Abbreviated Research Proposal

Online Course Delivery: Is Less Time in the Classroom Resulting in Longer Hours for Faculty?

EDF 6481 – Fall 2001

Florida Gulf Coast University

Group 1

Dennis Siepiersky

Linda Ciprich

Abstract

This is an abbreviated research proposal for a university graduate research

class in education. As such, the review of literature and description are also

very limited. During the past decade, the format of distance education has

rapidly evolved from the correspondence and taped classes to include high

technology. With the use of the internet and email, faculty as well as the

education have become increasingly accessible to students. As online

courses in distance education gain in popularity and number, more and more

faculty are gaining experience in developing, maintaining, and teaching the

classes. Many of them now believe that online delivery actually requires more

of their time than the traditional methods of delivery, and may not feel that

administrators are aware of the true effort involved on their part.

We propose a survey of faculty who teach both traditional face-to-face

courses and online courses, since they would be in the best position to

compare the amount of effort required.

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Table of Contents Page

I Introduction 3

A. Statement of the Problem

B. Importance of the Problem

C. Research Hypothesis

D. Assumptions / Limitations

E. Definitions

II Review of the Literature 5

A. Article Summaries

B. Narrative

C. Evaluation

III Procedures 16

A. Sample

B. Data Collection

C. Validity and Reliability

IV References 18

V Appendix – Survey Instrument 22

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Introduction

Statement of the Problem

During the past decade, the format of distance education has rapidly evolved from the

correspondence and taped classes to include high technology. With the use of the internet

and email, faculty as well as the education have become increasingly accessible to

students. As online courses in distance education gain in popularity and number, more

and more faculty are gaining experience in developing, maintaining, and teaching the

classes. Many of them now believe that online delivery actually requires more of their time

than the traditional methods of delivery, and may not feel that administrators are aware of

the true effort involved on their part.

Importance of the Problem

Certainly it’s important that faculty be recognized for their true effort. Information in this

area is also important for administrators in order to effectively evaluate the costs of

distance education for pricing, and for planning of resources such as personnel.

Research Hypothesis

In comparison to college classes using traditional delivery methods, online courses may

require a different amount of faculty time for development and maintenance.

Assumptions / Limitations

We feel this research would be best interpreted as within the interpretive/constructivist

paradigm. Eichelberger (1989) described this type of methodological researcher as being:

…much clearer about the fact that they are constructing the “reality” on the basis of the interpretations of data with the help of the participants who provided the data in the study.

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Definitions

A distance learning course is defined as one in which more than half of the instruction takes

place when faculty and students are at different locations and the instruction is delivered

through audio, video or computer technologies. Therefore, distance education is education

delivered at a distance and the following terms are related:

Distributed instruction

Internet-based delivery, internet-distributed

Networked Learning

Online Education

Telelearning

Virtual university

Asynchronous learning networks - Students learn the material "anytime, anywhere" by

reading books, handouts, or Web pages and interacting with other students and the

instructor via electronic media.

Costing – accounting for all of the various costs of distance education.

E-administration – the administrative side of distance education such as scheduling,

pricing, setting up electronic resources.

E-delivery – electronic delivery.

E-education – education delivered electronically.

Infrastructure – the underlying base or foundation for a distance education system, such as

the hardware, software, and personnel resources.

Internet 2 – The Internet 2 initiative is an effort to create a separate, higher bandwidth

network with new functionality and services. It involves more than 100 universities

throughout the U.S.

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Review of the Literature

Article Summaries

1. A Survey of Traditional and Distance Learning Higher Education Members

http://www.nea.org/he/abouthe/dlstudy.pdf This article is the result of a survey commissioned by the National Education Association

(NEA) in early 2000. NEA higher education members were polled by telephone to obtain

their opinions, for the purpose of using that information to help the NEA formulate future

policy regarding distance learning. (It is important to note that only NEA members of two

and four-year institutions were used as participants – we may want to include NEA

membership as a variable in our own research.) The study consisted of descriptive

information concerning distance learning faculty and courses, and the opinions of the

faculty concerning the courses.

