The substantial growth of online education has increased the demand for faculty who possess online teaching skills. Many institutions of higher learning offer training programs to teach faculty ways to facilitate online learning. However, the literature on online educations lacked studies demonstrating how those who complete training programs apply their newly acquired knowledge and skills. The purpose of this study was to investigate how online faculty apply the training principles and strategies learned in an online faculty-training program and how students perceive teaching effectiveness. Using a case study approach and collecting and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data determined the: (a) frequency with which faculty applied effective teaching practices learned in an online education training program; (b) barriers to using effective teaching practices in online teaching after completion of an online faculty-training program; and (c) perceptions of online students concerning faculty teaching effectiveness. The researcher used the Instructional Practices Inventory (IPI) to collect information from faculty concerning their online teaching strategies, including frequency and ease of use and proficiency of application. The researcher employed the Student Evaluation of Online Teaching Effectiveness survey (SEOTE) to determine student perception of teaching effectiveness. Data included follow-up faculty interviews, the IPI, and the SEOTE responses to create an in-depth investigation of the application of the strategies learned in the online faculty-training program. The IPI faculty survey identified the frequency of use, the ease of use, and level of proficiency of instructional strategies using the Seven Principles of Good Practice. Faculty tended to use principles that related to the online course they taught and identified time constraints as a major barrier to incorporating some of the instructional strategies. Means for instructional strategies were generally higher on ease of use and level of proficiency than they were on frequency of use. Follow-up faculty telephone interview confirmed this finding. The SEOTE results determined student perception of faculty use of the Seven Principles of Good Practice. Principle 3, active learning, ranked highest and Principle 2, cooperation among students, ranked lowest. Due to the small sample size, the finding of this study should not be generalized to other institutions.

The enormous growth of online learning creates the need to develop a set of standards and guidelines for fully online programs. While many guidelines do exist, web-based programs still fall short in the recognition, adoption, or the implementation of these standards. One consequence is the high attrition rates associated with web-based distance learning programs. This poor outcome has a negative impact on the perceived quality of these programs which in turn limits the resources that are made available to academic institutions for implementation. Faculty plays a significant role in this dilemma. While academic administrators strive to enhance their online offerings for a number of reasons, faculty are faced with a number of barriers that deter them from adapting to this mode of delivery. This report outlines how an in-depth analysis of these barriers was carried out. A mixed research synthesis design approach known as metasummary was used to synthesize the quantitative, qualitative, and mixed research studies that address the issue. The outcome of the synthesis was a set of solutions and recommendations that can be used to increase faculty buy-in and ownership of online learning. Regulatory bodies responsible for accrediting distance programs can benefit from these recommendations by including specific guidelines that explicitly consider the level of faculty satisfaction as a measurement of effectiveness when evaluating fully online programs.

This qualitative study examines expert instructors’ lived experienced with online pedagogy in order to (1) understand how teaching in a virtual environment influences pedagogical style, academic identity and student-instructor interactions and (2) to explore how the virtual teaching experience evolves as faculty continue to teach online. None of the existing empirical research has focused on accomplished instructors’ online teaching experiences and, as a result, there is very little information concerning how to sustain faculty approval, retain skilled instructors, provide adequate online teaching support and maintain a successful online learning enterprise over time (Coppola, et al., 2002; Bolliger & Wasilik, 2009; Betts, 2014). Using a constructivist design, this study employed interviews and content analysis techniques to explore the following research questions: 1) What challenges do experienced online faculty face when they teach in the virtual learning environment? 2) What new challenges have emerged as a result of their continued online teaching experience? 3) How do experienced instructors approach and address these challenges? Thirty-one self-identified experienced online instructors from across the nation and a variety of institutions participated. Findings show that continued online teaching experience has a profound impact on the way instructors perceive their pedagogical practice, their place in the academy and their role in students’ online learning experiences. The online environment presents instructors with a multitude of challenges. These challenges are complex and involve pedagogical issues as well as philosophical dilemmas that force instructors to reconsider their assumptions about teaching, learning and authority in the classroom. Wrestling with these issues puts instructors in a vulnerable position as they search for pragmatic solutions and simultaneously renegotiate their long-held academic assumptions and beliefs. The practical and philosophical challenges instructors experience in regards to their developing digital pedagogical practice, their changing relationship with students, and their evolving online academic identity are discussed as well as findings related to vulnerability in the online environment. Implications for online faculty development, limitations and areas for improvement are also considered.

