Background. Faculty development programs are often time and resource intensive. In order to accommodate time constrained clinicians a limited time commitment faculty development program was developed and was shown to be effective in improving participant’s scholarly productivity. Objectives. The objective of this study was to assess participants’ perceptions of why the faculty development program was effective in promoting scholarship in education. Methods. In-depth semistructured interviews of course participants were conducted a year after completing a faculty development program. The interviews were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. The transcriptions were coded independently by the investigators for dominant themes. The investigators held coding meetings to further refine the themes and discrepancies were handled by referring to the transcripts and reaching consensus. Results. The participants’ satisfaction with the course as described in the interviews correlated with the early satisfaction surveys. Reasons offered for this impact fell into four broad categories: course content, course format, social networking during the course, and the course facilitation coaching strategies to achieve goals. Conclusions. Course focusing on the process, experiential learning, and situating the course facilitator in the role of a functional mentor or coach to complete projects can be effective in facilitating behaviour change after faculty development programs. 1. Background Faculty development is seen as an imperative for every medical school [1]; however, there remains a paucity of evidence regarding its effectiveness [2]. Furthermore, there has been a call to evaluate faculty development effectiveness beyond outcomes, that is, to explore why an intervention is effective in order to better consider its applicability and transferability to other contexts [3]. Some “key features” to effective faculty development programs designed to improve teaching effectiveness have been identified [2]. There has been a call, however, for more qualitative studies to explore the complexities of these interventions and for evaluation to include faculty development interventions targeted at other faculty roles such as education scholarship [4]. The production and dissemination of education scholarship are critical to the education mission of Academic Health Science Centers (AHSCs). Such work ensures new knowledge is generated in the field of medical education, it promotes the delivery of high quality medical training through evidence based practices, and it facilitates academic
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