Faculty Development in the COVID and Post-COVID Eras: Lessons from an International Perspective

The paradigm shift induced by the COVID-19 pandemic challenged teaching practices in an unpredecented way. The sudden and often mandatory shift to hybrid and online teaching highlighted the crucial role of faculty development, which also had to be adapted to the new normal in its own ways of delivery. Among all the local faculty development initiatives settled from the beginning of the pandemic to support educators, and beyond obvious constraints raised by their context, some of them have represented an unexpected opportunity to rethink teaching and learning practices. Therefore, they can represent idea laboratories that might induce changes in these practices not only during the pandemic but also in the medium and long terms. However, these evolutions and their sustainability have to be assessed in a global context that includes structural aspects, such as those related to the higher education system, or cultural ones connected to resistance to change. This session will discuss the topic of the faculty development lessons learned or to be learned from the COVID-19 era through an international perspective, including examples coming from France, Japan, and Australia in a comparative approach. It will also showcase key factors that will lead the kind of scenario that teaching and learning practices will follow in the post-COVID era, in the model of restore/evolve/transform presented in the 2021 EDUCAUSE Top IT Issues.