Preparing future STEM faculty nationwide through flexible teaching professional development
We report on a five-year initiative that has prepared thousands of future STEM faculty around the world to adopt evidence-based instructional practices by participating in two massive open online courses (MOOCs) and facilitated in-person learning communities. This novel combination of asynchronous online and coordinated, structured face-to-face learning community experiences provides flexible options for STEM graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to pursue teaching professional development, while leveraging the affordances of educational technologies and the geographically clustered nature of this target learner demographic. A total of 14,977 participants enrolled in seven offerings of the introductory course held 2014-2018, with 1,725 participants from approximately 60 countries completing at an average course completion rate of 13%. The preparation of future STEM faculty makes an important difference in establishing high-quality instruction that meets the diverse needs of all undergraduate students, and the initiative described here can serve as a model for increasing access to such preparation.