Traditional faculty were the control group, but the only true difference in being ranked as

distance learning faculty was in having taught at least one course by distance in the past

five years. Interviews completed between February and March 2000 consisted of 402 with

distance learning faculty and 130 with traditional faculty.

The researchers felt overall that faculty had a positive outlook regarding distance learning,

although distance learning faculty more so than traditional. They acknowledged that

distance learning faculty feel they will be financially affected by distance learning, but that

for the majority, that concern is outweighed by the fact that distance learning offers an

educational opportunity to students who would not normally be able to participate.

Examples of some of the conclusions are:

“Distance learning NEA members and NEA members who teach traditional courses have

similar demographic profiles, largely because distance learning faculty spend most of their

time teaching traditional courses.”

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“We see two basic types of distance learning courses: Web-based courses (44%) and

those relying primarily on video technologies (54%).”

“In contrast to stereotypes of distance learning students as older, part-time students, NEA

faculty teach as many younger students as older students and as many full-time students

as part-time students.”

“Two-thirds of faculty report that their distance learning course has a limit on the maximum

number of students who can enroll. Faculty teaching courses with enrollment limits—

regardless of whether the limit is high or low— hold more positive feelings about distance

learning.”

“In spite of spending more hours on their distance learning course, most (84%) of faculty

get no course reduction, and 63% of distance learning faculty are compensated for their

distance learning course as if it were part of their normal course load.”

One of the most significant conclusions for our research topic is :

“Over half (53%) of distance learning faculty spend more hours per week preparing and

delivering their distance learning course than they do for a comparable traditional course,

compared to only 22% who spend fewer hours.”

2. Incentives and Obstacles Influencing Higher Education Faculty and Administrators to Teach Via Distance

http://www.westga.edu/~distance/rockwell24.html

S. Kay Rockwell Jolene Schauer Susan M. Fritz Professor Graduate Assistant Associate Professor

University of Nebraska Agricultural Leadership, Education & Communication

This article concerns a survey study done of the intrinsic incentives and obstacles for

distance education instructors. Following personal interviews with 16 administrators, the

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researchers developed a survey for 237 faculty and administrators from 2 colleges of a

mid-western university. Incentives or rewards included:

• opportunity for innovative instruction

• self-gratification

• fulfillment of a personal desire to teach

• recognition

• opportunity to offer instruction beyond traditional institutions

Time requirements, technological skills, and the need for assistance and support were

perceived as obstacles, while effects on annual evaluation and promotion or tenure were

viewed as both incentives and obstacles by different respondents.

The variables were ranked with a modified Likert scale and grouped as primary and

secondary incentives or obstacles, or not considered incentives or obstacles. After

collapsing the primary and secondary items to one group, they arrived at 9 incentives, 6

obstacles, and 2 that did not rank as either.

Incentives Obstacles Neither Providing innovative instruction Time requirement Student Costs

Applying new teaching techniques Assistance or support needs Monetary awards

Self-gratification Time taken from research

Fulfilling personal desire to teach Training requirements

Recognition of work Developing effective technology skills

Access to place-bound students

Reduction of student travel time

Release time

Peer recognition

Neither monetary awards for the teachers nor costs to the students were viewed as either

incentives or obstacles. Faculty was found to view distance education as time consuming

and requiring new skills. Plus it was determined that faculty need help with both the design

of instruction and technological delivery.

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3. Compensation Models in Distance Education

http://www.westga.edu/~distance/schifter31.html Catherine C. Schifter, Ph.D. Associate Professor

This article involved a North American survey of as an attempt to “assess practices for

faculty compensation and incentives for participating in distance education programs or

initiatives.”

Queries were sent to 8 listservs, i.e., the National University Telecommunications Network,

the Urban 13/21 Provosts, the University Continuing Education Association, the Texas

Association for Educational Technology, the Texas Distance Learning Association, the

Florida Distance Learning Association, the Instructional Technology Council, and the

Distance Education Online Symposium, and the membership of the National Association of

State Universities and Land Grant Colleges.

