INTRODUCTION
The role of faculty within traditional teaching institutions worldwide has always been multidimensional, involving administrative duties, research responsibilities, and a commitment to community service in addition to teaching. In the majority of institutions, this teaching role of faculty has remained unchanged for decades. In fact, most faculty teach the way they themselves were taught using the tried and trusted Socratic transmission paradigm in which sections of academic content are divided into 50 minute lectures and delivered to often large groups of passive recipients. There is simply very little incentive to make alterations to a teaching model that has been in place for hundreds of years (Buckley, 2002). Present day faculty culture often values research, productivity, and quality over high quality teaching and student evaluations tend not to reward faculty prepared to experiment and take risks with models of learning that differ from the students’ previous learning experiences.
Things are changing and the use of “chalk and talk” as the primary means of content delivery is being replaced at some institutions by more collaborative, interactive approaches to learning that are supported by course management systems and the numerous recent innovations in e-learning technologies, such as electronic books, text messages, podcasting, wikis and blogs (Kim and Bonk, 2006).
BACKGROUND
The growth in distance education, online courses and computer-based learning promises to add a new dimension to the role of faculty and serve as a catalyst for a change in learning paradigm. This explosion in computer-supported education is being driven in part by the increasing demand from the expanding number of “tech-savvy” students in the education system.According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 56% of all 2-year and 4-year Title IV-eligible degree-granting
institutions offered distance education courses in the academic year 2000 – 2001. A 2003 survey of online learning (Allen & Seaman, 2003) revealed that over 1.6 million students took at least one online course during Fall, 2002. A subsequent survey, the fourth reporting on the nature and extent of online education (Allen & Seaman, 2006) revealed that enrollment to online courses continues to increase. In fact, almost 3.2 million students took at least one online course in the Fall of2005. These students are largely undergraduates studying at Associates institutions (Allen & Seaman, 2006) and are part of the computer-gaming generation, continually “on the move”, often only finding time for study between social and sporting activities. For this generation, to be out of touch, to be disconnected from their community of friends and families is simply uncool. Not surprisingly, these students have high technological expectations of their faculty. Furthermore, in the new millennium the number of nontraditional students returning to education either full-time or part-time is increasing as distance education programs become more successful at marketing their product (Carnevale & Olsen 2003). These nontraditional students return to education after raising a family or seeking additional qualifications and professional development opportunities whilst holding down a permanent job lured by the increased flexibility that online programs have to offer. Having more life-experience these students are often more mature, more demanding, more focused and more highly motivated than students on a more traditional, linear educational path (observations confirmed by Dutton, Dutton, & Perry, 2002). They benefit most from a learning model that is increasingly flexible and can accommodate outside commitments. The expansion of computer-based learning may also be driven by institutional pressure to increase students’ educational opportunities and, at the same time, bring in more revenue by removing the limitations of bricks and mortar, thereby allowing for unlimited class sizes. However, the thinking that online learning is cheaper for the institution than the traditional paradigm is a widespread misconception and seriously flawed. Institutions may even embark on a computer-based learning adventure for no other reason than not to be left behind by others. In fact, today the education market place is becoming increasingly congested with private institutions, for-profit universities, and corporate giants competing with public institutions for market share.
MAIN FOCUS: GROWTH OF COMPUTER-BASED LEARNING
In this era of “borderless higher education” (Cunningham, Ryan, Stedman, Tapsall, Bagdon, Flew, & Coaldrake, 2000) 96% of the very largest institutions (over 15,000 enrollments) of higher education in the United States currently offer at least one online course and 58.4 % of all ChiefAcademic Officers envisage that online learning is critical to their long term institutional strategy (Allen & Seaman, 2006). There is, however, an uneven distribution of online course and program offerings by type of institution and typically it is the smaller, private four-year institutions that offer fewer online opportunities and are most negative regarding this teaching paradigm (Allen & Seaman, 2006). Not all ventures into the highly volatile international computer-based learning arena have been successful. In fact, there are many high profile failures as a result of inadequate support systems or poor planning. However, a number of institutions are currently attracting international recognition for the high quality of their online provision. These include the Open University of Great Britain, DeVry Inc., the University of Central Florida, the University of Phoenix (currently the largest accredited private university in the U.S. and now with campuses throughout Europe), Motorola’s Motorola University, the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and Sylvan Learning Systems, Inc. (incorporating The Universidad Europa of Madrid, Spain). Nova Southeastern University was recently ranked in the top 20 cyber-universities by Forbes Magazine and the Nova Southeastern Graduate School of Computer and Information Sciences was recently listed in the Princeton Review’s The Best Distance Learning Graduate Schools offering over 300 online classes annually to students in almost every state in the United States and in 20 foreign countries. PC Magazine, a leading technology publication, has recently (12.20.06) published a list of the top 10 wired colleges in the U.S. that included Villanova University, M.I.T., Indiana University Bloomington, Swarthmore College and Creighton University. Cardean University, a for-profit institution, is building a reputation for offering high quality business courses online, and has established links with a number of internationally respected institutions such as the London School of Economics. The number of courses offered online by the State University of New York has grown from eight in 1995-1996 to over 3,200 in 2002 – 2003 with enrollment in online courses increasing from 119 to over 50,000 students over the same time frame (Shea, Pickett, & Pelz, 2003a). In 2006, the State University of New York now offers 4,300 courses online with enrollment in these online courses reaching over 100,000 students.
