Teachers Perception on What Makes Teaching Excellence: Impact of Faculty Development Programme

Abstract

Objective: Faculty development programmes play a pivotal role in sustaining academic vitality in medical education and exerts a positive effect on institutional climate. The objective of this study was to evaluate the perception of participants on Teaching Methodology pre and post attending faculty development workshop. Methods: It was a questionnaire pre and post survey on a faculty development workshop conducted in November 2018 at Widad University College Malaysia. Total 27 teaching professionals attended the workshop. A survey-instrument on nine evaluation items was administered to the participants at the end of workshop to rate their perceived knowledge before and after attending the workshop. Five-point Likert scale was used to assess the data. The data were then collated, analysed and presented as mean for every item with significant differences at p = 0.05 or less. Results: Response rate was 70% (20/27). Sixty seven per cent of the participants were from faculty of medicine, 52% were male, 48% possessed 3-10 years of teaching-experience and 8% possessed > 30 years teaching-experience. Perceived satisfaction on nine evaluation-items, revealed significant increment after attending the workshop. The scores varied from 3.05 to 3.75 in the pre workshop while it was 4.15 to 4.40 in the post workshop evaluation. The overall usefulness of the workshop was rated as excellent and good by 95% of the respondents. Conclusions: The study concludes that the workshop was effective and there will be no curriculum development without faculty development. Leaders in higher education should give due importance on regular faculty development programmes by well-trained trainer across all levels of faculty aimed to produce quality graduates.

Full text

International Medical Journal Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 1 - 4 , February 2020
MEDICAL EDUCATION
Teachers Perception on What Makes Teaching Excellence:
Impact of Faculty Development Programme
Abdus Salam, Masran Bin Mohamad
ABSTRACT
Objective: Faculty development programmes play a pivotal role in sustaining academic vitality in medical education and
exerts a positive effect on institutional climate. The objective of this study was to evaluate the perception of participants on
Teaching Methodology pre and post attending faculty development workshop.
Methods: It was a questionnaire pre and post survey on a faculty development workshop conducted in November 2018 at
Widad University College Malaysia. Total 27 teaching professionals attended the workshop. A survey-instrument on nine evalua-
tion-items was administered to the participants at the end of workshop to rate their perceived knowledge before and after
attending the workshop. Five-point Likert scale was used to assess the data. The data were then collated, analysed and presented
as mean for every item with significant differences at p = 0.05 or less.
Results: Response rate was 70% (20/27). Sixty seven per cent of the participants were from faculty of medicine, 52% were
male, 48% possessed 3-10 years of teaching-experience and 8% possessed > 30 years teaching-experience. Perceived satisfaction
on nine evaluation-items, revealed significant increment after attending the workshop. The scores varied from 3.05 to 3.75 in the
pre workshop while it was 4.15 to 4.40 in the post workshop evaluation. The overall usefulness of the workshop was rated as
excellent and good by 95% of the respondents.
Conclusions: The study concludes that the workshop was effective and there will be no curriculum development without fac-
ulty development. Leaders in higher education should give due importance on regular faculty development programmes by well-
trained trainer across all levels of faculty aimed to produce quality graduates.
KEY WORDS
faculty, development, programme, impact, teachers' perception
Received on January 17, 2019 and accepted on April 18, 2019
Faculty of Medicine, Widad University College
Malaysia
Correspondence to: Abdus Salam
(e-mail: abdussalam.dr@gmail.com)
1
BACKGROUND
Faculty Development Programme refers to a range of activities
designed to improve the professional skills of the academicians in
respect to teaching, research or administrative activities (Cate et al.,
2014). Faculties are the assets of medical schools (Salam et al., 2014)
and faculty development is the basis of curriculum development (Salam
et al., 2014; Kunche et al., 2011). Faculty development has been consid-
ered to play a pivotal role in sustaining academic vitality in medical
education (Amin et al., 2009). These programmes exerts a positive
effect on institutional climate by fostering knowledge and professional
skills of faculty which results in enhancement of the academic perfor-
mance of learners (Bilal et al., 2017). Faculty development on teaching
methodology is the most desirable and highly demanded programme to
train the teachers in teaching skills. Teachers in medical schools are tra-
ditionally not trained to teach but are assumed to have that ability
because of their content knowledge and their own experience of being
taught (Cate et al., 2014). Medical education is constantly undergoing
changing to adapt to the changing pattern of the health care practices,
the impact of new technologies and advances in the development of
educational theory, research and knowledge (Conn et al., 2012).
Therefore, medical teachers also need appropriate training in order to
foster knowledge and professional skills among them and enabled them
to be competent and acceptable (Cate et al., 2014).
Teaching is an interaction between teacher and learner in order to
provide opportunities for learning (Pianta, 2016). While Learning is a
relatively permanent change in behavior of learner as a result of practice
or experience (Sharma et al., 2016; Morgan, 1996). In modern days
teaching and learning practices, the concept of 'teacher as knowledge
provider to the student' has been changed to 'student as the knowledge
and skill acquirer'. Now student instead of passive recipient becomes an
active searcher in the process of knowledge building and application of
knowledge and skills (Mocinic, 2012). The strength of understanding
learning theory from multiple perspectives is that it provides medical
educators with different teaching strategies depending on the specific
learning outcomes that are desired (Torre et al., 2012).
Widad University College (WUC) is a private university college sit-
uated in Kuantan, Pahang, Malaysia offers various Bachelor
Programmes, Diploma programmes and Foundation Programmes.
Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery modelled on an integrat-
ed curriculum. Its pre-clinical phase consists of two years while clinical
phase consists of three years. Regular faculty development workshop is
carried out as a requirement for continual development process.
We administered a survey questionnaire to evaluate the perception
of participants on Teaching Methodology after attending the faculty
development workshop. The objective of this study was to evaluate a
faculty development programme aimed to investigate its effectiveness.
C 2020 Japan Health Sciences University
& Japan International Cultural Exchange Foundation

