Distance education is continually evolving from a purely technological endeavour to a multidimensional academic experience involving several professional qualities and competences. These professional qualities and competences were explored in the context of the SMARTEL project (Erasmus+ KA2 SMARTEL https://smartel.pr.ac.rs/) whose objectives were to develop the technological and pedagogical infrastructures to renovate Distance Education in Western Balkan Universities. Thus, an extensive review of literature has been carried out about the readiness of educators and academics for digital education in terms of professional qualities and competences.

Professional qualities are idiosyncratic cognitive and affective processes that motivate action. These include epistemological beliefs, pedagogical conceptions and psychological factors that influence behaviour. Since these professional qualities are the sources and enablers of external professional practice, they are considered as first order readiness dimensions. The emergent second order dimensions make up the professional competence complement including pedagogical practice, learning design competence, digital competences, and awareness of and engagement with relevant environmental (institutional) factors.

This paper describes this 7-dimensional model about the readiness of educators (in this case academics) for distance education. This provided a framework to develop a survey about the professional qualities and competences of the academics from seven Western Balkan Universities involved in the SMARTEL project. Using the data collected from this survey, a needs analysis was carried out about the state of readiness of academics for distance education in terms of professional qualities and competences. Based on this needs analysis, a professional development programme was designed to prepare and train these academics for developing and managing distance education initiatives considering these professional qualities and competences. The paper elaborates on the professional learning and training proposals emerging from the needs analysis along the 7 dimensions.

Keywords: Distance Education, Readiness for digital education, professional development.