Penn State World Campus offered four programs and enrolled 41 students at inception in 1998. In 2003 annual enrollments reached 10,000 students in 300 courses (Kusch, 2001). At the close of the 2005-2006 academic year, Penn State World Campus offered over 50 online degree and certificate programs generating 13,750 credit enrollments in over 330 courses.
Government supported ventures into the higher education market are also occurring. These include the e-universities worldwide project in the United Kingdom and in Israel, the Israeli Council for Higher Education provided approximately $US 3.8 million to be used for the integration of IT into the curriculum (Guri-Rosenblit, 2002). Closer inspection of some of the courses offered by institutions that are leading the computer-based distance education field reveals that simply transporting course content to the Internet without appropriate pedagogic review is unlikely to be successful. In general, the computer-based online course offerings at these leading institutions are characterized by an approach to learning that adheres to the seven principles of good practice advocated by Chickering and Gamson (1987). These principles, originally advocated for the traditional learning model, have been subsequently revisited to accommodate the advances in computer-based learning technologies (Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996). Furthermore, online course design at the leading institutions reflects an appreciation for how students learn in this lean environment (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000).
THE ROLE OF FACULTY
In this rapidly evolving educational climate a new breed of faculty is beginning to emerge that is ready to embrace technological innovations wherever they appear and is competent to teach whatever the medium. These are the innovators, the entrepreneurs, the Lone Rangers (Buckley, 2002) of the teaching profession. This group of faculty is composed of creative, innovative, enthusiastic “new hires” familiar with technology as well as more experienced faculty with an interest in technology seeking new challenges and dedicated to the pursuit of life long learning. The enthusiasm and energy of this first group is a precious commodity indeed and should not be blunted by excessive administrative duties and pressure to seek research funding to justify their new faculty position. The second group of more senior faculty on long term contracts or tenured faculty has a wealth of experience obtained from teaching in a traditional paradigm that should be utilized to inform the development of new technologies in all areas of college life. This group of faculty is aware that all students learn differently and appreciate that when it comes to e-learning in particular, one “size” does not fit all. They may usefully contribute to the design of learning environments that accommodate the diversity of the growing population of learners.
The best “traditional” teachers do not necessarily make the best online teachers and vice versa. In the traditional face-to-face lecture format, faculty adopts the role of a high energy, dynamic entertainer to relay content effectively. However, this new breed of faculty will be required to teach both online and traditional courses as part of their normal workload. They will be capable of switching between the “sage on the stage” paradigm so effective in face to face situations, and the “guide on the side” paradigm that provides essential scaffolding and promotes collaboration, interactivity, and a sense of community between remote groups of learners in the online environment. Though faculty will always need to be content experts, teaching effectively in the online environment will require that faculty develop a different set of skills to connect with the distance learner in a lean environment devoid of the subtle (and occasionally not-so-subtle) visual cues such as eye contact, nodding, or yawning. Teaching effectively online starts with the creation of a safe, supportive learning environment in which students feel comfortable asking questions and engaging in collaborative group work. For some time now educators in the traditional arena have been abandoning the teacher-centered approach in favor of a more student-centered approach. However, in the traditional classroom there is always the temptation for the faculty member to slip back into the teacher-led paradigm, but this is made more difficult when teaching online. In the online learning environment students become autonomous learners with more responsibility to understand and fulfill their learning objectives. Teaching online requires that faculty become more of a co-learner, a coach, and mentor motivating and encouraging students along the path to knowledge acquisition. Students should be encouraged by their mentor to pause and reflect and share their views en route to a more complete understanding of the material. This changing role of faculty is not confined to countries such as America, Australia, and the United Kingdom that are considered leaders in the distance education arena, but appears to be a more global phenomenon since it has also been described at Israeli institutions (Kurtz, Beaudoin, & Sagee, 2003), in the United Arab Emirates (Saunders & Quirke, 2002), Canada (Chao, Saj, & Tessier, 2006) and Asia (Lee, Tiong Hok Tan, & Goh, 2004).
