Faculty Perspectives About Distance Teaching in the Virtual Classroom

Abstract

Much research has been done to understand how to make online teaching increasingly effective for students, but more needs to be understood about the implications of such a medium for faculty members, departments, and universities. We relied on survey data to explore the challenges and advantages that faculty members who teach nonprofit management courses have with hybrid and online courses. We also discuss faculty recommendations on what their departments and universities could do to help facilitate online teaching. The findings indicate that the main advantage of teaching hybrid courses is the ability to be innovative and the main advantage to teaching on-line courses is working remotely. However, for hybrid and online courses, the main challenge is decreased interaction with students. Suggestions that respondents had for university administrators included increased training and updating policies related to online teaching.