1 Introduction

Faculty members are the most important resource of any academic institution. As such, faculty development programs are essential in supporting and improving the educational excellence of this invaluable resource. Wilkerson and Irby [1] state, “Academic vitality is dependent upon faculty members’ interest and expertise; faculty development has a critical role to play in promoting academic excellence and innovation.”

While it was once assumed that a competent health care practitioner would naturally be an effective teacher, it is now acknowledged that preparation for teaching is necessary [2]. By developing faculty members’ skills in teaching, mentorship, research, and leadership, educational institutions can achieve their goals and visions. Although the responsibility for such development falls largely on the faculty members themselves, institutional leaders also bear the moral and professional responsibility to support the growth of those faculty members they have recruited and hired [3]. This is important especially with the increasing complexity of healthcare delivery and the need to develop new approaches to teaching and learning that would foster students’ learning in diverse settings.

At KSU, our goal is to enable faculty to meet their goals as scholars and teachers so as to achieve innovation and educational excellence. The following sections discuss the strategic steps and initiatives proposed to achieve this goal.

2 Strategic Goal 5: Promoting and Supporting Distinguished and Innovative Educational Excellence and Scholarship Among Faculty

Based on multiple meetings, seminars, and workshops among the key faculty members, educators, consultants, student representatives, and other relevant stakeholders, this goal was developed. The goal was founded on the crucial role of faculty members in HSCs on achieving educational excellence by preparing and training them in the latest principles of learning and teaching strategies. Several initiatives were proposed to achieve this goal. These are outlined below:

3 Objective (Initiative) 5.1: To Collaborate with the Deanship of Skills Development

This initiative’s strategy is presented in Table 13.1. It states the need for collaboration with Skills Development Deanship to reach the ultimate goal, which is to support distinguished and innovative educational excellence and scholarship among faculty. Missions of the Skills Development Deanship include drawing up the future strategies necessary to raise the skills of faculty members to achieve excellence and creativity in teaching and learning and developing faculty members’ ability to design and develop courses and transform them into electronic content. Faculty development is an ongoing effort whereby universities sustain faculty vitality [4]. This can be achieved by cultivating professional and personal development of faculty at all levels. Collaboration between different entities involved in faculty development is therefore essential. Collaboration should aim to provide contemporary vision of educational leadership, facilitate academic collaborations and educational innovations across the university, and invest on the full capacity of faculty to achieve excellence in educational scholarship. The required timeframe and budget for this and the other initiatives in this section depend on available manpower and resources, which will be studied and decided as a second phase.

Table 13.1 Strategic plan for collaboration with the Deanship of Skills Development
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4 Objective (Initiative) 5.2: To Develop and Support the Utilization of Educational Materials by Faculty Members

According to the KSU designed strategic plan, the strategy of this initiative has been planned as shown in Table 13.2. It suggests the need for developing educational materials that would support faculty members in improving their teaching skills.

Table 13.2 Strategic plan for developing and providing faculty members with educational resources
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In line with the previous initiative (2.1) in Chap. 10 “provide learning theory resources,” educational resources are vital for faculty development, since it offers not only literature findings, but also practical ideas and tips that faculty members can use throughout their teaching practice. These resources might be digital or non-digital and can be used for learning, education, or training. Non-digital educational materials may include textbooks, journals, and course-materials on CDs or other forms of storage. Digital educational materials may include portals that provide relevant links or URLs, curricular material developed by other faculty or institutions, encyclopedia, data archives, videos and films, images or visual materials, simulations and animations, personal online diaries (blogs), mailing list/forums, online book, presentation, publication, how-to articles, reference resources and manual, etc.

