worked. It was found that it is important to have a planned approach, before, during and following the sessions, to maximise their effectiveness.

T. Harper and R. Holme write on 'informal, grassroots online professional learning: The experiences of teacher educators'. Overviews the specific challenges faced by teacher educators on their CPLD needs and how these may be addressed through 'grassroots' approaches.

Last chapter in this section is by J.R. Rothman, R. Lege, E. Bonner and M. Ishii who present a chapter on 'supporting emergency remote teaching via responsive professional support system'. This case study from Japan provides another perspective on the global 'emergency remote teaching (ERT) response. The CPLD approach drew on the work of Drago-Stevenson's learning-orientated mode of adult learning. 

The last section has 2 chapter around the topic - personal 'inside-out' experiences of CPLD.

R. Philip on 'pathways to creative learning and teaching online: An ecological model'. Shares the ecological model for designing creative online learning which was derived from Australian and international HE examples.

M. Lafferty and E. Roberts with 'from physical to virtual: reflections on the move from the lecture hall to the digital classroom. This UK case study studies perspectives on CPLD of lecturers in two disciplines - Law and Psychology, which have provided guidelines for the implementation of blended learning experiences.

A final chapter from the editors brings the book to a close. They write on 'CPLD for online teaching: diverse perspectives and common themes'.

Overall, a timely addition to the literature covering not only the importance of CPLD to help lecturers/teachers shift practice rapidly from the known to 'new' teaching and learning contexts, but also offers an insight into the many approaches used, across the HE sector, to support learners through online access.