Faculty Members as Students in the Same Institution: Implications for the Learning Environment

“Good luck on your first day as an assistant professor, Dr. Tanner! Have a great class!” On the wall above my desk, these words scream out from an otherwise encouraging note that is adorned with many exclamation points. This note has hung on my wall since my very first day as an Assistant Professor of Biology. As I was charging off to teach my first class, a senior faculty member who had been on my hiring committee slipped this note under my office door. In moments of pause years later, I still stare up at that note and breathe a sigh of relief that I had much more than luck to guide me on my first day as a college-level teacher. Although I continue to have much to learn—as all of us do no matter the number of years of teaching experience—I did arrive at the university with both formal and informal training in science education. I had had plenty of exposure to innovative pedagogical approaches, questioning strategies, and techniques for engaging diverse audiences in learning science. As a scientist educator, I had had the privilege of many years of collaboration with outstanding K–12 educators as well as a postdoctoral fellowship in science education. However, my training has been, to say the least, unconventional compared with that of my fellow junior faculty and unique in its preparation in regard to the teaching and learning of my discipline. It will not be news to anyone reading this article that university and college teaching is to a large extent a profession with no formal training. It’s startling but true that the majority of faculty members—and lecturers who often teach large numbers of students—have no formal training in the teaching and learning of their discipline. In fact, the hiring process in university science departments is structured primarily to evaluate a faculty candidate’s ability to be a productive researcher, with success measured in number of publications and magnitude of grant funds raised. Depending on the type of institution, for example, research university, state-level university, or liberal arts college, there may be a component of the faculty interview process that probes a candidate’s teaching ability, for example, requesting a statement of teaching philosophy and requiring the candidate to teach a sample lecture class. However, this sample lecture often screens for gross inadequacies, rather than looking for stellar innovations or pedagogical skills. This lack of formal, accredited training for university and college instructors stands in stark contrast to the requirements for a high school teacher who is charged with the education of students only a year junior to college freshmen. High school teachers in the United States must be credentialed as a secondary science teacher, demonstrate subject matter competency in every subject that they will be teaching, and must continually engage in professional development in the teaching and learning of their discipline throughout their career as a science teacher. With the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind legislation, the onus is upon each precollege science teacher to become “highly qualified” in terms of formal university-level training in science education. However, no such required professional training or measurable standards for teaching are required in institutions of higher education. Many policy documents have suggested standards of teaching practice in postsecondary science education (National Research Council, 1996, 1997; Siebert and McIntosh, 2001), but the extent of implementation of these ideals is unclear and has gone relatively unstudied, although national and regional accreditation boards do look at outcomes, asking colleges and universities to assess what their students have gained from four years of study at their institutions. Nonetheless, there is a striking reversal of accountability that happens when one crosses the precollege teaching to college-level teaching boundary (Table 1). During the K–12 school years, society expects K–12 teachers to be responsible for student learning. Salaries of teachers in many states are tied to student test scores, and poor student performance can potentially invoke penalties. At a college or university, several variables in the educational universe shift. Students are the ones responsible for learning. The evaluation and compensation of college-level teachers is not DOI: 10.1187/cbe.05–12–0132 Address correspondence to: Kimberly Tanner (kdtanner@sfsu.edu). CBE—Life Sciences Education Vol. 5, 1–6, Spring 2006

This qualitative case study aimed to examine faculty members’ perceived behaviour regarding the use of technology in their classrooms. The behavior was examined within the framework of the decomposed theory of planned behavior. The theory states that technology integration behaviour is directly related to intention and perceived behaviour control and indirectly related to attitude, subjective norms and perceived behaviour control. Data sources included semi-structured interviews conducted with 17 faculty members who participated in a faculty technology mentoring programme implemented at a large public university in Turkey over a semester of 4 months’ duration. The data analysis revealed that the factors affecting faculty members’ planned technology integration behaviour were related to their intentions, attitude, subjective norms and perceived behaviour control, as explained in the theory. Faculty members identified a number of student-related, faculty-related and context-related challenges in technology integration. The recommendations arising from the study are to support and sustain faculty members’ technology integration in higher education classrooms. Implications for practice or policy: Technology mentoring programs can improve faculty teaching practices with technology in higher education classrooms. Faculty members’ technology integration behaviour can be supported by addressing the challenges, including lack of time and motivation, insufficient technological knowledge and classroom management problems. The technology integration awareness of faculty members can be developed by improving the teaching and learning environment with the support of administrators, peers and students and providing the required time and incentives to integrate technology.

