What are the most common challenges and barriers to faculty development in higher education?

From my experience, working with thousands of adjunct over the years in my former company, and starting Babb Education and continuing to work with adjuncts, Faculty need to be paid for training. A lot of the training is repetitive if you work for more than one school. Mandatory training needs to be centralized so all universities can see that we are certified. All training should be paid.

I do agree that time is a key factor. In my experience, College off time is not well attended by faculty. Faculty need the time off to take that much needed break and focus on themselves and their priorities outside of work. In addition, faculty as a whole have different development needs. Options for the type of development and scheduled times are positive ways to address faculty needs.

I would add that PD should be differentiated, so faculty continue to grow their skills in areas where they see a need, not check-the-box training.

Yes! Lack of resources! I believe they are lacking because we are not able to demonstrate our value with solid statistics so institutions cannot justify allocating the necessary resources.

I would add too that teaching in your area of expertise does not always mean you understand how to break down complex content for those that are not at your level of expertise. You easily/efficiently understand it, but to someone new to the content it is foreign. Supporting faculty to design and develop curriculum that builds in complexity is a fabulous investment.

I don’t find it that Faculty are not motivated to increase their skills. They are not paid to do it, and not compensated more when they enhance their skill set. As faculty members have to take on more roles as advisers and coaches, updating reports for the university and other tasks, there is less time available for us to train.

I slightly disagree that faculty lack motivation or are not interested/willing to participate in faculty development opportunities. Often times, faculty are drawn to higher education based on their commitment to lifelong learning and pedagogical ideologies. I believe at the root of this issue is a "one size fits all" approach that feels unauthentic and lacks creativity. In my experience, faculty need time to participate with the planning and design of these opportunities. I understand that lack of time might hinder faculty to volunteer; however, the encouragement and recognition might be a reward to not only participate but develop a model that will encourage other faculty engage in learning.

I agree that faculty overall desire to learn and grow. Motivation to learn is impacted by the benefits. The focus of faculty development must be beneficial to the faculty to enhance opportunities for advancement.

I find they are quite motivated and inspired to continue to improve their craft when the PD is relevant and makes an impact on their students' understanding. I also find they are quite committed to developing meaningful experiences for their professional conferences within their area of expertise for colleagues' benefits.

It is known that programs or degree tracks tend to be silos. Is that a bad thing? Each program has their own needs. However, all programs have the same goal, student success. Different programs/tracks should not compete against each other but embrace what can be learned from others. There is so much talent throughout all college faculty. If competition is taken out of the mindset, collaboration will occur.

Yes, sometimes it is hard to measure impact on a human brain or life, but that is the complex world of teaching humans. The teacher does not always witness an immediate impact or progress or achievement. It might percolate for days, weeks, months, or years and then finally connect in a powerful way. There are also secondary impacts that occur from participating in high quality learning experiences which are difficult to measure (self-esteem, risk-taking, creative application, attendance, attention, etc...).

Forgetting that higher Ed is all about life-long learning. Most of us gravitate towards higher Ed because we love learning and had a positive experience somewhere (K-12, undergrad, grad school) and want to keep learning. This is the benefit of teaching: continual learning. Not all of us have had the opportunity to improve our teaching through a pedagogy class (for instance) or our leadership skills (once we get promoted) or even to finish our degrees (if we haven’t had the chance to do that yet. We need to re-frame our perspective into one of life-long learning for everyone: staff, faculty, as well as students, so that our institutions will be the best they can be.

Diverse Needs: Faculty members have varied backgrounds, skill levels, and professional goals, making it challenging to design a one-size-fits-all program Also Faculty members from different generations (Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z) may have varying preferences, learning styles, and expectations, making it challenging to create universally appealing programs. Resistance to Change: Older faculty might prefer traditional teaching methods, while younger faculty might advocate for more innovative approaches, leading to resistance to change.

1. Centralized training should exist so that University’s can see what we are trained in and we remove redundancy. We will take literally the same training course at every school we work for each year. 2. Pay for training. 3. Work roles should focus on education and should be reasonable, such that we are not advisers and coaches. Of the thousands of adjunct faculty members that I have helped transition to other positions over the years as a higher Ed consultant, most of them were exhausted by having to fill the role of so many other positions at the University. We became the advisors, coaches, form fillers, course update specialists (with or without any work) and more. We have less time for training.

Forgetting that faculty development, like all good teaching and learning, must be tailored to the needs of the learner, ongoing, interactive, carefully assessed and improved, and learner-centered.

Some advice regarding the use of data. The correct information is key to being able to make sound judgements and decisions. KPIs and data should not be the sole factors in decision making. Qualitative information, experiential feedack and context is also important. Data doesn't provide the answers, it only indicates the questions that need to be asked. Trends over time and benchmarks are also more meaningful than single data points. Finally, never forget that education is about individual human beings and not factory production lines.