Methods
Local Survey
Motivated in part by a desire to secure site-specific information about online writing instructors' experiences, the author surveyed faculty at her home institution in 2007. This second survey allowed the author to compare national data against single-site responses.
The online survey instrument, created using SurveyMonkey, featured twenty questions:
- Identify your position/rank.
- How long have you been teaching online?
- List the courses that you have taught online.
- Have you ever taken an online course?
- Describe the personal or institutional factors that influenced your decision to teach online.
- How did you prepare yourself to teach online for the first time?
- Have you participated in eLearning-related professional development or training offered by the department?
- Have you participated in eLearning-related professional development or training offered by the university?
- Have you participated in off-campus eLearning-related professional development or training (e.g., at conferences)?
- What eLearning-related professional development and/or training opportunities would you like to see offered on campus in the future?
- What do you find most challenging or problematic about teaching online?
- What do you find most appealing or rewarding about teaching online?
- Approximately how much prep time do you put into developing material for and building your typical online course?
- Approximately how much time do you put into your online course on a weekly basis?
- List the three most time-consuming activities related to online teaching.
- Respond to this open-ended question: How does teaching happen in the online classroom?
- Respond to this open-ended question: How does learning happen in the online classroom?
- How do you facilitate peer-to-peer and student-teacher interaction in your online course?
- Which WebCT Vista tools play the biggest role in your online course? If you do not use Vista, describe the technologies that you use to teach your online course.
- Is there anything else that you would like to share about your experience teaching online at this university?
Responses were anonymous.
Interviews
In order to gain an even more in-depth understanding of online writing instructors' experiences, the author conducted interviews with three faculty at her home institution. Interviewees were asked to respond to three questions:
- Describe the factors that motivated you to teach writing online.
- What do you find most challenging about teaching writing online?
- What do you find most rewarding about teaching writing online?
Excerpts from these interviews are incorporated into the Results section of the webtext.
Results > |