This is a multi-article dissertation that seeks to address the current state of online teaching evaluation processes in post-secondary institutions. The last two decades have seen a dramatic increase in enrollment in online courses at post-secondary institutions. Unfortunately, evaluating online instructors has been a neglected field of research leaving many post-secondary institutions to develop their own evaluation systems. A deeper analysis of the current practices of online instructor evaluation will help administrators to strengthen their evaluation processes, thereby providing more effective online teaching. The first article is a literature review that explores common practices of post-secondary institutions. By performing an extensive review of the literature, it is clear that very little research has been done to address online instructor evaluation beyond student evaluations. The second article compares different approaches to online instructor evaluation in various post-secondary institutions. By performing interviews with administrators, we found that many institutions are using a variety of types of evaluations and not just student evaluations to evaluate online teaching. The third article is a study that explores how well institutions that utilize a master course model evaluate online teaching competencies. This is done by performing a content analysis of their observational rubrics.

With the advances in technology, there has been a steady and unstoppable expansion in online education, and as technology has kept changing, so has online education. These changes have impacted the experiences of the faculty members, which has led to a growing interest in examining what online faculty members’ lived experiences are. To have a better understanding of the prior status of the research conducted on online education, this dissertation included a systematic literature review between the years 2000-2018. The systematic review of the literature demonstrated that the major issues examined in prior studies included online faculty motivation, inhibitors, online faculty course design, implementation practices and roles, and online faculty satisfaction. Researchers have attempted to explain online faculty motivation, satisfaction, workload and role changes mostly through quantitative studies. Some researchers also implemented mixed methods and qualitative research to examine online faculty members’ perceptions of online education, best practices in designing and implementing online courses. These studies were limited in terms of their data relying mostly on context bounded self-reports. Moreover, as technology evolves swiftly, so does the online education due to the changing affordances of available technology. Therefore, this study aims to describe the lived experiences of the online faculty members through a qualitative research design, namely multiple descriptive case study, collecting data from two rounds of interviews and an online course observation. In addition, a review of the literature demonstrated that only one study attempted to examine online faculty experiences through the lens of a distance learning theory (Bair & Bair, 2011). Therefore, there was also a need to analyze and explain the experiences of the online faculty members through a distance learning theory. While depicting the lived experiences of the online faculty members, the current study aims to portray a detailed picture of the online faculty members’ course design and implementation strategies in relation to Michael Moore’s (1989) Three Types of Interaction Framework. The findings of the study demonstrate that online faculty motivation and satisfaction are dynamic. As the initial experiences of the faculty members wear out, the factors impacting their motivation and satisfaction change. The factors impacting faculty members’ motivation and satisfaction also vary from one faculty member to another faculty member. In addition, the experiences of the faculty members in designing and implementing online courses change as they become more experienced. The faculty members implement several strategies to facilitate student interaction with other students, the course content and the course instructor while they design and teach online courses. They also improve their strategies as they face challenges while they teach online. The findings of the study in relation to Michael Moore’s (1989) Three Types of Interaction Framework demonstrate that while the faculty members design their online courses, they pay utmost attention to having a consistent structure of their online courses in order to avoid student disorientation. They use a variety of content materials to cater for the needs of their online students, and design several activities to enhance student interaction with the content. They prefer to chunk the content into modules, in which they design a consistent pattern of course activities. The faculty members while designing the course activities also pay attention to creating opportunities for learner-learner interaction such as discussion boards and group projects. The study also show that faculty design their online courses in ways help them communicate with the students, for instance, they design home pages, orientation modules, or provide several alternative ways of contact. The study also indicates that while the faculty teach online courses, they use different strategies to facilitate student interaction with their classmates, the course content and the instructor. The strategies implemented to enhance learner-learner interaction include mostly discussion forums. The faculty members paid attention to provide variety of assignments for discussions such as reflecting on peer’s work, discussing case studies as well as checking if the students read the assigned materials. Due to student complaints about the challenges faced while completing group projects, they were rarely used. Some faculty chose to drop the group projects completely whereas some faculty used them sparingly. As for the student interaction with the content, most faculty members prefer to roll out the whole course upfront and allow students to see the whole course, be able to make connections and see the expected outcomes. Some faculty, however, also prefer releasing the course content module by module and using pre-requisites to control student interaction with the content as well as their peers. As for student interaction with the course instructor, the faculty members implement various strategies such as on-campus course orientations, announcements, e-mails, discussion boards, one-on-one synchronous sessions and phone calls to communicate with their students. Finally, the study presents a more detailed picture of the lived experiences of the online faculty through the lens of distance learning theoretical framework. It helps to better understand how the online faculty design and facilitate student interaction with their classmates, course content as well as the course instructor. It provides several pedagogical and empirical implications in line with and addition to prior research.

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