The participants were the members of the above institutions who responded to the survey,

and who were offering distance-learning courses that were not print-based.

The variables of interest were:

Independent Variables

Dependent Variables

whether the institution was a two year school or a four year school

the ways in which faculty were compensated for maintaining distance learning courses

whether courses were undergraduate level or graduate

the ways in which faculty were compensated for developing distance learning courses

the methods in which the distance learning courses were managed and administrated at the participating institutions

the policy of the institution with regard to faculty course load of distance learning courses and promotion and tenure

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Extraneous variables were:

• the course delivery method,

• whether the faculty is unionized, and

• the state or country that the institution is located in.

This was a quasi-experimental study where the researchers were studying the effect of the

dependent variables on intact groups. The researchers obtained 212 responses from 160

institutions, using a sampling method that could be defined as opportunistic or

convenience. Opportunistic in the sense that the researchers evaluated each response to

the survey that was submitted to see if it met their criteria. Convenience in the sense that

the researchers did not actively select the respondents from the population, but issued a

blanket invitation to respond and evaluated the responses received.

The research question was, What is the prevalence of various faculty compensation and

incentive practices for participating in distance education programs or initiatives at

institutions offering electronic distance learning courses? – with the hypothesis being:

Institutions offering distance-learning courses delivered by electronic means will have compensation and incentive practices in place for faculty who maintain and develop those courses.

Data was collected by a web–based survey. Most items on the questionnaire had check

boxes for responses, i.e., yes, no, does not apply. An additional text box was added to

each item which enabled respondents to elaborate on their answers.

The results of this survey showed that many faculty feel that teaching a [distance

education] course is more demanding on their time than traditional face-to-face courses.

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4. Internet Delivery of Instruction: Issues of Best Teaching Practice, Administrative Hurdles, and Old-Fashioned Politics

http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/html/cnc9703/cnc9703.html

John F. Chizmar, Professor of Economics David B. Williams, Associate Dean for Research and Technology; Professor of Music

This paper represents a presentation made at the annual CAUSE conference in 1997. The

researchers created a case study by offering two courses, one statistics and one a fine arts

class, to both an on-campus and online internet group at Illinois State University. Their

research question appears to be:

How do online course delivery methods affect course pedagogy, time spent in course development and maintenance, course administrative procedures, geographical location of students, methods of evaluation and authentication of student work, and student course satisfaction?

The independent variable was the method of course delivery (on-campus delivery versus

online course delivery). The dependent variables were the:

• pedagogy used,

• amount of time spent in course development,

• administrative methods (grade reporting, course registration procedures, geographic

dispersion of students, tuition rates, method of tuition payment, method of

completion of administrative forms),

• method of authentication of student work,

• instructor time in maintaining each course, and

• student satisfaction with the course.

The extraneous variables were the technological skills of students and the availability of

technical support to students and faculty. The sampling method used in this research could

be described as typical case sampling, or convenience sampling, since the participating

courses were taught by the researchers. The research design was phase change (ABAB).

The phase A, or baseline period, had been established with the previous development and

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offering of courses via on campus classroom delivery. The phase B was established when

the course was delivered via distance technology.

Data collection was by means of observation, where the researchers were complete-

member-researchers. They were the University faculty who were teaching the courses

under study. The student satisfaction data was collected via a questionnaire requesting

student opinion in regard to their feelings toward the quality of their learning experience.

The responses were rated on a numerical scale (1=strongly disagree, 5=strongly agree)

and the statistics students were given pre and post tests to measure cognitive gains.

Students in the internet statistics course did not perform as well as students in the

classroom statistics course, but performed well absolutely. The researchers found that

pedagogy will change substantially, and that there are numerous approaches to adapting a

course to distance technology.

Instructor time in maintenance of the online course “far exceeded” the time required for

maintenance of the classroom delivery, with instructor response to student emails requiring

most of the additional time.

Administrative structures in place proved to be an obstacle to development and

maintenance of online courses, with no procedures in place for remuneration or adjustment

of class load of faculty and staff for course development and additional time maintaining

online courses. Technical support was inadequate and the researchers recommended a

standardized, centralized technical support facility for online courses. The researchers also

recommended that administration be more flexible and supportive of courses converting to

distance technology.

