Best practices in the training of faculty to teach online

Distance education is often used as a cost-efficient way to train employees. This research focuses on training for teaching online. A comprehensive literature review revealed the scarcity of scholarly work in this area. To determine best practices in training for teaching online, a faculty training program was examined and experts were interviewed. Both educational organizations and corporations offer online education programs, and there are enough similarities in the way in which these programs are presented to extrapolate the findings of this study to corporate training. This study found that successful online training programs are led by faculty trained to teach online. Training programs are successful when faculty have computing skills before enrolling in the training, are trained using the course delivery system with which they will be teaching, have ongoing institutional support, and are motivated to work in this environment. © 2006 Springer.