Role of faculty development programs in improving teaching and learning

Faculty development programs (FDPs) have proven to be successful for improving teaching skills in higher education. This review article summarizes literature reviews and resource books on faculty development. It tackled why FDP is important, history of FDP in the past years, and questioned whether FDP produced any positive effect on students' academic achievement as well as the different methods to assess FDPs effectiveness. The review also discussed how to establish FDP, presented its ideal structure, features that make FDP effective, and outlined the barriers to its successful implementation as well as the future vision. This report also highlighted the situation of FDP in Saudi Arabia. Finally, the review concluded that professional FDPs produce promising outcomes in the learning and teaching practices and recommended that teachers in higher education should attend FDP training activities on regular basis and that the scope of planned FDPs should extend beyond the health professions discipline, to include social skills necessary for collaboration, professional growth as well as management, and leadership abilities.