Threats to INternal and EXternal validity

Most of this research was based on observational data. There was some attempt to gather

objective data in the form of a course evaluative survey for all students at the end of the

courses. There were also pre and post-tests, but these were for the statistics students only.

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The research summary does not state how many school terms the classroom-based

sections had been in existence, so it is difficult to evaluate how well the baseline data was

established. It also does not give the course development and teaching background of the

faculty participants (more faculty experience in these areas would contribute baseline

validity).

The students were limited to those who were already enrolled at the university, or

“volunteer“ students who did not pay tuition and did not receive credit. Therefore, it is

questionable whether data from this sample of students could be generalized to the

distance learning population at large.

Varied Pedagogy / Technology of delivery

Since the researchers studied only two sections of two courses, the research can only be

generalized to distance learning courses with similar delivery technology and pedagogy.

We suspect that these two factors would have a great influence on the effectiveness of the

online courses.

Overall strength of the research design

Distance learning is still in its infancy. There are comparatively few online courses offered

today, consequently it is difficult to obtain large samples from which to collect data. There is

also no standardized pedagogy for distance learning delivery, and the delivery technology

is evolving more quickly than research can be done. As a result, despite the research’s

limitations, it is still the best data that we presently have to work with.

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5. An Investigation into the Costs and Benefits of Internet-Based Delivery

http://vc.tafensw.edu.au/staff/gwebb/ol98/paper.htm

Greg Webb & Cecelia Cilesio This paper was also presented at a conference and turned out to be preliminary since the

study was ongoing at the time. The researchers wanted to determine if the additional costs

of internet-based delivery for distance education over snail-mail (postal) delivery could be

justified with added benefits. At the end of each term, a questionnaire was issued to the

students, the teachers, and the technical support staff. Financial data was extracted from

the 1998 financial records.

Interestingly, the authors state that originally they had planned to include face-to-face

delivery but in developing their IT model they found it more difficult than they had planned

and decided to cut back.

We will note that the researchers believe the following to be one of their most significant

discoveries:

…in describing the source of the costs for each component of the model we have in fact created a framework for defining what we mean by online delivery, something that has been missing to date.

They also state that their framework has resulted in a multi-purpose tool for comparing

costs between different courses or different types of delivery, and could even be used for

costing commercial offerings.

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Narrative

The first article, the NEA survey, is probably one of the best for our purposes. It pertains to

faculty opinion which is what we are primarily concerned with. A significant conclusion of

the results was: “Over half (53%) of distance learning faculty spend more hours per week

preparing and delivering their distance learning course than they do for a comparable

traditional course, compared to only 22% who spend fewer hours.” We noted, however,

that this particular survey was only aimed at NEA members and that for our own survey it

might be wise to include NEA membership as demographic data.

The second article on University of Nebraska research is also an excellent choice for our

topic. It involved interviewing administrators and faculty to determine their perceptions of

incentives and obstacles in teaching distance education. Faculty was found to view

distance education as time consuming and requiring new skills. Plus it was determined that

faculty need help with both the design of instruction and technological delivery. Perhaps

what was most interesting about this article was the fact that neither monetary awards for

the teachers nor costs to the students were viewed as either incentives or obstacles.

With the Schifter article, the research begins to shift more towards actual compensation.

Unlike the last article and a few not discussed here which mainly dealt with costs and

costing, this research is still examining the faculty perception on incentives for participating

in distance education programs, albeit they seem to be monetary incentives. A significant

result was that the results of this survey showed that many faculty feel that teaching a

distance education course is more demanding on their time than traditional face-to-face

courses.

The fourth article was the CAUSE conference paper that looked at two classes being

offered to a face-to-face group and an internet group at the same time. The researchers

used a lot of the faculty time variables that we are interested in. The results are very

pertinent to our proposed research since the study showed instructor time in maintenance

of the online course “far exceeded” the time required for maintenance of the classroom

delivery, with instructor response to student emails requiring most of the additional time.

