Faculty Development Should Be More Than a Workshop

Faculty development often begins with a familiar format: a workshop, webinar, presentation, or professional development day.

These activities can introduce new ideas, create valuable conversations, and expose faculty to emerging approaches. But a single event does not necessarily translate into lasting changes in teaching or academic practice.

The more important question for institutions is not simply: “What training should we offer?”

It is: “What capabilities are we trying to develop, and how will they strengthen our students, programs, and institution?”

From Professional Development Events to Faculty Development Strategy

Higher education is changing quickly. Faculty are navigating new technologies, evolving student expectations, changing approaches to assessment, new delivery models, and increasing pressure to keep curriculum relevant.

These changes make faculty development increasingly important as an institutional capability rather than an occasional activity.

Research on faculty development has long emphasized the importance of ongoing professional learning. Faculty development has also been described as a strategic mechanism for supporting institutional quality and organizational change.

A more intentional approach connects development activities to what faculty actually need to do differently—and to what the institution is trying to accomplish.

Five Ways to Make Faculty Development More Meaningful

Move From Attendance to Application

One of the simplest ways to rethink faculty development is to reconsider how success is measured.

Attendance numbers and participant satisfaction can provide useful information, but they primarily tell institutions whether people participated and how they perceived the experience.

They do not necessarily reveal whether anything changed afterward.

Evaluation of teaching-related professional development can go further by examining longer-term value and impact before, during, and after development activities.

Institutions might therefore ask whether faculty development contributed to changes such as:

Faculty Development as a Continuous Cycle

Professional learning can create greater value when it is viewed as a cycle rather than a single event.

A faculty member might participate in a development session, apply a new approach within a course, reflect on the results, discuss the experience with colleagues, and then refine the approach.

That process turns professional development from an event into professional learning.

Faculty Development Should Reflect Institutional Context

Not every institution needs the same faculty development agenda.

A university expanding online programs may need to strengthen faculty capabilities in digital course design and online pedagogy. An institution redesigning academic programs may need development focused on curriculum mapping, learning outcomes, and assessment.

Another institution may be navigating generative AI and need faculty conversations around responsible use, assessment design, academic integrity, and AI-enabled teaching.

This is why professional development is most useful when it begins with institutional context rather than a generic list of training topics.

The AI Era Makes Faculty Capability Even More Important

Artificial intelligence provides a clear example of why ongoing faculty development matters.

AI is not simply introducing another educational technology. It is prompting institutions to reconsider assessment, curriculum, academic integrity, teaching practices, and the capabilities graduates may need.

Faculty need opportunities to explore these developments critically, understand both possibilities and limitations, and determine how new approaches fit within their disciplines and institutional context.

As technologies and teaching practices continue to evolve, faculty development cannot reasonably be treated as something that is completed once.

Development Can Strengthen More Than Individual Faculty

Faculty development is often discussed in terms of individual growth. That matters—but its potential institutional value is broader.

When professional learning is connected to academic priorities, it can contribute to stronger courses, more coherent programs, improved assessment practices, greater collaboration, and a stronger culture of teaching and learning.

This is where faculty development becomes part of institutional development.

The institution is not simply providing faculty with additional knowledge. It is building the collective capability required to respond to change and improve academic practice over time.

From Workshop to Institutional Capability

Workshops will continue to have an important place in faculty development. The issue is not the workshop itself.

The issue is what happens around it—and what happens afterward.

Institutions can create greater value by connecting professional development to priorities, giving faculty opportunities to apply what they learn, encouraging reflection and collaboration, and examining evidence of what changes as a result.

The shift is subtle but important:

From delivering professional development to developing institutional capability.

That is where faculty development can contribute most meaningfully to stronger teaching, stronger academic programs, and stronger institutions.