Reviewing the Literature on Professional Development for Higher Education Tutors in the Work-From-Home Era: Is it Time to Reconsider the Integration of Social Media?

Abstract

AbstractSet in the context of higher education, this paper focuses on professional development-related challenges faced by teachers and specifically how these difficulties have been exacerbated by the recent Work-From-Home policy. The study investigates how the integration of social media into educators’ professional development plans can support tutors in this new status quo and prepare them for similar situations in the future. A systematic review of literature, based on a methodological instrument called PRISMA, identified 28 relevant articles for detailed analysis from an initial pool of 65. This revealed that social media-enabled professional development should be promoted across universities. The benefits include social media’s potential to provide tutors with a bespoke experience, that is specific to their evolving needs. Also notable, is social media’s potential to clear physical and temporal hurdles, resulting in a significantly more extensive professional learning network. This leads to faculty who are likely to reap the benefits of networked learning, by using social media as the infrastructure through which to establish a higher volume of more geographically dispersed connections to like-minded individuals. Institutions will need to tackle hurdles, namely faculty resistance to using this novel platform, as well as the anxiety of participating in open online spaces. This should be addressed by pacing the integration of social media-enabled professional development and by blending it with the more established practice of face-to-face workshops. This hybrid model will provide time and support for sceptical teachers to make the transition towards the integration of social media into their PD.