Teachers’ beliefs about professional development and the use of collaborative online tools in higher educational settings

Teaching in higher education beyond the boundaries of face-to-face education is an evolving practiceincluding the integration of various technologies to support collaboration between learners andteachers. From a historical perspective the integration of such technologies in this practice hasafforded different time- and location-related conditions for collaboration. This development hasbrought new conditions for the practice of teaching in higher education. From being a practice mainlylocated at the university, teaching is possible to occur elsewhere; e.g., on the move, or from the homesetting. It has paved the way to introduce so called blended learning practices of teaching in highereducation. Such practice has been an emerging trend in the 21st century with an overall impact on thedesign of university courses. Applications, devices and networks that initially were used inexperimental distance education have later become natural parts of mainstream education, withblended learning as a standard concept in higher education. The rich plethora of information andcommunication technologies applied as tools to mediate learning and support teaching have created aneed for teachers’ professional development. The aim of this study is to present and discuss universityteachers’ perceptions and beliefs about how the supplementary training should be organised. Datawere gathered by semi-structured interviews at a department for Computer and System Science whereall seven interviewees teach in blended synchronous educational settings. The empirical material wereanalysed inductively by applying a thematic analysis method. Findings show that all courses have abasic common toolbox as well as an extended specific toolbox that both are continuously changing.This can be stressful and the formal teacher professional development is far from satisfying. Teacherscope with problems by consulting the collegium, a peer group where colleagues share experiences andassist each other in problem solving. Despite the constant pressure many teachers have creative ideasfor a further development of the blended synchronous learning concept. Many of the teachers in thisstudy see the continual attempts to implement these tools and experimenting with these tools in theirteaching as possibilities in their teaching as well as a source of professional development