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It should be noted, however, that this article is from 1997. Due to the rapid changes in

technology and the high growth rate of e-education, this type of research can become

quickly outdated. There are many more online classes available today than there were in

1997 although by now perhaps these researchers or others are already collecting more

data.

As mentioned earlier, the last article by Greg Webb and Cecelia Cilesio primarily

concerned financial costing. It was interesting, though, that they were attempting to

compare the older forms of distance education to internet delivery.

Evaluation

We feel that overall the articles we used for this abbreviated literature review represent

solid, original, and for the most part, current research in the area of online course delivery

and how it affects faculty. Since researchers are often faculty, it would be difficult at any

time to state unequivocally that the research is free from bias.

In addition to the five articles previously summarized and discussed, we found other

pertinent research articles on the internet and have listed the websites in the reference

section. Distance education in some forms, such as video-taped classes, is certainly not

new. However, when taking into consideration how recent e-education is, it is somewhat

surprising to find that a lot of research has, and is, being done. Having said that, we also

found that the majority of what is out there is relative to the financial costing of distance

education, e.g., the last two articles described in this proposal, rather than the time and

effort of our faculty. We feel that supports the necessity for our proposed research - to

collect and analyze faculty data that could be used to more accurately predict the cost of

development and maintenance of distance learning courses.

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Procedures

Sample

We intend to use all faculty at Florida Gulf Coast University, the University of South Florida,

and the University of Pittsburgh, who are presently offering identical or similar courses by

both online and traditional classroom delivery.

Data Collection

E-mail lists of faculty offering courses with online presence will be obtained from the three

institutions. We will then send e-mail messages to everyone on these lists inviting faculty

to participate in the study.

The message will describe the study and include a hyperlinked web address that will direct

participants to an online questionnaire linked to a database. (Refer to Appendix A for the

data collection instrument.) Dreamweaver Ultradev and Microsoft Access will be used for

this online survey.

Data reduction will be through manipulation of the database.

Validity and Reliability Reliability • Coefficient of equivalence (parallel forms) There are two parallel forms of delivery for the courses that are being studied. One section

of the course is delivered face to face classroom delivery, the other is delivered entirely, (or

almost entirely) by distance learning technology.

• Reliability with observers Interrater reliability / Intrarater reliability - We would rate this category as "fair" to "good"

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All time data are subjective estimates by the respondents. This category could be improved

by having the respondents keep actual time logs.

Validity • Content / predictive validity The instrument has good content validity. It breaks down the courses in question into

components, and collects data pertaining to the amount of time expended on each

component. Since the data is broken down by type of technology and course component,

and will be collected from faculty at three different institutions, it can have predictive validity

in a variety of situations.

• Consequential validity The data collected from this study could be used to more accurately predict the cost of

development and maintenance of distance learning courses. It could also result in greater

consideration (and additional pay) for the additional time faculty spends on distance

learning courses.

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References

Bates, A.W. (Tony) 1992, Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Open Learning Agency’s Activities - Part 1: Inputs and Outputs, The Agency as a Whole, The Open learning Agency, Burnaby, B.C., Canada.

Bates, A.W. (Tony) 1995, Technological, Open Learning and Distance Education, Routledge, London and New York.

Bates, A.W. (Tony) 1996, The Impact of Technological Change on Open and Distance Learning, presented at Open Learning ‘96, Brisbane, Queensland. Also available online at <http://bates.cstudies.ubc.ca/brisbane.html>. Bates, A.W. (Tony) 1998, Learning Leaders Seminar Series, Videoconferenced seminar, Unisearch Professional Education, University of NSW, 21 October 1998. Beaudoin, M. (1990). The instructor's changing role in distance education. The American Journal of Distance Education; 4(2):21-29. Beaudoin, M. (1998). The new professoriate for the new millenium. DEOSNEWS; 8(5). [available on the Internet from DEOSNEWS@lists.psu.edu] Berge, Z. (1998). Changing roles of teachers and learners are transforming the online classroom. ONLINE-ED, August 30, 1998. [available on the Internet from ONLINE-ED@unimelb.edu.au]

Boshier, R. et al 1997, Best and worst dressed web courses: Strutting into the 21st century in comfort and style, Distance Education, vol. 18, no. 2.