Objective: Nursing education institutions globally have issued calls for mentorship to address the nursing faculty shortage; however, little is known about the current state of mentorship for faculty members in Canadian schools of nursing. The purpose of this study is to describe the current state of mentorship in Canadian schools of nursing and explore definitions and goals of mentorship programs, mentorship models and components, and mentorship evaluation.Methods: A qualitative descriptive study was conducted. Within the Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing there are 81 English-speaking schools of nursing and 2,284 permanent faculty members spread over four regions. Participants were recruited from the 81 schools of nursing through the CASN newsletter list serve and publically accessible email addresses. Inclusion was limited to English speaking faculty. Purposive sampling aimed to capture variation across rank and tenure, school, size and areas within Canada. Semi-structured interviews were utilized to explore the participant’s (n = 48) perspectives and involvement with mentorship. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. NVivo was used to code and analyze the data for significant statements and phrases, which were organized into themes and sub-themes.Results: Mentorship remains largely informal in nursing academia without common definitions or goals. Current mentorship in nursing academia employed dyad, peer, group, constellation, and distance mentorship models. Common mentorship program components included guidelines, training, professional development workshops, purposeful linking of mentors and mentees, and mentorship coordinators. Evaluation of mentorship in nursing academia, where it exists, remains mostly descriptive, anecdotal, and lacks common evaluative metrics.Conclusions: Our results confirm mentorship in Canadian schools of nursing remains largely informal. In developing mentorship programs, academic leaders need to consider the mentorship models and components to meet their specific needs. Further rigorous evaluation of mentorship programs and components is needed to identify if mentorship programs are achieving specified goals.

AimTo identify barriers to conducting and publishing research among nursing faculty members at Shaqra University, Saudi Arabia.DesignA qualitative descriptive design was used.MethodsThis qualitative descriptive study was conducted on 12 nursing faculty members from two nursing colleges at Shaqra University, a public university located in Riyadh region, SA, under the supervision of the Ministry of Education. Data were collected between September and October 2021 using semi‐structured interviews and analysed thematically using content analysis.ResultsThree themes emerged in the study, namely (I) individual/personal barrier, (II) institutional barrier and (III) external factors. Barriers to conducting and publishing research included lack of time due to a high teaching load and lack of administrative and financial support. The present findings suggest that nursing faculty members in SA are facing many barriers hindering them from carrying out and publishing research activities. Such barriers need to be urgently addressed through different strategies, including allocating facilities and funds for research, motivating faculty members towards research, and ongoing education and training on research.

Nowadays, social media tools used in all fields such as politics, health, economy, transportation, public services are also used in the learning and teaching process. The main aim of this research is to investigate academic administrators’ and faculty members’ perceptions concerning the reasons and the expectations of social media usage in the teaching and learning process. With this purpose, semi-structured interviews were carried out with 20 academic teaching faculty members from different academic units, titles, and positions at Aksaray University in Turkey. According to the findings of this research, the use of social media in the teaching and learning process was similar in terms of faculty that use or not use. In this study, both the benefits and challenges of using social media for teaching and learning purposes were identified. It has been determined that the faculty members who use social media prefer YouTube most and even the ones against find YouTube useful and use them effectively in their courses. The motives stated by the faculty that use social media were; student-centered reasons such as students’ preference to use these environments, contributing to students’ perceptions and learning, fast and effective communication with students, as well as accessibility and equal opportunities in education. Those who do not prefer to use social media claimed the students’ unethical behavior in these platforms, the difficulty of creating a traditional classroom environment, and maintaining the relationship between the learner and the teacher. As a result, in order to integrate social media tools with the teaching and learning process, it is necessary to raise awareness of faculty members and students and to use social media tools that have a code of ethics, appropriate and can be integrated into the learning environments.

