Learning and teaching centers in higher education institutions: Management structure, organizational structure and technologies used

Globalization has brought many changes affecting education, shifting the main responsibilities of all educational institutions, especially higher education institutions. As a result of these changes, graduates as well as being a specialist in their fields, should be people who can acknowledge, use, develop and integrate digital technologies. In this case, the importance of increasing the quality of higher education institutions to reach the speed of digitalization cannot be denied. One of the dimensions of quality is teaching and learning process. It is recognized that students can easily use latest technologies during the learning process. On the other hand, change in the teaching process does not take place as fast as required, components of teaching have not changed for a long time and teaching continues to be traditional teacher-centered approach. The faculty members, who are responsible for teaching knowledge in line with the technology adoption, also started to make innovative changes in their teaching with the effect of digitization. Faculty being lifelong learners, who continuously develop themselves and renew their knowledge due to their academic careers. Faculty also play an important role in the effective use of technology in the teaching and learning process. In order to fulfill this task, it is important to integrate pedagogical and technological competence of faculty with today's requirements and their professional development in these topics. For this purpose, it may be good to start without wasting any time. In order to provide a higher quality and effective education, higher education institutions need to use technology in teaching and learning process and establish necessary institutional infrastructures to ensure faculty professional development. In order to serve the purpose of teaching and learning, faculty development centers have been established with different names to support learning and teaching process, in various public and private universities in Turkey since 2009. The management structure and organizational structure of such centers are strategic in terms of being successful and functional within the institution. This study is intended for professional development in teaching and learning process of teaching faculty members in higher education institutions in Turkey. The aim is to examine the management structure, organizational structure and technology usage of the teaching and learning center, unit, office and similar named institutional structures. Qualitative method was used in this study. Centers of all universities listed in Higher Education Council (HEC) are identified through a three staged process. In-depth interviews were conducted with and data were collected from the executives of the responding centers. As a result, it has been determined that Teaching and Learning Centers has started to be established recently, despite the Distance Education and Continuing Education Application and Research Centers which exists in almost all universities. Except pioneer centers, the majority of them were established in the recent years where all of these centers have futuristic plans. It was understood that most of them was connected and supported by the top management of the university and most of the burden was undertaken by the center directors, in relation to the management and organizational structure of centers. It is stated that the most important limitation is; to increase of awareness of the teaching staff about developing themselves in the field of technology and ensuring their participation in professional development activities.