Carl, D. L. 1991. Electronic distance learning: Positives outweigh negatives. T.H.E. Journal, 18:67-70.

Clark, T. 1993. Attitudes of higher education faculty toward distance education: A national survey. The American Journal of Distance Education, 7 (2): 19-33.

Corporation for Public Broadcasting. 1992. Lifelines of learning: Distance education and America’s rural schools. A Report to the 103rd Congress and the American People Pursuant to Pub. L. 102-356. ERIC, ED 357 919.

Dede, C. 1990. The evolution of distance learning: technology-mediated interactive learning. Journal of Research on Computing in Education 22 (3): 247-264.

Dillon, C. L. and Walsh, S. M. 1992. Faculty: The neglected resource in distance education. The American Journal of Distance Education 6 (3): 5-21.

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Gibson, J. & Rutherford, P. 1998, Learners are Teachers Too in our Virtual Classroom, poster session at WWW7, 14-18 May, Brisbane. Available online at <http://www7.conf.au/programme/posters/1888/com1888.htm>.

Gibson, J. 1997, Evaluation of a Trial of Internet Teaching in TAFE NSW, presented at AusWeb 97, the Third Australian World Wide Web Conference, Gold Coast, Queensland.. Available online at <http://www.scu.edu.au/ausweb97/educn/gibson/paper.html>.

Goldman, S. 1997, Evaluating online delivery: Communication studies at Adelaide Institute, Adelaide Institute of TAFE for DETAFE SA. Olcott, D. and Wright, S.J. (1995). An institutional support framework for increasing faculty participation in postsecondary distance education. The American Journal of Distance Education; 9(3):5-17. Pierpoint, P.E. and Hartnett, R.A. (1988). Faculty attitudes toward teaching in off-campus graduate programs. International Journal of Innovative Higher Education; 5(1),25-30. Relan, A. and Gillani, B.B. (1997). Web-based instruction and the traditional classroom: Similarities and differences, pp. 41-46. In Kahn, B.H. (1997). Web-based instruction. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Educational Technology Publications. Rutherford, P. 1996, The Key to Collaborative Teaching and Learning on the Internet. In proceedings of AusWeb96 The Second Australian World Wide Web Conference, 1996, pp. 331-334. Also available online at <http://www.scu.edu.au/ausweb96/educn/rutherford/paper.html>.

SAS User’s Guide: Statistics. 1985. Version 5 Edition. Cary, North Carolina: SAS Institute.

Schutte, J.G. 1997, Virtual Teaching in Higher Education: The New Intellectual Superhighway or Just Another Traffic Jam?. Available online at <http://www.csun.edu/socilogy/virexp.htm>.

Strong, N. 1998, Change Management and A Developmental Model for Online Delivery Platforms, presentation made at the OTEN Technology Series, 18 October 1998.

Taylor, J.C. and White, V.J. (1991). Faculty attitudes towards teaching in the distance education mode: An exploratory investigation. Research in Distance Education; ,7-11. U.S. Department of Education. (1999) Distance education at postsecondary education institutions: 1997-98. (NCES Publication No. 2000-013). Washington, D.C.: Lewis, L., Snow, K., Farris, E., Levin, D., & Greene, B. United States Distance Learning Association. 1998. Distance Learning Definition [online]., 13 July. Available at www.usdla.org/Pages/define.html

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Warner, W., Christie, G. & Choy, S. 1998, The Readiness of VET Clients for Flexible Delivery Including On-Line Learning, Research Report. Available online at <http://www.worklearning.corskill.com.au/worklearning/WL/research/>.

Webb, G. & Cilesio, C. 1998: An Investigation into the Costs and Benefits of Internet-Based Delivery , Open Learning 1998, December, Brisbane. Available online at http://vc.tafensw.edu.au/staff/gwebb/ol98/paper.htm Webb, G. & Cilesio, C. 1999: The Results of an Investigation into the Costs and Benefits of Online Delivery, EduCause 1999, April, Sydney.

