Campus Location

Dallas Campus (Online)

Date of Award

2-2023

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0009-0008-3773-9163

Document Type

Dissertation

Department

Organizational Leadership

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Committee Chair or Primary Advisor

Leah Wickersham-Fish

Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor

Billie McConnell

Third Committee Member or Committee Reader

Timothy Stafford

Abstract

Leadership at a mid-sized 4-year university in the western region of Texas asserted a problem with the low amount of faculty training impacting online courses’ creation and quality. The purpose of this qualitative single case study was to investigate the elements needed to design quality online courses, determine how faculty and instructional designers perceived professional development provided by the university to develop online courses, and find out how faculty and instructional designers perceived professional development impacted faculty skills as an online instructor. Three research questions were created which generated two interview protocols. The following research questions were used and were answered via the emerged themes reported in the Analysis Overview section: RQ1: What attributes do instructional designers and faculty at a mid-sized 4-year university in west Texas believe are needed to design a quality online course? RQ2: What professional development do instructional designers and faculty at a mid-sized 4-year university in west Texas perceive is needed to create a quality online course? RQ3: How do faculty and instructional designers at a mid-sized 4-year university in west Texas perceive professional development impacts faculty’s skills as an online instructor at a mid-sized university in west Texas? Data were collected from 18 participants who consisted of full-time online faculty, adjunct online faculty, and instructional designers, using semistructured open-ended interview questions and thematic analysis. Four themes emerged from the data analysis: (a) positive/negative faculty training, (b) positive/negative institutional support, (c) use/non-use of an instructional designer, and (d) use/non-use of online best practices and strategies. Recommendations for practice and future study were also recommended.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.