Needs Assessment for Faculty Development: A case study of applying focus group

Faculty Development(FD) play a significant role in improving teaching - learning process as higher education quality(HEQ). HED depends on quality of faculty members. It is expected that through planning and improvement the FD programmes the HED would be improved . Consequently, the more powerful faculty members are considered as the key of HED. Toward this ,it’s required to pay close attention to managing and planning faculty development system as part of human resources in higher education institutes. The aim of this study,was a need assessment for the FD in a large government university of Iran was conducted through a qualitative method and implemented through focus group interview.The sample included faculty members of the government university of Iran which obtained lowest and the highest scores in assessment of teaching by students in last semester. Focus groups were conducted and interviews separately arranged . The research question of faculty members was “ what are the faculty development needs? ”. Data were collected and classified. Categories of faculty needs were identified in three areas as follows: educational, research and communication. Finally, faculty members’ views on the role of organizational support in developing programmes and empowering professionals were discussed.The need are also classified to the two types of faculty members.