Salam A. et al.
2
MATERIALS AND METHODS
It was a questionnaire survey on evaluation of a faculty develop-
ment workshop conducted on 09 November 2018 at WUC, Malaysia.
The topic of the workshop was "Teaching Methodology: What Makes
Teaching Excellence?" In this half day long workshop, participants were
taught on Concept of teaching-learning, Learning theories, Principles of
learning, Conditions facilitates learning, Teaching learning methodolo-
gies, Alignment of objectives, contents, methods and assessment, Input,
process, output as system approach in education, Teaching plan and its
stages and Organization of instructional events. Participants were the
faculties of medicine and nursing from WUC and lecturers from hospi-
tals affiliated with WUC. Number of participants attended in these
workshops 27. At the end of the workshop an evaluation questionnaire
was administered to the participants asking their perceived satisfactions
on the items of workshop contents before and after attending this work-
shop. A five-point rating scale was used to measure the responses indi-
cating 5 = excellent, 4 = good, 3 = satisfactory, 2 = poor and 1 = very
poor. So the maximum score in each item was 5. The questionnaires
were then collated and analysed. Data were presented as mean (SD) for
every item with significant differences at p = 0.05 or less.
RESULTS
Response rate of this study was 70% (20/27). Table 1 showed the
demographic profile of the participants. Here, 67% of the participants
were from faculty of medicine, 52% were male, 48% possessed 3-10
years of teaching-experience and 8% possessed > 30 years teaching-ex-
perience.
Table 2 showed the distribution of perceived knowledge before and
after attending workshop. Perceived knowledge on nine evaluation
items, revealed significant increment of their knowledge after attending
the workshop. The scores of the items varied from 3.05 to 3.75 in the
pre workshop evaluation while it was 4.15 to 4.40 in the post workshop
evaluation. The overall usefulness of the workshop was rated as excel-
lent and good by 40% and 55% of the respondents respectively.
Figure 1 showed the perceived knowledge before and after attend-
ing workshop based on the Likert scale scores, which are converted to
percentage.
DISCUSSION
Faculty development is an initiative intended to improve the effec-
tiveness of faculty in teaching related matters (Bhatnagar et al., 2010;
Centra, 1978). This study was conducted to compare the perception of
the faculties of WUC on teaching methodology before and after attend-
ing the Faculty development workshops. This study has shown statisti-
cally significant difference in the pre and post scores on all items such
as 'concept of teaching-learning', 'learning theories', 'principles of learn-
ing', 'conditions facilitates learning', 'teaching learning methodologies',
'aligning objectives, contents, methods and assessment', 'input, process,
output, as system approach in education', and 'organization of instruc-
tional events' except 'teaching plan and its stages'.
In this present study, about half of the participants were with teach-
ing experience of 3-10 years. Some are actually very novice without any
exposure to the faculty development programme. Even the more experi-
enced teachers also need this exposure as a reinforcement and continued
education in order to be competent. Therefore, we consider, this faculty
development was a timely event to advance teachers knowledge,
behaviours, and skills. It has been mentioned that faculty are the heart
and soul of a university, its key lifeline both to providing valuable skills
and to promoting intellectual stimulation (Pearson, 2010). Faculty
development has been considered as an integral part of higher educa-
tion's strategy for gaining new knowledge, self-renewal, and increased
vitality (Pearson, 2010). Active faculty development programme has
shown enhancement of faculty's skills in all the five desired domains,
i.e., teaching, assessment, curriculum support, organizational leadership
and mentoring (Guraya et al., 2016). It promotes and contributes to fac-
ulty members' teaching knowledge, behaviours, and skills, rekindling
their motivation to change their attitude towards embracing effective
learning strategies (Steinert et al., 2006; Lee et al., 2018). Previous
study in USA, on 52 faculty members from 8 academic medical centres
while 94 faculty members as control group showed Faculty
Development Programme retain experiential learning and critical reflec-
tion and improves humanistic teaching and role modelling (Branch et
al., 2014). Another study showed Faculty Development Programme has