A Review of:
 Melles, A., & Unsworth, K. (2015). Examining the reference management practices of humanities and social science postgraduate students and academics. Australian Academic & Research Libraries, 46(4), 250-276. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00048623.2015.1104790 
 
 Objective – To understand patterns in reference management practices of postgraduate students and faculty members at one institution.
 
 Design – Mixed methods online survey and semi-structured interviews.
 
 Setting – Public research university in Australia.
 
 Subjects – The survey included responses from 81 postgraduate students. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 8 postgraduate students and 13 faculty members.
 Methods – The researchers distributed an 18-item survey via email to approximately 800 people who previously registered for EndNote training sessions. Survey participants were also recruited via a website advertisement. The researchers recruited postgraduate student interview participants from the list of survey respondents. Librarians invited faculty members to participate in the semi-structured interviews. Interview audio recordings were transcribed and coded for data analysis.
 
 Main Results – The survey found that 71.4% (n=55) of respondents used reference management software (RMS) and 29% (n=22) did not. Over half of the students who did not use an RMS described other ad hoc or “manual” (p. 255) methods for organizing and tracking references. The majority of participants reported using EndNote (67.53%, n=52), while few respondents reported using other RMS tools like Zotero (1.3%, n=1) or Mendeley (1.3%, n = 1). Software awareness (49.32%, n=36), recommendations from faculty members (30.14%, n=22), and University support (47.95%, n=35) were the primary motivations for choosing a specific RMS. Other important factors included ease of use (32.88%, n=24) and integration with Microsoft Word (46.58%, n=34). Students preferred RMS features that support the process of accessing and using references in a paper, and reported that technical problems were the most common frustrations. The researchers found that student interview respondents were more likely to use RMS (75%, n=6) than were faculty member respondents (31%, n=4). Interview respondents varied in which RMS features they used, like importing references, PDF management, or “Cite While You Write” plug-ins (p. 258). Few interviewees used the RMS’s full functionality, either due to variations in workflow preferences or lack of awareness. Similar to survey respondents, interviewees who did not use an RMS reported their own personal practices for managing references. The time and learning curve necessary to become proficient with a particular RMS, as well as how the RMS fit into a particular task or workflow, influenced respondents’ decisions about software selection and use. Faculty members were split with their advice to students about using an RMS, with some respondents advocating that an RMS can save time and trouble later in their writing processes, while others took a more cautious or hands-off approach. 
 
 Conclusion – The authors conclude that measuring RMS use or non-use does not reflect the real world complexity behind student and faculty member reference management practices. They suggest that librarians may want to rethink focusing on RMS as the sole reference management solution. Librarians should also recognize that institutional availability and support may influence users’ RMS choices. A user-centred approach would account for RMS and non-RMS users alike, and librarians should “develop a more flexible perspective of reference management as part of an approach to researchers that aims to understand their practices rather than normatively prescribe solutions” (Melles & Unsworth, 2015, p. 265). Instruction workshops should help students and faculty members select features or systems that match their existing research processes, rather than exclusively demonstrate the mechanics of a particular RMS.

There has been a long history of studying library users and their information seeking behaviors and activities. Researchers developed models to better understand these information seeking behaviors and activities of users. Most of these models were developed before the onset of the Internet. This research project studied faculty members' use of and their information seeking behaviors and activities on the Internet at Angelo State University, a Master's I institution. Using both a quantitative and qualitative methodology, differences were found between tenured and tenure-track faculty members on the perceived value of the Internet to meet their research and classroom information needs. Similar differences were also found among faculty members in the broad discipline areas of the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Tenure-track faculty members reported a higher average Internet use per week than tenured faculty members. Based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with seven tenured and seven tenure-track faculty members, an Internet Information Seeking Activities Model was developed to describe the information seeking activities on the Internet by faculty members at Angelo State University. The model consisted of four basic stages of activities: "Gathering," "Validating," "Linking" with a sub-stage of "Re-validating," and "Monitoring." There were two parallel stages included in the model. These parallel stages were "Communicating" and "Mentoring." The Internet Information Seeking Activities Model was compared to the behavioral model of information seeking by faculty members developed by Ellis. The Internet Model placed a greater emphasis on validating information retrieved from the Internet. Otherwise there were no other substantive changes to Ellis' model.

