@kkeairns eLearning Blog

I just returned from LA after giving a talk at the beautiful Loyola Marymount University (LMU) as part of their Speaker Series.  The Speaker Series is a very cool program that is:

Poster@LMU

“intended to help LMU faculty explore and understand the possibilities and potential challenges involved in online and hybrid teaching. Speakers are invited to facilitate an honest discussion of the opportunities, challenges, and pitfalls of online and hybrid teaching and to offer some lessons from their own institutions’ experiences.”

Abstract

Like other organizations, higher education has been disrupted by the Internet and technological innovations over the past 20 years. The college classroom is changing as online and hybrid education become commonplace at many institutions today. Although there has been tremendous growth in online and hybrid learning, there is still a lot skepticism and resistance, especially from those who have no direct experience with these new learning formats.

Faculty resistance to online education is one of the challenges I highlighted during my talk.

Faculty Resistance

Faculty resistance is a major challenge faced by traditional higher education institutions considering moving online.  Many faculty are skeptical about online education and believe that:

• online courses are less rigorous
• there is more cheating in online courses
• online teaching is more time and energy intensive
• online courses are inferior to face-to-face courses

Faculty who haven’t taught online may assume online courses are self-paced with little opportunities for interaction with students.  They may associate online education with correspondence or televised courses from the past that were much less interactive. They may also be skeptical about the quality of online courses.

Another reason for faculty resistance is the lack of rewards, especially related to tenure and promotion decisions. In many institutions, faculty who teach online are often looked down upon by colleagues. Although online education is more common today, there is little prestige for faculty who teach online.

If university leaders want faculty buy-in for online education, they need to acknowledge and address faculty resistance.

I was honored to be part of this wonderful series to talk about online education.