We direct our attention towards online environments that support the development of universityprofessional capacities. This article reports on a six-week online capacity learning andtelementoring program at the Canary Universities. Firstly, we give our view of university teachingand learning. We then go on to present a number of theoretical viewpoints mainly from onlinetraining and mentorship perspectives. We structure our argument introducing concepts about thementor method. Simultaneously, we illustrate our empirical project with a case: University Teaching Professional Development (UTPD), a University training program that regards thedevelopment of curriculum and teaching capacities with reference to change within universityteaching programs. Finally, we discuss the results, which lead us to their improvement, showing thedifficulties between learning and practice of capacities within an online training course. Introduction see conclusion (text too long for this field)

Participants included thirty tenured professors and pretenure lecturers enrolled in the UTPD program. All volunteers met the following selection criteria: (a) University campus, (b) scientific field, and (c) professional merits. Of the 30 participants, 14 (46.7 per cent) were male and 16 (53.3 per cent) were female. More than one-third of the professoriate (36,7 per cent) were between the ages of 35 and 39, half were in the 40 to 49 age range, and only 9,9 per cent were older than 55. The mean age range was 40-44 years; ages ranged from twenty-four or less to fifty or more with a median between the age range of 35-39 to 40-44. All of the respondents were full-time faculty at the two public Canary Universities: La Laguna (ULL) and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC). Most of them had doctor degrees (76.7 per cent). Of the responding, one (3.3 per cent) held the rank of full professor, twenty (66.7 per cent) ‘titular’ professor or its equivalent, eight (26.7 per cent) adjunct appointment, and one (3.3 per cent) held other rank as a contract appointment. Of faculty participating, twenty-one (70 per cent) were tenured; nine (30 per cent) were not. Three underlying UTPD and e-mentoring process elements are attended: Planning, Organization and Assessment. Figure 1 illustrates the mentoring process. First, adequate planning facilitates participant selection by the ACECAU. Second, cross-university pairings is established. Third, participant dyads are assigned according to discipline areas. Fourth, the one-month online minicourse consists of twenty capacity lessons; the mentor module is composed of seven capacities. Fifth and finally, planning allows for early and clear communication of the mentoring program goals. The research questions with which we interrogated the evidence on curriculum and teaching and capacities were therefore as follows: • What are the curriculum and teaching capacity beliefs and needs of participants? • Are there significant differences among participants on opinions and attitudes toward curriculum and teaching capacities? • How do faculty who strive to learn their own professional curriculum and teaching capacities differ among them because of mentoring levels? Three types of statistical analyses guided the study. The first hypothesis was tested by descriptive statistics. Hypotheses 2 and 3 were tested at the 0.05 level of significance using twotailed tests. The hypotheses were as follows: Hypothesis No. 1. All participants will affirm perception of curriculum and teaching competency needs. 4 Hypothesis No. 2. There is statistically significant difference among participants’ opinions and attitudes toward curriculum and teaching capacities because of demographic and professional attributes, and mentoring levels. Hypothesis No. 3. There is statistically significant difference among participants’ learning of curriculum and teaching capacities because of mentoring levels.

INTRODUCTION: (Text too long for proposal info) Higher education in Spain is undergoing a deep change. Universities have to resolve the challenges represented by changes in the student profile, teaching and learning practices, new technologies, and new delivery mechanisms for new European sceneries. All Spanish Universities are now mainly concerned to developing and implementing learning capacities and teaching methods which focus on the encouragement of students’ learning. Even, some authors believe that students are devising the curriculum and teaching agenda for universities (Brancato, 2003). 2 The Canary Government has recommended that a new and recently created agency is to implement its University teaching evaluation and teacher accreditation reforms. The University Accreditation and Quality Evaluation Canary Agency (ACECAU) has set out a new quality and standards evaluation framework which is currently supporting quality teaching and building a new university wide community through teaching and learning in the Canary Islands higher education. Thus, the long-term goals of University Teaching Professional Development (UTPD) were clearly aligned with to those of other European higher institutions (Cox, 2004). Mentoring is a relationship in which experienced faculty work with less experienced teachers to stimulate both academic and personal development. It becomes a way of revealing the secrets of the teaching profession or discipline for others, a process-oriented relationship involving knowledge acquisition, application, and critical reflection (Zachary, 2002). Advantages of mentoring have been verified in a variety of settings that imply real gains for newcomers. Also, protégés have demonstrated improvements in teaching risk-taking, curriculum confidence, and disciplined professional capacities (Boyle and Boice, 1998). The conceptual basis for this study comes from three sources: online teacher development, curriculum and teaching capacities model, and telementoring. UTPD is a site using