In Pre-COVID Times, I was making steady progress on my dissertation. I had completed phase 1 and started on phase 2. My dissertation explores the strategic imperative of professional development for online learning and makes the argument that professional development for online learning, especially for part-time contingent faculty, is the key for online learning’s continual maturation so that online educators can fulfill online education’s potential and its promise.

There are now a host of online professional development opportunities for online educators. Here is a short list that flowed through my inbox and may prove useful for my concluding discussion:

Online Learning through Instructional Design (Magna Publications)

https://www.magnapubs.com/product/online-seminars/archived/online-learning-through-instructional-design/

This course costs between $297 - $497 USD. At MHC, the Centre for Innovation and Teaching Excellence (CITE) recently developed a Course Design for Online Workshop covering the curriculum areas covered in this course. 116 faculty have registered. By developing this home training, the CITE training (spearheaded by our Instructional Designer) saved the college in the neighbourhood of $46,400 CAD

Online Learning Consortium’s Instructional Design Mastery Series

https://my.onlinelearningconsortium.org/s/community-event?id=a1Y1U000001DMBYUA4

This offering is even more expensive, at $600 - $750 USD. At $814/per registrant, this would cost a relatively small college approximately $94,000.

I have no doubt that these professional development opportunities are of high-quality and would be of great value to instructors wishing to improve their practice online. But the importance of resourcing teaching and learning centres appropriately to develop internal professional development opportunities enables the institution to ground their curriculum in the tools supported by their institution and to develop their own teaching philosophy/vocabulary around online education.