0.4 Discussion  (Page 23/23)

Each instructor tailored their use of the Online Day software to their own motivations. These motivations ranged from getting tenure, pleasing a supervisor, having ready-made materials to teach an online course, demonstrating one’s level of technological expertise in teaching, simplifying testing and grading, and gaining more class time by offering a way for students to watch the course videos outside of class.

A deeper motivation lay in the instructor’s reason for choosing a teaching career. Some found gratification in performing and interacting with the students in the classroom. Others felt the need for job security, while others found gratification in having a professional persona, playing a leadership role, and being part of an academic community. Each of these reasons influenced the degree to which they incorporated technology in their teaching.

The two instructors who made the most complete use of the Online Day offerings were motivated to find materials with which to teach the theories course online. Neither had taught the course before they discovered Online Day, so they had not already developed their own course curriculum or teaching methods specific to the course. Therefore, they had fewer obstacles to overcome in adopting Online Day than those professors who had taught the theories course many times before.

The one professor who used Online Day the least was most engaged with tenure seeking activities that took her focus away from the classroom. Her motivation to get tenure precluded her spending a large amount of time learning to use a new computer program. In addition, this instructor classified herself as computer-phobic , which indicates that she would need to develop her level of comfort with computers by building computer skills.

Half of the instructors used the online materials as supplementary to their face-to-face teaching; the others split between teaching an online or a hybrid course. Although the course content was widely praised, the computer interface presented problems to the instructors. The interface lacked instructions, and the menu items did not clearly describe the features to which they linked.

The study found that although the courseware presented a number of barriers to the instructors’ use, faculty who had committed to teaching the theories course online managed to overcome most of them. Although the quality of the interface was important, environmental and personal factors also influenced to degree to which the courseware was used. Two significant personal factors were the instructors’ age and stage of career and their motivation for adopting the courseware. The older instructors who could devote more time to teaching and who were committed to teaching the theories course online were the highest level adopters of the courseware. The younger instructors who were trying to obtain tenure actually used the courseware the least. When they faced obstacles to use, the younger instructors did not persevere.

This information is relevant to institutions of higher education because universities are expanding their reach to students through online learning. Enrollment in online courses has been increasing at close to 20% per year for the past ten years ( Allen&Seaman, 2007 ). This study points to the need for universities to help instructors develop their repertoire of teaching skills that will work in the classroom as well as online. Instructors’ work loads must be adjusted to allow them time on the job to get training in the use of pedagogy to use with technology, as well as use of the technology itself. The university needs to examine its support to faculty to ensure that pedagogy is taught along with technology skills. The study also points to the need to hire and develop instructors who are flexible in the way they approach teaching, who are interested in learning new teaching methods, and who have the communication skills to support online learning.