Exploring the influential factors of online professional learning completion of college teachers from the Global South in an international training program

Abstract

Online courses emerged as an important mode for large-scale cross-national teachers' professional learning. However, with most previous research on teacher online professional learning (TOPL) focusing on resource-rich and technology-advanced regions, little attention has been paid to the factors influencing the online learning completion of college teachers in Global South contexts. This study aimed to explore the facilitators and inhibitors of this population's online learning completion in a cross-country program. In seven courses, individual, institutional, and country-level data of 3529 teacher-learners from 99 countries were collected. Forty-two learners were further interviewed. We adopted hierarchical linear modeling to analyze the nested relationships among the individual/institutional/country-level factors and course completion. Results revealed several significant associations between individual/institutional/country-level variables and course completion, as well as several moderation effects. Interviews complemented the analytics results. This study uncovers influential factors of TOPL in Global South contexts and provides practical implications for college teachers' online professional learning. © 2024 Elsevier Inc.

Keywords

Author Keywords

College teachers Cross-country program Facilitators and inhibitors Online professional learning The global south context

Index Keywords

Online learning Teachers' Federated learning Contrastive Learning Professional learning Adversarial machine learning College teachers Cross-country program Facilitator and inhibitor Influential factors International training Online professional learning The global south context

Author Affiliations

Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Center for Higher Education Research, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Funding & Acknowledgements

Southern University of Science and Technology, SUSTech

This research is supported by the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong S.A.R., China (No. HKU 17621123) and a doctoral scholarship funded by Southern University of Science and Technology, China.

Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee, 研究資助局

Grant: HKU 17621123

This research is supported by the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong S.A.R., China (No. HKU 17621123) and a doctoral scholarship funded by Southern University of Science and Technology, China.

Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee, 研究資助局

This research is supported by the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong S.A.R., China (No. HKU 17621123) and a doctoral scholarship funded by Southern University of Science and Technology, China.

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Exploring the influential factors of online professional learning completion of college teachers from the Global South in an international training program

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