This changing role of faculty will not occur overnight. In fact, it may well not occur at all unless well designed faculty training programs are implemented that allow faculty to develop pre-existing skills and acquire the new ones required to fully utilize the potential of the latest online learning environments. Buckley (2002) describes a transformational model of faculty development in which faculty focus on pedagogical innovation and student learning and draw upon their experiences of teaching in the traditional classroom to create learning environments that allow them to teach things that they felt they could not teach as well before. If synchronous faculty development is not feasible then live online faculty development workshops have recently been proven to be a successful alternative since they may accommodate distant participants and encourage local experimentation (Blyth, May, & Rainbolt, 2006). In the absence of faculty training, faculty may simply map traditional practices onto the new medium without the necessary transformation in the teaching process to account for the interactivity of the medium (Gold, 2001). This type of preconditioning is unfortunate since what works in a conventional face-to-face classroom rarely works online.
Course development for online delivery should ideally involve faculty in a collaborative effort working alongside instructional designers and technicians as described by Almeda & Rose (1998) and Fredericksen, Pickett, Shea, Pelz, & Swan (2000). Though in order for faculty to contribute proactively and retroactively to the collaborative effort some training may well be required not only to become familiar with the technology of choice, but to develop online materials and the design of appropriate learning activities, assessment protocols, and course evaluations. Faculty required to teach online may well require retraining in the design of learning objectives and outcomes that must be more clearly defined in the online environment. Faculty training will also be required in instructional design to enhance access to these newly designed online courses, not just in terms of “any time any where” access, but in terms of opening course availability to students with physical or visual difficulties and differing learning styles. Though faculty may choose, or be required to use, many new tools that are becoming available within online learning environments, one particular area of online “teaching” that may well require particular attention is the development of strategies for encouraging interactivity and communication in an asynchronous discussion forum. In fact, Kim and Bonk (2006) identified the ability to moderate or facilitate online discussion as being more important than serving as a content expert for teaching online in 2010.
This type of faculty-student interaction is not consistent with these interactions in the traditional paradigm though it is central to soundly designed online constructivist learning environments. Strategies for facilitating discussion and motivating students to participate as well as plans for coping with the proliferation of messages that can be generated by large classes and flaming episodes that can occur online should be an integral part of staff development for new online faculty. Since students can post messages to the course discussion boards at any time there may well be a tendency for faculty new to the medium to post responses immediately. Faculty would be well advised to monitor the discussion and participate selectively since the increased workload associated with multiple postings is not sustainable. Faculty development should be completed by an online learning experience for all faculty new to the online learning environment. In fact, Kim and Bonk (2006), anticipate that by 2010 online instructors will typically receive some sort of training in online teaching.
