The Penn State’s World Campus faculty development program provides professional development opportunities for online faculty to increase their effectiveness in the online learning environment. The program makes use of best practices that we feel contribute to the development of competencies related to online teaching success. How do we know if we have been successful in our faculty development program? To answer this question, the Director of Faculty Development and a research team is designing and developing a series of metrics and collection mechanisms on the existing faculty development program to determine if the competencies being targeted are associated with faculty satisfaction, instructional effectiveness, and student satisfaction of the learning experience.

Paula Bigatel is an instructional designer for Penn State's World Campus.