Moodle (http://gid.us.es:8083), a free, course management system, which had many different components in its design including: • The course outline (of which 20 curriculum and teaching capacities were ‘clickable’ to provide lesson information. They were observable and easily reached to faculty so they can comprehend and develop the required level of performance). • A schedule or calendar with dated for lessons, written assignments, and deadlines. • Icons to click for information on activities, multiple-choice questionnaires as formative and summative assessments and online quizzes. An assessment battery of instruments was used. • Modules to click for two forums, and rubrics for the assessment of the non-objective tasks, including discussions within the two forums. • Mentor conferencing by appropriate interaction (synchronous or asynchronous). • Digital portfolios for building a continuous assessment loop through the collection, analysis, and feedback of faculty data. • Study materials and resources, innovation readings, research projects and links to scientific articles on other websites. • A central ‘notice forum’ for up-to-date course information and urgent messages. • Icons to access e-mail and chat. • Icon to access online glossaries. All Spanish universities are turning to curriculum and teaching capacities as a framework for quantifying student learning. Even, the Canary Islands accrediting agency (ACECAU) has set an assessment policy by asking whether University institutional processes are in place to routinely evaluate the quality of teaching and curriculum based on evidence of student satisfaction. Actually, curriculum guidelines that would prescribe students’ levels of learning results evidence are undergoing as a useful means of addressing outcomes in teaching program accreditation reviews (Villar and Alegre, 2004). The use of curriculum and teaching capacities allows connecting the online course with related educational outcomes into seven modules. Table 1 summarizes the UTPD framework, including the component capacities for each of its modules. 3 Purpose of the Study A major purpose of this study is to assess the relative importance of personal and academic factors associated with both the UTPD evaluation and capacities learning. The study ought to elicit faculty perceptions about several UTPD program factors that might detract or enhance the likelihood that Canary universities’ faculty would take part in mentoring process. Finally, the study also sought to determine the faculty’s perception of how mentoring processes might benefit their learning. Hence, the specific aims of the study were as follows: • To assess if faculty involved in the online UTPD program mastered a series of curriculum and teaching capacities. • To analyze if faculty involved in the online mentoring UTPD course extended their professional roles as mentors and protégés. RESULTS The purpose of this study was to measure the impact of university teachers’ participation in a short-term online capacity program. The academic development unit web site UTPD includes a range of online courses which include a database of innovations, and a quality review of teaching and learning, as other on-line academic staff development sites (Kandlbinder, 2003). Our data strongly support the important involvement of participants. This study confirm previous findings in the university and mentor literature that capacity learning is an important factor to consider in efforts to initiate and sustain university teaching changes, as a natural part of university teacher development. It is also important that those facilitating University professional development be aware of the various curriculum and teaching capacities that interconnect within an online program. In this article, we have tried to document carefully the processes we used to assess online capacity learning and mentor skills. The key instrument design that we faced as program evaluators were similar to those written by other researchers: assessment capacities for the measurement of learning gains need to be aligned with the online program goals (Myford and Cline, 2001: 126). Essentially, six findings are noteworthy concerning assessment UTPD online faculty development program. Firstly, while hypothesis 1 was accepted, hypotheses 2 and 3 only were partially accepted. Secondly, there is still a need for constant renewal of program design and pedagogical content; which should include: Who should be recruited as a mentor? What are the boundaries of the communication and interaction mentor-protégé? What are the core capacities of mentoring? This suggests that online mentor education is a complex program involving capacities, processes and practice approaches. Thirdly, participants showed a greater increase in knowledge capacities at the outset of the study (they were involved in 2.737 activities). Besides, they were asked to notice their own interactions while using Moodle, and to comment on the suitability of the capacities for their own practices. Fourthly, scientific fields’ participants had a clear and different prior pedagogical knowledge. Also, they evaluated differently the quality of each capacity structure. Fifthly, the mentor-protégé relationship has been a short, but special type of shared experience. Acting as a mentor, participants were actively invested in shaping the protégé’s worldview and in developing the protégé’s program capacities. Sixthly, collaborative teaching discourse between peers evidence of how dyadic models (mentor-protégé) may be enabled using online platforms leading to distributed learning, as also have been provided by Russell and Perris (2003). 5 Seventhly, formative evaluation approaches was implemented in order to obtain regular feedback from the participants regarding their satisfaction with the capacity program. Finally, results of the current study are generalizable to University training mentoring interactions.