Technological innovations are, however, not embraced by all faculty. A fact supported by the findings of Allen and Seaman (2005) who report that only a minority of Chief Academic Officers agree that “Faculty at [my institution] accept the value and legitimacy of online education.” In a more recent survey, Allen and Seaman (2006) reported that very few academic leaders see no significant barriers to the widespread adoption of online learning. In fact only 4.6% of Chief Academic Officers surveyed agree that “There are no significant barriers to widespread adoption of online learning” (Allen and Seaman, 2006). Indeed this should not be unexpected since there will always be a certain amount of resistance to any new technology. This resistance to technology syndrome is perhaps most evident in senior faculty who have become comfortable with traditional teaching modalities and see no added value to the implementation of technology-supported ventures. This group of resisters often quotes workload, lack of skills, lack of training and support, poor quality of the medium and a lack of released time as factors inhibiting their participation in computer-based initiatives (Schifter, 2000). Based on the findings of a large-scale exploratory factor analytic study Muilenburg and Berge (2001) identified 10 factors that constitute barriers to distance education. Of the 10 factors identified those specifically related to faculty include the lack of faculty knowledge and skills necessary to design and teach distance education courses and the fact that their employers lack the support staff to assist with technical problems. Other instructors fear that the new technology will diminish the need for teachers and reduce j ob security. It is widely recognized that developing courses for online delivery is time consuming (Fredericksen, Pickett, Shea, Pelz, & Swan, 2000) and pre-course development time is significantly greater for Web-based courses than for face to face courses (Schweber, 1999). However, Laz-erus (2003) reports that the actual teaching of courses online should not be any more time consuming than in the face to face paradigm and actually falls within the range of reasonable expectations. However, she does acknowledge the need for additional studies with a variety of instructors across a variety of courses and disciplines. Allen and Seaman (2006) report that a greater burden on faculty time and the requirement for more faculty effort ranks second (behind the perception that students need more discipline to succeed in online courses) as the major barrier to the widespread adoption of online learning. Other workers (Shea, Pickett, & Pelz, 2003b) have suggested that faculty spending considerably more time teaching their online courses than traditional courses may be doing so because the online courses are poorly designed. A number of examples of good online teaching practices designed to reduce faculty time commitments to the online course and at the same time enhance student interaction and collaboration have been described most recently by Shea, and colleagues (2003b). These include allowing students to lead the online discussion groups and involving students in peer evaluation.
Faculty buy-in to the transition from the traditional learning paradigm to a computer-based learning paradigm is critical to the success of these initiatives yet the question remains how can we convince faculty reluctant to embrace computer-based learning to do so? At present a variety of models exist ranging from a top down directive from administration to faculty on the one hand to incentive-based course development models that may involve a salary increment (Hartman, Dziuban, & Moskal, 2000) a one time only course development stipend (Hislop & Atwood, 2000) or a course development stipend plus a share of the course revenue. Certainly faculty compensation, incentives and release time represent important issues (Muilenburg & Berge, 2001) that need to be addressed before faculty will truly embrace the new technology. Reporting on the results of an online survey of college instructors and administrators, Kim and Bonk (2006) predict that monetary support for and pedagogical competency of online instructors would most significantly affect the success of online programs.
FUTURE TRENDS
In the not too distant future it is possible that the most innovative of this new breed of faculty may evolve into freelance expert online tutors utilizing a range of multimedia tools appropriate to teach high quality courses for a variety of geographically dispersed institutions. In this way, they will be able to take advantage of the increased flexibility of the medium to become highly sort after “superstar faculty”, highly paid entrepreneurial adjuncts who have maintained academic ownership of their prized courses, and deliver these courses within the new distance education globalized economy. These courses have been painstakingly compiled over many iterations according to sound constructivist principles and will utilize the most current advances in Internet technology to deliver high quality media rich content. Many of these courses may be taken in isolation for certification or continuing education credits by consumers seeking to enhance their employability. They will bring subject-specific content to life for a multitude of students worldwide by introducing holographic images of famous figures past and present from around the globe into their learning environment. They will challenge students with educationally useful authentic “real world” problems, interactive simulations or games and promote collaboration rather than competition. It is widely held (Kim and Bonk, 2006) that the learning outcomes of students participating in these online courses will steadily and significantly improve during the coming decade. Though this view of globalized education in future may be undesirable to many in academia due to the casual nature of the workforce and its dependence on marginalized staff with no job security, it could soon be a reality.
CONCLUSION
The explosion in computer-based learning is making education more accessible to the general population than ever before. To be successful in this new environment, faculty need to be flexible, acquire new skills, and appreciate the many advantages that this paradigm shift has to offer. It is indeed an exciting time to be an educator.
KEY TERMS
Asynchronous Discussion Forum: The asynchronous discussion forum is at the heart of many computer-based courses. It is the place where student – student and student – faculty interaction occurs and learning takes place. The participants in the discussion need not be present in the learning environment at the same time and make contributions to selected threads as needed.
Blended Courses: These courses utilize a combination of different delivery modalities, combining face – face with online delivery as appropriate.
Collaborative Learning: A model of learning that involves groups of students working together on a project or assignment. In this model, communication between students is crucial to a successful outcome.
Faculty: The collection of teachers at a school, college, or university.
Flaming Episodes: Inappropriate, rude, or hostile exchanges that occur in asynchronous discussion groups.
Transmission Paradigm: A model of learning that involves one-way teacher-led delivery of academic material, most often in the form of a 50 minute lecture, to a group of passive learners in the absence of interaction.
