Supporting Online Faculty--Revisiting the Seven Principles (A Few Years Later)

Since 2005, the landscape of online teaching and learning has changed as well as the landscape of the academy, and continues to transform before our eyes. These changes are not only a product of technological innovation, but also a result of new and reconceptualized "values" of higher education, and so we must reexamine what changes to faculty role, position and perspectives best support these new values. Drawing on the Seven Principles of Good Practice, this article visits the need for effective faculty support and development in online education. Online education has forever transformed higher education, and we are learning that quality requires flexibility and the ability to adapt to the changing demands of learners, the new promises of technology, and the new competitive landscape of higher education. If higher education is to remain competitive, we must refocus and redesign our paradigms, as well as design business processes that integrate with quality assurance models.