Discussion

Let me begin this section by returning to the questions I was hoping to answe, or to at least "explore," with this survey. 

What were the differences of faculty experiences and choices about online learning between those who had previous online teaching experience and those who did not prior to Covid? 

Survey respondents who had online teaching experience prior to Covid were significantly more likely to have taught their online courses asynchronously during the 2020-21 school year, and respondents with no online teaching experience prior to Covid were much more likely to teach their online courses synchronously during the 2020-21 school year. The fact that almost four times as many respondents who had previous experience teaching online elected to teach asynchronously seems to make this point quite plainly. Respondents with previous experience teaching online were also more interested in continuing to teach online than those who had no online teaching experience prior to Covid, though the responses to this question from those with no previous experience are more evenly split than responses to other Likert scale questions.

This result is perhaps common sense because all of us tend to make choices about how to engage in a previously not experienced situation (such as teaching online during a global pandemic) based on the choices we made before. Faculty who had previously taught online almost certainly did so asynchronously, and so the choice to do so during the Covid pandemic was a continuation of past practice. That certainly was the case for me and my many years of experience teaching online asynchronously prior to Covid. But given that almost all online classes taught prior to the 2020-21 school year were taught asynchronously and also given that this was presumed to be the "best practice" for teaching online, it still strikes me as odd that so many faculty who had no previous experience teaching online decided to teach synchronously.

I also think the survey results suggest two other aspects about the role of previous experience and the choices faculty made for teaching online during Covid. First, there was not a great deal of difference in this choice about which mode to teach in between those respondents who only had previously taught a few courses online and those who had taught extensively online. In other words, within the context of this survey, it appears even a small amount of previous online teaching experience was enough to convince these faculty members to teach online asynchronously. I would also argue—as Reisman (2020) does—that faculty with no previous experience teaching online were more likely to opt for teaching synchronously with Zoom because it appeared to be the "easy" way to move their face to face class online with few changes.

Second, almost twice as many respondents with previous online teaching experience also made choices to teach some classes online synchronously and some asynchronously compared to those with no prior to Covid teaching experience. As I mentioned earlier, the additional comments faculty made on the survey and also some of the issues that have already come up in the interviews have made it clear that for many faculty at many different institutions, the division between synchronous and asynchronous instruction was less rigid than I initially assumed. That said, I also think the survey suggests more faculty with previous experience did more to tailor and combine their choices of teaching both asynchronously and synchronously in order to take advantage of what they saw as the affordances of both modes. In contrast, I think most faculty who had no previous experience teaching online either didn't realize that the conventional wisdom and practice was asynchronous delivery, or they ignored that this was the conventional wisdom and practice.

Why did so many faculty choose to teach online synchronously? 

I don't think the survey responses in and of themselves provide a satisfactory answer to this question, though the responses make it clear most faculty who taught synchronously did not do so against their will. Many faculty were "strongly encouraged" but not required by their administrations to teach online synchronously, but for the most part, faculty made the decision to teach synchronously on their own.

I think these results do suggest some of the logic to opt into synchronous delivery. Those respondents who had taught previously online asynchronously or both asynch and synch probably did so based on what they already knew about the affordances of online learning. Those who had not taught online previously probably selected to teach synchronously because it seemed closest to the only teaching mode they already knew, which was face to face. In other words, I suspect the choice had less to do with the particulars of the technology or what might work "best" for online teaching, and more to do with what instructors were doing prior to Covid.

However, the individual and "other" responses that some participants entered on the survey (not to mention the follow-up interviews I've conducted so far) do suggest the choice to teach synchronously was more complicated than this. Just as the Covid 19 pandemic itself has continued to cause all of us to make unexpected changes of plans, rearrangements, and compromises to almost every aspect of our day to day lives, a lot of the decisions and moves from synchronous to asynchronous to a combination of the two (not to mention other formats like hybrid classes) evolved and changed during the 2020-21 school year, and often based on quite specific individual circumstances.

I still believe asynchronous delivery is best for the affordances offered by online courses, but it is clear—based simply on the fact that many faculty successfully taught online synchronously via a software like Zoom during the pandemic—synchronous online instruction can work. The technology is still far from perfect and on the open-ended question regarding the disadvantages of teaching online synchronously, many faculty noted the technical and connectivity problems. But video conferencing applications are significantly more advanced now than they were in the early 2000s when Bernard, et al. (2004) published their study which found a small advantage for asynchronous online courses.

Also complicating matters is most of the survey respondents who taught synchronously during the 2020-21 school year were at institutions focused almost exclusively on traditional college students rather than nontraditional students. It's difficult to find a correlation in these results between the type of institution and the choice to teach synchronously versus asynchronously because the majority of my survey participants taught at institutions that primarily focus on traditional students. But I think a lot of faculty who taught synchronously believed that was the mode that could most closely mimic the "look and feel" of actually being in an on-campus classroom. Whether or not that's actually true is debatable at best. But while synchronous online courses are not as helpful to nontraditional students seeking the flexibility of asynchronous offerings, the synchronous format did arguably give traditional college students something that was more of a simulation of an in-class experience.

Is there any evidence of a self-selection bias among faculty that Zimmerman says has "marred" the research comparing face to face and online courses?

It depends on how important the "bias" might be and also by the definition of the word "marred." It doesn't make sense to simply dismiss the decades of research on the effectiveness of online teaching because of some self-selection bias; at the same time, I think these results do suggest previous experience and a certain comfort level with online teaching did shape the faculty perceptions. If there was no evidence of a self-selection bias involved, then the influence of previous online teaching experience of survey respondents wouldn't have been as striking as they are.

At the same time, about 67% of respondents with no previous experience teaching online prior to Covid agreed or strongly agreed that online courses could be just as effective as f2f ones, and almost 43% of these respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they were interested in teaching online after the pandemic and as a part of their regular teaching load. (In comparison, about 84% of those with previous experience teaching online agreed or strongly agreed about the effectiveness of well-designed online courses, and 70% said they would like to teach online in the future). Perhaps this suggests that some of these respondents with no previous experience teaching online had also previously believed in the effectiveness of online courses and were also interested before Covid at having a chance to teach online. But I also suspect that many of these no prior online teaching respondents were persuaded by the experience of teaching online during Covid that perhaps the format could work just as well as face to face courses.

I don't think the survey results address the importance of this bias though. Some faculty clearly expressed a preference on whether or not they would like to continue to teach at least some of their courses online, but that isn't necessarily the same thing as indicating that they would not teach online again, depending on the circumstances. The interviews do add more depth to this issue in the sense that when I asked individual faculty directly about this, most of the responses included more detailed qualifiers. For example, some faculty—regardless of previous online teaching experience—who were less enthusiastic about teaching online in the future said they would still do so if it was the only option available (and this was the case for many faculty who taught part-time and who were sometimes assigned to teach classes at the last minute, and also where the "overtime" teaching options for summer teaching required teaching online), and some faculty who were enthusiastic about teaching online in the future also restricted that to certain courses or grade-levels. In other words, while I don't think this modest study and its results can provide a particularly clear answer to how important a self-selection bias is in terms of previous studies on the effectiveness of online courses, I do think these results suggest that self-selection bias is present.