An example of an online digital library available for KSU faculty is the Saudi Digital Library [5]. The library provides to all Saudi universities one umbrella, through which students and researchers can have free access to more than 300 international publishers, and more than (310,000) full e-books in various scientific specialization including other commercially available resources such as the Education Resources Information Center [6], composed of more than 1.3 million bibliographic records. It is the world’s largest educational database that is used by teachers, researchers, education professionals, and policy makers around the world. It contains more than 1.4 million records from all areas of education and links to more than 337,000 full-text documents. Many documents, from research reports to curriculum guides, pamphlets to conference papers, are also included. Another database resource is EBSCO Health [7], which is one of the leading providers of evidence-based clinical decision support solutions, healthcare business intelligence, and peer-reviewed medical research information for the healthcare industry. Also, Ovid [8] is one of the world’s leading medical, academic, and corporate institutions that help librarians, clinicians, researches, students, instructors, and other healthcare professionals find the information they need to make critical decisions that improve patients’ care. In addition to the SDL, each academic institute will choose resources that match their needs and source for their financial support. Another useful resource is called MedEdPORTAL [9], founded in 2005. It is a MEDLINE-indexed, open-access journal of teaching and learning resources in the health professions published by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), in partnership with the American Dental Education Association. MedEdPORTAL publications are stand-alone, complete teaching or learning modules that have been implemented and evaluated with medical or dental trainees or practitioners. Each submission is reviewed by editorial staff and external peer reviewers using a standardized review instrument grounded in the tenets of educational scholarship. It is a great resource of toolkits, courses, and modules that were largely applied in HSCs. Such resources would expand faculty members’ knowledge of the profession, broaden their teaching horizons, and give them a lifelong resource for improving professional competence.

In order to facilitate the execution of this initiative, the responsible bodies should formulate a task force committee consisting of expert educationists, librarians, and IT personnel who will make a sharing and unifying core educational resource for all HSCs.

5 Objective (Initiative) 5.3: To Provide a Listing of Courses

This initiative’s strategy is presented in Table 13.3. Coinciding with previous initiatives to provide faculty members with learning resources, this initiative focuses on giving them list of courses on the best practices of teaching. In KSU, the Deanship of Skills Development provides the faculty members each semester with full list of various courses that can be a great opportunity for faculty members to enhance their skills in different aspects such as teaching, leadership, and management. However, each HSC might also provide their faculty members with needs-based list of courses. So, it can gather all available courses (national and international) and make lists to be sent to faculty members for subscription. Also, HSCs can provide courses that add specific skills to the faculty members needed for their roles in college. The action plan for this initiative starts with needs assessment data. Based on the results, a list of selected courses—offered by authoritative national and international institutions—will be presented to faculty members. A general needs assessment study was conducted in HSCs to evaluate faculty perception and readiness to engage in initiatives toward excellence revealed emphasis on teaching, learning and assessment, research and development, and graduate education [10].

Table 13.3 Strategic plan for providing a listing of courses
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6 Objective (Initiative) 5.4: To Foster the Utilization of Online Courses

The strategy for this initiative is summarized in Table 13.4. Continuing with the pervious initiative, there are more resources in online learning, e.g., providing useful links to improve skills through self-study and practice. Currently, there are online courses provided by prestigious institutions such as Harvard, MIT, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford. The courses are provided free and through online learning platforms such as edX [11], Coursera [12], and Stanford Online—Stanford Center for Professional Development [13]. Also, there is a Saudi Arabian online learning platform named “Rwaq” [14], an Arabic platform for open education. It is a personal project founded in (2013) that provides courses in all educational fields. KSU can make its own platform for all online courses provided that this initiative is supported and executed for this program through the center of excellence in interprofessional education (CEIPE), Chap. 1.

Table 13.4 Strategic plan for fostering the utilization of online courses
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7 Objective (Initiative) 5.5: To Train Faculty in Educational Scholarship

This initiative’s strategy is presented in Table 13.5. It highlights the need for informing faculty members of the concept of scholarship and its importance on their career path. To be a scholar, it means to be able to produce creative work that has value, and its integrity is measured by the ability to think, learn, and communicate [15]. Previously, the concept of scholarship on the academic field was based on research and publication. However, in 1990 Ernest Boyer—President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching—called for the need to reform the concept of scholarship. He argues, “what we now have is more restricted view of scholarship, one that limits it to a hierarchy of functions” [15]. Educational scholarship refers to any material, product, or resource originally developed to fulfill a specific educational purpose that has been successfully peer-reviewed and is subsequently made public through appropriate dissemination for use by others. It must be made public, peer-reviewed, reproduced, and built on by others. The Boyer’s paradigm includes the following four overlapping and interdependent domains of scholarship: Discovery, Integration, Application, and Teaching. Basic research has come to be viewed as the first and most essential form of scholarly activity, with other functions flowing from it. Scholars are academics who conduct research, publish, and then perhaps convey their knowledge to students or apply what they have learned. The latter functions grow out of scholarship, and they are not to be considered part of it. However, knowledge is not necessarily developed in such a linear manner. The arrow of causality can, and frequently does, point in both directions. Theory surely leads to practice, but practice also leads to theory. And teaching, at its best, shapes both research and practice. Viewed from this perspective, a more comprehensive, more dynamic understanding of scholarship can be considered, one in which the rigid categories of teaching, research, and service are broadened and more flexibly defined [15]. By 1992, numerous medical and dental schools had announced their acceptance of the new form of educational scholarship [16]. They even encouraged faculty members to provide evidence of their educational scholarship in portfolio-like documents. As of 2000, more recognition is shown to this concept with linking it to academic promotion [17].

