Perception and Preferences of Faculty for Online Learning

Online learning now depends more on the ability of educators and trainers to tutor and support learners online than on the technology itself.” Dr. Ian Heywood, 2000 World Open Learning Conference and Exhibition, Birmingham, England. Online learning has been widely accepted as a growth strategy for degree programs since it can also attract working adults by providing convenience and flexibility both in terms of location and scheduling. As in the design of any system, customers’ (i.e. students’) needs should come first for a successful program implementation. On the other hand, often a secondary or neglected aspect is the needs and preferences of faculty for teaching online classes. The purpose of this study is to assess the perception of faculty towards online courses compared to the traditional on-campus courses, and to understand their preferences for different online course delivery techniques. Differences between different disciplines, including Engineering Management, are also investigated. The results of a survey study conducted among faculty are presented here to answer these research questions. The results show that there are variations among disciplines, thus an online learning program needs to be designed to address not only the needs of different types of learners from different disciplines but also preferences of faculty. We are going to also report some of the initial experiences of a recent Online MS Degree in Engineering Management that was established as a strategic growth initiative at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Introduction Motivation: Distance education seems to be an innovative and educationally progressive idea with many benefits. So no wonder that more and more universities try to be part of this trend. With the advances in technology, the possibilities to create great online classes have multiplied. According to the Sloan Consortium (A Consortium of Institutions and Organizations Committed to Quality Online Education) website: “For the past several years, online enrollments have been growing substantially faster than overall higher education enrollments” They also give some numbers to prove this statement: • During Fall 2006, e.g. there were almost 3.5 million students taking at least one online course, which is almost 20% of all US higher education students. This number is almost a 10% increase from the year before. • The overall growth rate for higher education student population is about 1.5%, while for online enrollments it is 9.7%. A more recent analysis of the twenty leading Engineering Management (EMGT) Programs by Ozelkan and Galambosi have shown that EMGT enrollment in universities deploying distance education is 53% higher than the ones not deploying distance education. Also these programs that leverage distance education grant 78% more degrees per year compared to the programs without distance education. Seeing these numbers gives a definite strong motivation for institutions to join in the online learning and teaching experience. Recently, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte) has made a major move towards online learning by investing in online learning information technology infrastructure and giving out competitive research grants. Several departments in colleges of Arts and Architecture, Computing and Informatics, Education, Engineering, Health and Human Services and Liberal Arts and Sciences have started offering online courses and online programs. Accordingly, the Systems Engineering and Engineering Management (SEEM) Program has also decided to jump on the online bandwagon. Online delivery has been selected as a strategic initiative, which resulted in the establishment of an Online MS in Engineering Management that started during the Fall of 2009. Scope: This study is an extension of the work presented in Ozelkan and Galambosi, who studied preferences of engineering and EMGT students towards online learning techniques. They have shown that student preferences vary depending on the engineering discipline, and EMGT graduate students are one of the most interested in online learning. The current paper focuses on the faculty perspectives instead, and tries to answer the following three research questions: 1. What are faculty’s preferences for different online teaching techniques?; 2. What is the perception of faculty towards online courses compared to the traditional on-campus courses?; 3. How do factors such as department or discipline affect the online teaching preferences? In order to address these research questions, a survey has been conducted at UNC Charlotte among the online teaching faculty, and the results of this survey are analyzed and presented here. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: after presenting a brief literature review about some basic findings and challenges of online learning, the survey study and analysis is presented. Then we share some Online teaching experiences from an Engineering Management Program. The final section summarizes the main findings of our analysis. Literature Review As the demand increases towards global online programs and courses, many guidelines and papers have been published on how to efficiently create an online learning environment (see e.g. Bender). Since a good literature review can be found in Ozelkan and Galambosi, here we will provide a very brief glance at some relevant literature. Importance of proper online learning infrastructure is described by Tserenjav and LaPraire and Hinson. Some guidelines on how to conduct better online classes and creation of an effective online learning environment are discussed for example, by Caron et al. , Durrington et al. and Wang. Attitudes toward online education are examined by Uzunboylu, McMahon et al. and Ropp. Dennen et al. summarizes their findings as some “tips” for instructors to adopt best practices: 1. instructors need to reply questions and give feedback in a timely manner; 2. instructors need to show that they are present in the online classrooms on a regular basis; 3. instructors need to communicate their expectations clearly. As the literature review shows above, online learning can be an effective learning approach but needs to be carefully planned and adopted to ensure success. It also requires strategies, preparations and techniques different from the on-campus classrooms. The study presented here compliments the previous studies as it answers additional related questions about online learning related to the perception of faculty towards online teaching and online teaching tools and techniques. Survey Analysis The survey that is provided in the Appendix is composed of four parts to address the research questions stated earlier: Part 1: Consent (question 1) Part 2: General Questions about the Participants (questions 2-8), Part 3: Questions Related to Online Learning Background (questions 9-14), Part 4: Questions Related to Online Teaching Preferences (questions 15-30), This survey has been implemented online using SurveyShare.com. Next, we are going to describe the main parts of the survey and the corresponding findings. Survey Part 2: General Questions about the Participants Demographics In this part of the survey, the faculty participants begin by answering a series of general questions about their gender, age group, race, department, full time/part time work, tenure status and position they hold. UNC Charlotte has currently 118 faculty members teaching online courses in six colleges: Arts & Architecture, Computing & Informatics, Education, Engineering, Health & Human Services, and Liberal Arts & Sciences. 62 of them replied to the survey yielding a 53 % response rate. Based on the survey results, the demographics of the participating faculty shown in Figure 1 indicate that the majority of the respondents were female (67%), ages 41-50 (33%), dominantly Caucasian (90%), mostly from the College of Education (37%, Engineering faculty was 15% of the respondents), most of them work full-time (62%), most are tenure-track or tenured (58%), and most are Assistant Professors (26%) and Associate Professors (24%). African American 3% Asian 7% Caucasian 90% Race <30 2%