Thematic Manual for Staff Development and Support

Authors:
Thematic Manual:
• Anne Villems, Lehti Pilt, University of Tartu (Estonia)

Questionnaire aimed at investigating staff training situation related to e-learning:
• Anne Villems, University of Tartu (Estonia)
• Lehti Pilt, University of Tartu (Estonia)
• Risto Aikonen, University of Joensuu (Finland)
• Maris Zernand, Estonian Business School (Estonia)
• Reet Neudorf, Tallinn Technical University (Estonia)

1. Introduction

Development and support for academic staff for elaborating ICT-based courses is one of the most important success factors of e-learning. The key problem is: What structural and legal changes might facilitate academic staff to change their teaching methods to incorporate ICT? How policy objectives and educational development stimulate real everyday teaching practice?
The aim of the staff training and support thematic workgroup was to analyze previous experiences in supporting, motivating, and training academic staff for developing e-courses. Centralized and decentralized models of financial, technical, and pedagogical support, administrative regulations and staff training were under discussion.
The work of staff development and support workgroup was planned as follows:
• Developing the questionnaire aimed at investigating staff training situation related to e-learning
• Distributing the questionnaire and collecting the responses
• Analyzing the questionnaire results and writing article
• Developing the course models
• Adapting and piloting the training courses for online course design and online tutoring