positive impact in improving professional skills and self-confidence of
teachers (Gjerde et al., 2008).
This present study also documents noteworthy improvement in the
knowledge of the participants after attending the workshop. Significant
difference between pre and post perception in all the domains was noted
except 'teaching plan and its stages' where no significant difference
observed. This indicates, being a teacher, they are quite knowledgeable
on the teaching plan and its stages, therefore no significant increase in
their pre and post perception. However, regarding all other aspects of
teaching methodology, they showed significant knowledge gain. This is
very important for the teaching institute to employ such faculty develop-
ment programme. It is recognized that the more successful institutions
will be those that make faculty development a key strategic resource.
Indeed, recently designed faculty development programs are intended to
initiate, infuse, and sustain change in targeted faculty (Pearson, 2010;
Sorcinelli et al., 2006). This is also reflected by their perception about
usefulness of this workshop. The overall usefulness of the workshop
was rated as excellent and good by 40% and 55% of the respondents
respectively (Table 2).
Students are expected to be more autonomous, self-regulated and
lifelong learner. Therefore, learning environment and teaching
approaches need to be supportive. Understanding the learning theories
can help to select the correct teaching practice; so that the specific
instructional strategies, learning objectives, and evaluation strategies are
well matched to curricular goals (Torre et al., 2012). Learning theories
are mostly connected with practice in the sense that theory drives prac-
tice. The main learning theories are: i) behaviourism ii) constructivism
iii) cognitivism and iv) social interaction theories and humanistic theo-
ries (Pangea, 2010; Guneya & Al, 2012). Inputs, processes and outputs
are system approaches in education. Objectives, contents, methods and
assessments are the integral part of system approach and key elements
in any educational planning which is inter-related with each other
(Salam, 2015). A proper lesson plan and a holistic view to the teaching
following Gagne’s nine-step instructional model ensure an effective and
systematic learning program (Khadjooi et al., 2011). Support for teach-
ers and students alike is critical for successfully implementing educa-
tional interventions designed to enhance learning in both formal and
opportunistic setting (Conn et al., 2012). Conducting effective faculty
development programme is not an easy matter (Salam et el., 2018;
Mohamad, 2010) and the standard of training workshop depends on the
system in place (Salam et el., 2018; Khan, 2010). Professionalism
(Salam et al., 2012) and educational environment (Salam et a., 2015)
are important issues for effective educational programme. Any faculty
development training programme requires adequate resources in terms
of man, money and materials (Salam et al., 2018; Rashid, 2013) with
their proper utilisation and mobilisation (Salam et al., 2018). This study
finding reflects that WUC is in right direction in regards to use of
appropriate resources with proper utilization and mobilization in order
to bring the faculty development training workshop effective.
Table 1. Demographic profile of the participants, n = 27
Variables No. %
Male 14 52
Gender Female 13 48
Faculty of Medicine 18 67
Affiliations Faculty of Nursing 6 22
HTAA 2 7
HOSHAS 1 4
3-10 years 13 48
Teaching 11-20 years 9 33
experience 21-30 years 3 11
30+ years 2 8
* HTAA -- Hospital Tuanku Ampuan Afzan
* HOSHAS -- Hospital Sultan Haji Ahmad Shah

Teachers' Perception on Impact of Faculty Development Programme 3
CONCLUSIONS
The study concludes that the faculty development workshop con-
ducted in WUC on teaching methodology was effective and required to
meet the need of the faculty in improving their ability. Overall useful-
ness of the workshop was also rated as good and excellent by 55% and
40% of the participants respectively. It can be said that, without faculty
development there will be no curriculum development. Regular faculty
development programmes should be implemented by well-trained train-
er across all levels of faculty to ensure the quality and effectiveness of
training and thereby ensure a sustainable educational and organizational
development aimed to produce quality graduates.
AVKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors would like to thanks to all who participated in this
study.
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