S5.2.3

=Teaching staff are recognised and rewarded for their engagement with innovative e-learning initiatives. =

Evidence
There are many barriers to uptake of ongoing professional development. Many staff complain of time constraints, or that teaching is not valued in performance indicator measures so there is a lack of incentive. Hence professional development is seen as an optional activity. Across the five institutions surveyed by Mansvelt et al. (2009) e-learning support was unevenly experienced and sometimes hampered by unsupportive management, resource conflicts and organisational structures. Alignment between policy and practice was poor. Staff are unclear how policies relate to expectations of their own practice. This must be made clear and transparent.

Bacow et al. (2012, p24) note the need for incentives to support adoption and use of online learning, particularly given the high time costs associated with creating new courses or revising existing ones for online delivery. They note that for many academics, releases from other work are likely to be more useful than salary supplements.

Leem & Lim (2007) conducted a survey of all 201 universities in Korea. They found that 85% had investigated offering e-learning. However, meaningful supports and policies were lacking. They recommend creating ‘Knowledge Servers’ to accumulate e-learning knowledge and content stored by a university. They noted that e-learning is severely limited in scope when it continues to operate on classroom models. Also, that less than half the universities provided support for tutors and that there was a significant lack of support and incentives for faculty to take part in e-learning.

Resources
According to Leem & Lim’s survey results (2007) only 34% of universities awarded extra credits for faculty achievement evaluation. Only 21% reported reducing teaching workload. Only a small number of universities reported providing awards for excellent content. All these methods can potentially be used to reward and recognize and encourage teaching staff for innovative e-learning. If excellent content results from crediting staff with reduced workloads, the content may then be added to a ‘Knowledge Base’ for reuse across the university and beyond.

Wirth (2006) discusses quality management approaches. He emphasizes the need to compare e-learning solutions and that this comparison should not be against preset criteria. Rather, solutions should be compared to one another to find the best. One way of undertaking this is by awarding prizes for e-learning innovation, e.g.: 􀂃 European e-learning Award (EureleA, http://www.eurelea.org ) 􀂃 Deutscher Bildungssoftware-Preis (Digita, http://www.digita.de ) 􀂃 Mediendidaktischer Hochschulpreis (Medida-Prix, http://www.medidaprix.de )