ObjectivesUnderstanding the concepts and structures of health promotion in the faculty from the perspective of its members.Study designQualitative study.SettingsFaculties of Medical Sciences University.ParticipantsA sample of four main groups in the...

This study examines university teaching and aims to understand more about university faculty members’ sense of teaching efficacy criteria in the hope of providing insights for future strategies in faculty development training programme universities and colleges. This study uses a descriptive and correlational survey. The population of this study was all faculty members at four state universities in Sistan and Baluchestan Province in Iran. The research instrument for the study was a questionnaire called the Faculty Teaching Self-Efficacy Scale (FTSE). The findings showed that the faculty members felt efficacious in their work in the following criteria: communication skills, assessment, subject matter, curriculum and instruction, learning environment, and implementing technology. In other words, the faculty members rated their teaching efficacy in all criteria as good. The study also found a relatively high positive correlation between criteria of teaching efficacy, and some significant differences for faculty members with different backgrounds. For example, faculty members with more than 20 years’ experience had a good assessment of skills in comparison with other groups. Faculty members in the education discipline had greater efficacy than their counterparts in some or even all dimensions of teaching efficacy.

In this study, the reasons for faculty members to start a research paper, the factors they consider when determining the research methods, whether they prefer to use any particular research method, the parts of their research with which they have difficulty, their feelings about the research during the research process, and the challenges they face while conducting research were examined. The basis of this study was a case study. The research study group consists of 19 faculty members who work in the education faculty of a university in Türkiye. Research data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using content analysis. According to the findings of the study, faculty members start a research paper with the intention of satisfying their curiosity, solving a problem, filling gaps in the field, contributing to the field, and meeting needs. Faculty members give careful consideration to the problem at hand when deciding on the research methods. Almost all faculty members prefer to primarily use a particular research method. In their research, faculty members have the most difficulty with the methods, introduction, and discussion sections, respectively. It has been determined that the predominant emotions faculty members experience during the research process are mainly excitement, pleasure/enjoyment, boredom, happiness, and curiosity. During their research, faculty members often run into problems with technology, funding, bureaucracy, getting their research published, and managing their time.

This study aims to identify factors that influence the adoption of artificial intelligence in teaching and learning environments in Saudi universities in light of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, as well as proposals that effectively support the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in Saudi universities' teaching and learning environments. The study employs a qualitative approach based on a semi-structured interview, with the participation of 17 faculty members from Saudi universities specialising in educational technology. According to the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, the study's findings show that there are four aspects that affect how artificial intelligence is adopted in teaching and learning settings in Saudi universities. The facilitating conditions rank first in terms of positive impact, followed by performance expectancy in second, effort expectancy in third, and social influence in fourth place. The study makes a number of recommendations to encourage the use of artificial intelligence in Saudi universities, including teaching faculty members how to use artificial intelligence in the classroom, emphasising the benefits of implementing AI for educational leaders, offering AI tools, programmes, and technical support, as well as offering faculty members incentives and promoting scientific research in the area of AI in higher education. KEYWORDS Educational technology, E-learning, education, higher education, integration, Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT)

