This thesis asserts that faculty are the critical resource for the integration of distance
education by postsecondary institutions. The major barriers to the participation and
adoption of distance education center around faculty. This manuscript thesis incorporates a
series of articles to develop applied frameworks and strategies that place faculty at the core
of the institutional adoption process. An advocacy approach that integrates organizational
culture and diffusion of innovation theories provides a conceptual framework for
addressing the complex issues inducing faculty resistance to distance teaching. What
issues impact faculty receptivity to distance teaching? At the institutional level, altered
faculty roles for distance teaching, academic quality, inload vs overload teaching
assignments, promotion and tenure, quality of instructional and student support services,
and traditionally embedded academic norms affect faculty receptivity to distance teaching.
Moreover, this thesis asserts that institutional and interinstitutional extended degree
programs utilizing telecommunications must resolve issues related to curricular approval,
accreditation, program prioritization, academic residency, fee structures, and articulation.
Integrated instructional delivery frameworks are presented that fuse traditional instructional
systems with new learning systems. These frameworks advocate the gradual integration of
telecommunications-based coursework in extended degree programs to promote greater
faculty participation, expand curricular offerings for students, and balance the introduction
of new learning systems with traditional campus-based systems. A faculty support model
for integrating distance education in postsecondary institutions delineates the key
organizations and professionals essential to faculty and institutional adoption. This model
asserts that the centrality of faculty to distance teaching adoption requires mutual support
from presidents, deans, departmental chairpersons, the faculty senate, media services, and
continuing education. In conclusion, distance education compels postsecondary
institutions to reduce existing barriers to faculty participation by compensating, rewarding
and training faculty at levels commensurate with traditional instructional activities and to
provide instructional and administrative support services designed to ensure student access
to high quality programs. Without well trained and equitably rewarded distance teaching
faculty, the potential of distance education will be seriously diminished. Within the
mainstream academic culture, failure to ameliorate these human resource needs reduces
faculty receptivity to, and participation in, postsecondary distance teaching. Institutions
that satisfy these needs will simultaneously create a balanced equilibrium between the
application of advanced technologies and human resource development necessary for
ensuring instructional quality and student access to extended educational programs
delivered via distance education. / Graduation date: 1995
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/34980 |
| Date | 07 December 1994 |
| Creators | Olcott, Donald J. |
| Contributors | Carpenter, Charles E. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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