C OURSE D EVELOPMENT I SSUES

A second major theme that emerged from a synthesis of the survey and interview data is related to faculty concerns and problems with development of online engineering courses. This could be considered the manifestation of the “ease of use” factor in the TAM model or more broadly, the “effort expectancy” factor in the UTAUT model as shown in Figures 1 and 2 (Davis, 1989; Venkatesh et al., 2003). This supports findings in

the literature, such as faculty concerns with changes to content and methods and additional time and effort to develop and teach online courses (Allen & Seaman, 2011, 2013; Bourne et al., 2005).

In the section of the survey focused on general perception questions (Table 7), respondents felt most strongly that online courses cannot be taught just like face-to-face courses. While both online teaching experience level and undergraduate / graduate teaching level indicated a significant difference in responses across groups, all demographic cross sections rated this item very low and generally agreed that one cannot teach an online course the same as a face-to-face course.

This result is reinforced by the high level of agreement of respondents to a different question that asked if online courses require changes to standard face-to-face teaching methods. Survey respondents also strongly agreed that it takes more time and effort to teach an online engineering course than a face-to-face course.

All of these results, taken together, indicate that engineering faculty members are concerned with course development issues related to the changes necessary to teach online classes and the time and effort to make those changes. This result is further supported by the interview responses. A number of interviewees directly raised the issues of time and effort to support course development. This seemed to be a more prevalent concern with those that had not taught online courses before, indicating that they were either speculating that the development of a course would take longer, or they believed it to be the case from their understanding of the experiences of others.

This is not to say that those with online teaching experience disagreed or denied that online courses took time and energy to develop, but rather their perspective was more of an acknowledgment of this as a reality of teaching online and felt that it was necessary in the sense that, to be most effective, an online course involved the redesign of

the materials and pedagogical methods instead of simply replicating a face-to-face course via online tools. In several instances in the interviews, respondents that had not taught online opined that a significant hurdle to teaching online was exactly that – they did not know and could not imagine how to replicate what they are doing in their face-to-face engineering courses. They did not seem to entertain the concept of actually changing what they were doing to take advantage of online affordances or tools.

The issue of redesign versus replication in course development for online delivery was important to several interviewees and something that was repeated by both those with and without online experience. For an online course to be effective, course materials and methods had to be reconsidered, independently or as part of a larger curriculum, and redesigned to utilize and fully exploit the affordances available in an online environment. Part of the confusion and pushback expressed by those that had not taught an online course was a mental model of needing to replicate current face-to-face teaching methods or traditional in-class engineering activities and the disconnect as to how these things might work when delivered online. Therefore, for any online engineering course or program to move forward, a mindset of course redesign is necessary instead of simply trying to convert traditional materials and pedagogical methods to be used online.

Another significant issue related to course development was resources and support in both a technical and course development sense. Survey respondents strongly disagreed both that faculty have appropriate technical support to develop online engineering courses and that faculty receive appropriate training in development of online courses. Interviewees agreed with these findings and while the level of technical support varied in the descriptions, a general theme of limited or non-existent course design and developmental support arose. Respondents described not knowing about any

on-campus or departmental course design and development resources, limited familiarity with what was available, concerns about the quality of support, and in some cases described a culture of peer learning and instructors fending for themselves.

An additional factor identified was more practical in nature but still very real – the issue of compensation. As noted in Tallent-Runnels, et al. (2006), faculty felt they should be duly compensated for developing online courses. Survey respondents felt strongly that they were not compensated for developing and teaching online engineering courses. While most agreed that it took additional time and effort to develop an online course, a lack of a comprehensive method to measure their efforts and properly compensate busy faculty members was considered a significant barrier. Nine of the ten interviewees agreed that this was the case, regardless of whether they had previously taught an online course or not.