Background:Clinical evaluation is a critical component of nursing education, as it assesses nursing students' essential clinical competencies during their supervised clinical experiences and ensures safe and competent nursing practices. Globally, studies have revealed that nurse educators often find it challenging to fail or report students who demonstrate unsatisfactory clinical performance. These challenges arise at various levels, including student, personal, and institutional factors. In Pakistan, however, no studies have been conducted to discuss the challenges associated with failure to fail students with unsatisfactory clinical performance in nursing educational institutions. Given the significance of this issue, a study was needed to explore the perceptions and experiences of clinical educators, including faculty members and clinical preceptors, regarding this phenomenon. This study specifically aimed to understand these perceptions and experiences in the context of a private school of nursing and midwifery in Karachi, Pakistan. Methodology: A qualitative descriptive exploratory design was used, with data collected from 12 clinical preceptors and faculty members at the private school of nursing and midwifery, Karachi, Pakistan, through semi-structured interviews. Data was analyzed using Creswell’s [1] content analysis steps. Results: Five major themes evolved from data analysis: (i) identification of unsatisfactory behaviours during clinical performance; (ii) system based challenges faced by faculty members and clinical preceptors that hinder their decision; (iii) emotional challenges faced by faculty members and clinical preceptors that hinder their decision; (iv) creating possibilities of hand-holding of students; (v) way forward for overcoming critical challenges faced by faculty members and clinical preceptors. Conclusion: The study revealed several challenges faced by clinical educators in evaluating nursing students in clinical settings and dealing with the failure to fail students who do not meet satisfactory performance levels. It also proposes strategies to address these challenges and ensure the production of safe and competent nurses for society.

RIO GRANDE VALLEY, the Robert C. Vackar College of Business and Entrepreneurship, School of Accountancy invites applications from

Background and purposeRecruitment and retention of competent faculty members are important in maintaining and improving the quality of education and research performance of universities. The aim of the present study was to find out the faculty members’ views, experiences, and attitudes to identify the reasons for faculty attrition and retention in regional medical schools in Iran.MethodsIn this qualitative study, we used a content analysis method. The participants included 12 faculty members who had been transferred to type I universities, four faculty members who had applied for transfer, four with more than 10 years of experience and working in the type 3 universities with no intention to be transferred. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews, which were conducted either face-to-face or via phone calls. The interview was developed for this study (Supplementary file). To measure the trustworthiness of the data, we evaluated four components of credibility, transferability, dependability, and conformability, as proposed by Lincoln and Guba.ResultsThe findings were classified into three categories and 14 subcategories. The first category was “retention facilitators” including four subcategories of facilitated communication, proximity to major universities, gaining experience, and support by authorities. The second category was “retention threats” including six subcategories of social infrastructure, individual dimension, occupation dimension, economic dimension, sense of respect, and executive management. The third category was “retention strategies” which included four subcategories of recruitment and promotion processes, inter-university collaboration with type I universities, facilitation of the scientific growth, and fulfilment of the safety needs.ConclusionSeveral factors play a role in the faculty members’ retention in regional medical schools in Iran. Authorities can create a more positive environment by devising a suitable reward system, supporting academic activities, and increasing the level of faculty autonomy practically to develop a sense of belonging among them and reduce the intention to be transferred among their human resources.

This study explores how nursing students address patients' fundamental needs during their internships, identifying key processes and challenges. The Fundamentals of Care framework emphasizes a holistic, person-centered approach to nursing by addressing patients' physical, psychosocial and relational needs. However, its integration into nursing education remains limited, with a stronger focus on technical competencies rather than fundamental care. Qualitative descriptive study. The study was conducted within the FoC-Form project in northern Italy. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with first- and second-year nursing students following their internships. Thematic analysis was applied to identify emerging themes and patterns. Four themes emerged: personal resources, care dynamics, contextual features and characteristics of the internship program. Students highlighted the importance of time management, relational aspects and mentoring in delivering fundamental care. Differences between first- and second-year students wereobserved in their clinical reasoning and approach to patient-centered care. Organizational factors such as workload and staffing also influenced their ability to meet fundamental needs. This study highlighted the critical role of mentorship and organizational support in fostering the integration of the Fundamentals of Care framework in nursing practice. Findings suggest the need for curriculum enhancements that balance technical training with the relational and holistic aspects of patient care. Nursing leadership should prioritize creating supportive environments that facilitate fundamental care practices.