Instructors’ Readiness to Teach Online: A Review of TPACK Standards in Online Professional Development Programmes in Higher Education

Abstract

Online learning has been developed in higher education offering a flexible environment for learners. Faculty knowledge is among the most important domains required to be updated in order to ensure a successful integration of instructional technology and online learning in higher education. This update can be performed by providing faculty training on how to use technology. However, this should be integrated with pedagogical knowledge, which is represented in the Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge framework (TPACK). This paper reviewed the literature to find how higher education institutions support online instructors with professional development programmes and, moreover, to discover how these programmes are shaped by the TPACK framework. The paper also summarises the effective online teaching practices based on the TPACK framework presented in the literature. Teaching online is a challenge and does not mean having to move traditional instructions and activities into the online platform, but this does mean a shift might require building a whole new material to ensure the quality of online teaching and learning. Reviewing the previous literature regarding the available professional development programmes increases the need to integrate online teaching competence as a main objective into teacher education and professional development programmes to follow up with the skills of the 21st century students. The framework includes three main domains of teachers’ knowledge: Content (CK), which is related to the subject matter and answers the question “what will be taught?” such as concepts, theories and terms; Pedagogy (PK), which refers to teaching strategies required for addressing the students’ learning needs; and Technology (TK), which refers to the variety of technologies and instructional materials used, such as learning management systems.