Educational institutions have to spend considerable amount of effort to keep up with the rapid changes and demands in the society. According to Camblin and Steger (2000), the continuous changes in higher education have an effect on faculty members, both personally and professionally. Correspondingly, Caffarella and Zinn (1999) underline the change in the dynamics that have effect on faculty members alter repetitively. Therefore, in this ever changing environment, expectations from the universities are high. Specially, the experiences of faculty members in their early career are characterized by stress, pressure, and uncertainty (Rice, Sorcinelli & Austin, 2000) due to these expectations. Faculty development is of great significance to increase the quality and success of higher education (Camblin, & Steger, 2000) to meet these expectations. Ozvaris, Aslan, Hodoglugil and Sayek (2004) stated the importance of reassessing faculty members’ needs in improving the quality of teaching. Similarly, Opre, Zaharie, and Opre (2008) emphasized needs assessment as a critical step for providing professional development for faculty members. Likewise, Eleser and Chauvin (1998) pointed out that effective faculty development programs need to identify the goals and needs of academics in an organizational setting. Hence, understanding needs of faculty members is a vital step in order to provide approppriate faculty development practice.

According to Austin (2002), the academic career starts with the graduate studies. She also points out the lack of organized opportunities for graduate students to increase required skills and abilities for their future profession. Similarly, Halifax (2008) examines the literature about the needs of graduate students from different countries. Accordingly, he concludes that, in graduate studies for academic positions, students are either mostly guided through their research or only teaching skills, and their needs for their future and career development are disregarded. Therefore, it is essential to asses early career faculty members needs  in order to provide appropriate support during their graduate study process. The specific research question that guides this study is: 

•  How do early career faculty members’ (research assistants) perceive their professional development needs in regard to information and communication technology (ICT) integration into their profession?

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