Table 13.5 Strategic plan for training faculty in the concept of scholarship
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This initiative aims to provide faculty members with training and detailed advice on the new concept of scholarship and how to utilize it to build up their professional career. To train faculty, collaboration between medical educationists, experts in educational scholarship both within and outside the university is needed.

8 Objective (Initiative) 5.6: To Provide Support for Educational Research

This initiative’s strategy is presented in Table 13.6. Research is a major part of academic development. In the Lancet Commission Report for Health Professionals for a New Century [18], it is stated that expenditures for health professional education and related research are less than 2% of the total health expenditures worldwide, which explains much of the glaring educational deficiencies that do so much harm to health system performance. Therefore, expenditures for health professions education and research should be at least doubled over the next 5 years of any new educational initiative. This initiative targets the culture of educational research at KSU by improving research environment in education and increasing support services for researchers, e.g., assistance in identifying and preparing of research proposals and grant applications. This requires availability of digital and non-digital library resources, faculty development and consultations regarding research methods, data collection and analysis, support for publication and dissemination of research results, and recognition of research achievements. This also includes providing incentives and rewards for publishing in professional educational, and not to be only limited to basic and clinical sciences research. Ready facilities and support for conducting professional education research in each HSC are required for this initiative.

Table 13.6 Strategic plan for supporting educational research
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The proposed action plan is to: start prioritizing the university’s educational research agenda based on published educational research and new research needs assessment; ensure individual and institutional capacity to access, use, and conduct research; encourage research collaboration through networking and partnerships between and among faculty researchers and educators across KSU to address priority research needs; communicate information about existing and new research activities and findings; contribute to the national and international body of research knowledge about educational policies, programs, and practices; and support, recognize, and reward scholarship of educational research through grants, fellowships, awards, and promotions based on educational research publications and contributions. Developing an active peer review system within the academic community would be another useful step, in addition to creating an educational research support unit that aids researchers in writing grant proposals, finding literature, analyzing data, and proofreading of manuscripts. Organizing annual educational research symposia, regular journal clubs (e.g., monthly), would be an ideal faculty support as well.

9 Objective (Initiative) 5.7: To Develop and Suggest Ways to Recognize Innovation in Teaching

This initiative’s strategy is presented in Table 13.7. It focuses on the necessity of innovation in education. Being an innovative teacher is about looking beyond what we currently do well, identifying new ideas in teaching and learning environments and putting them into practice. Development of new and evidence-based ways to facilitate and assess learning as education is in constant change. In addition, today’s students are different and want learning that meets their individual needs and ambitions. They challenge the educational organization to be innovative and to make learning environments more challenging, fulfilling, and rewarding [19].

Table 13.7 Strategic plan for suggesting ways of identifying innovative ideas in teaching
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Therefore, the role of an organization in supporting innovation is vital by providing the opportunities and resources to innovate. Moreover, recent research highlights the role of organizational culture in facilitating organizations to transform innovative activity into tangible performance and routine practice [20].

The proposed action plan that would support innovation in professional education starts with aligning innovations in education with mission and strategic goals of the university. This is followed by identifying the priorities, budgets, and reward systems that would enhance the culture of innovation. Another step is following up innovative ideas by improving its usability and setting policies and actions to support continuous development and transference of innovation. Finally, there is evaluation of the success of innovative ideas against a set of criteria.

10 Summary

Excellence in teaching, learning , and assessment requires faculty who are motivated and well prepared for their tasks. At KSU, our goal is to promote educational excellence among faculty members. This can be accomplished by providing them with educational resources and lists of courses, training them on educational excellence and scholarship, supporting their educational research and innovations, and collaboration with the Deanship of Skills Development.