Faculty Views It is not known how faculty view ways to improve student learning productivity. Most research done so far on faculty track their integration of technology (e.g., Green, 2007; NEA, 2000), the impact of new technologies on faculty workload (NEA, 2000; NCES, 2002), and modeling the influences on faculty technology use (Xu & Meyer, 2007; Meyer & Xu, 2007). Therefore, this study asked faculty how they were affecting student learning productivity in their online courses. Methodology Sample Faculty were sought through the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications (WCET) discussion board. Each facultyperson had taught 10 or more fully online courses. Interviews Two questions guided the interviews. First, how do you attempt to increase productivity in your online courses? Second, what do you think about the four principles (discussed in a cut section)? Results The Faculty. The ten faculty participants were from master's (n=3) or doctoral (n=7) institutions. These types of institutions were chosen because they have both teaching and research expectations of faculty. There were four males and six females, and they worked in nine different states in the South, North, and West. They also represented ten different fields: two disciplines (English, philosophy) and eight professions (special education, higher education, finance, human relations, nursing, safety management, social work, and library media). Major Themes. The analysis produced eight main themes: 1) new usage and approaches to time, 2) use of constructivist/experiential learning models, 3) the importance of relevance, 4) changing faculty roles, 5) differences by student level, 6) ubiquitous availability of content (and more content), 7) new student skills required, and 8) access to faculty and classmates. For the sake of brevity, I will focus on the first theme only. The comments relating to "time" focused on the student, course, and faculty. For example, three faculty gave extensive examples of how their design choices for online courses would encourage a routine for the student and ultimately save time for both students and faculty. Here is one description of what was done and why: I used the same template to make things routine and familiar for the students. I know that there would be some who would disagree with this. If we use good teacher behaviors, it is important that students know what to expect, they have a class routine, so I used the idea of class routine so that the classes looked similar and you'd put things in the same place. We worked on that a couple or three semesters before I was finally happy with the template that we'd use for all of our classes. Three faculty had thought through precise procedures to manage content and student time. One had grouped "material into 17-day cycles (allowing an overlap of a weekend for working students to complete their assignments)," another into weekly assignments beginning and ending on Mondays (to again allow working students to do their homework over the weekend), and still another instituted 48-hour cycles so that students would receive input from the faculty person regularly. Still another aspect of the use of time was its variability, or the emphasis on giving students the flexibility to learn when the student had time to do so. In this way, a student "chooses the best time to learn" or "uses the time available to them" as two faculty phrased this idea. And finally, one faculty person had designed her courses so that students could "go as fast as they can go," finishing before the term had concluded or waiting until the final weeks to turn all of the assignments in. One interesting comment about time - more particularly the faculty's time - had to do with different concepts of work time in light of students' expectations for 24x7 availability and the multiple obligations of faculty. For example, Do you know that students expect us to answer emails over Christmas holidays? I need a break! You'd better think about this. Younger students live in a tweeter world and they are dealing with faculty who are stuck in an 8-to-5 five-day-a-week thought process. Are we going to change those students? I think not. Are we going to change the faculty? I think not. The solution proposed was an email policy, explaining when faculty would respond and when they would not. Doing so would clarify the two parties' concept of "work time." Four Principles. One of the aims of this research was to discover if faculty were - perhaps without knowing it - implementing the four principles for improving productivity discussed in the research literature. Only four faculty were familiar with these concepts, due to their expertise in business-related fields. While the other interviewees were not familiar with these concepts, the examples they gave can be categorized into three of the four principles. For example, nine faculty described specific projects, learning experiences, or class designs that would require less of their time on a day-to-day basis. This is the principle of replacing higher-cost labor with technology. Three faculty used GAs to take over the day-to-day handling of student questions, thereby replacing higher-cost labor with lower-cost labor. While there were no examples of replacing capital with technology, five faculty made specific statements of the importance of instructional design in the process of ensuring the online course was productive. Conclusion/Interpretations I was motivated to undertake this research to ask faculty what they are doing to improve student learning productivity because of the prevailing perception that faculty are a barrier to improving productivity. No one has asked faculty what they do to help higher education institutions and students use financial and personal resources more wisely. This research challenges perceptions that faculty are barriers to change but are willing partners to ensuring student learning.
