Teaching online

Abstract

Often, online teachers report feelings of frustration or satisfaction resulting from their online teaching experience. Despite a growing body of published work, anecdotal evidence indicates that we still do not know what the true issues are, or at least not all of them and how important they are. The study presented here consists of a grounded-theory approach, relying on deep interviews with faculty members teaching online courses. The intent was to sample professionals working at different colleges and universities that offer online classes and to interview them in order to develop a theory highlighting issues they can identify in relation to their online teaching experience. This qualitative study builds a theory providing a grounded understanding of the experience of teaching online, as viewed by the teachers. In addition, the study provides insight into research paths that may be worth exploring in subsequent studies.