Conflicted: Faculty and Online Education, 2012

Not sure if this has been discussed, but it's interesting.



Conflicted: Faculty and Online Education, 2012 | Inside Higher Ed

 

I believe the following quote lies at the core of the lack of respect that many B&M professors hold for online education. The professors that were negative towards online education were old-school faculty that had been around long before online ed existed. It was interesting that most professors that had experience with it were more positive.

"The dubiousness among faculty members may be attributable, in part, to the makeup of the sample. About 75 percent of the respondents were full-time faculty members, many of whose teaching careers predate the online boom. And 61 percent of them were not teaching a fully online or blended course at the time of the survey.

Those who were teaching online at the time of the survey, meanwhile, seemed to hold online education in higher esteem than their classroom-bound colleagues. And the greater the proportion of their teaching that occurs online, the more optimistic they are."

(Bold is mine)

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Yes, there has been previous discussion about this interesting topic. As someone who has been in the field of instructional technology and distance learning in higher education for 25 years, I can state that much of the faculty reticent can be explained by a fear that online education will reduce the number of full-time faculty jobs in favor of adjunct teaching positions. Also, a large percentage of faculty enjoy the live performance (sage on the stage) aspect of teaching. Once the door is shut, they control their world. Many are wary of giving up control to technological systems that fail at the wrong time. Many have never had exposure to well-designed and well-taught online courses and equate online learning with correspondence learning. There is much more, but this post is plenty long already.