Webb, G. & Cilesio, C. 1998, Administrative Infrastructures for Online Courses: The Part of the Online Delivery Iceberg You Don't See, presented at the online virtual preconference of NAU/Web ‘98. Available online at <http://vc.tafensw.edu.au/staff/gwebb/nauweb98/paper.htm>.

Webb, G. 1997, A Theoretical Framework for Internet Based-Training at Sydney Institute of Technology, Paper presented at AusWeb'97, the third Australian World Wide Web Conference, Gold Coast, Queensland. Available online at <http://www.scu.edu.au/ausweb97/educn/webb/paper.html>.

Webb, G. 1997, Internet-Based Training: Do Learners Like It as Much as Trainers Think They Should?, presented at AVETRA ‘98, Sydney. Available online at <http://www.zip.com.au/~gregw/avetra98/paper.htm>.

Webb, G. 1998, Functional Description of the OTEN InfoTech Virtual Campus - An Online Delivery Platform for Education, Information Technology, OTEN, Strathfield NSW.

Wolcott, L. (1997). Tenure, promotion, and distance education: Examining the culture of faculty rewards. The American Journal of Distance Education, 11(2):3-18.

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Websites of Articles

The Costs and Costing of Networked Learning – Greville Rumble http://www.aln.org/alnweb/journal/Vol5_issue2/Rumble/5-2JALN%20Rumble.pdf A SURVEY OF TRADITIONAL AND DISTANCE LEARNING HIGHER EDUCATION MEMBERS http://www.nea.org/he/abouthe/dlstudy.pdf Is Distance Learning Worth It? Helping to Determine the Costs of Online Courses Brian M. Morgan http://www.marshall.edu/distance/distancelearning.pdf A Framework for the Comparative Analysis of the Costs of Classroom Instruction vis-à-vis Distributed Instruction http://academic.shu.edu/itcosts/jewett.pdf An Investigation into the Costs and Benefits of Internet-Based Delivery http://vc.tafensw.edu.au/staff/gwebb/ol98/paper.htm Compensation Models in Distance Education http://www.westga.edu/~distance/schifter31.html The Efficiency of Telelearning http://www.aln.org/alnweb/journal/issue2/moonen.htm Costs for the Development of a Virtual University http://aln.org/alnweb/journal/issue1/turoff.pdf How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Distance Learning Course? It All Depends.... http://www.cren.net/~jboettch/dlmay.htm Using Information Technology to Enhance Academic Productivity http://www.educause.edu/nlii/keydocs/massy.html Assessing Teacher Presence in a Computer Conferencing Context http://www.aln.org/alnweb/journal/Vol5_issue2/Anderson/5-2%20JALN%20Anderson.pdf Issues and Challenges…. http://www.irrodl.org/content/v2.1/jung.pdf Distance Education at Postsecondary Education Institutions: 1997-98 http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2000013 Incentives and Obstacles Influencing Higher Education Faculty and Administrators to Teach Via Distance http://www.westga.edu/~distance/rockwell24.html

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Appendix A

Survey Instrument

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The questionnaires attached are part of a study to compare the actual cost of courses as delivered by distance learning as compared to courses delivered by traditional face-to-face classroom meetings. One of the major costs that is often neglected is the cost of faculty and staff time spent in course development and maintenance of the online course. The data collected below will be used in an effort to develop a tool for estimating the cost of faculty and staff time as part of the budgeting process for online course development. If you are offering, or have offered in the past, different sections of the same course :

Entirely by traditional classroom delivery. Entirely or almost entirely by distance learning technology. Kindly take a few minutes to answer the questions attached for each course that you have offered in this way.

Thanks very much for your help! Linda Ciprich

Dennis Siepierski Florida Gulf Coast University

Indicate technology used (if more than one, estimate the percentage of the course that used each technology):

Distance Learning Technology Used Est. % of course offered Course name and number: Hard copy through the mail Course materials available over internet /intranet CD rom Zip Disk or other electronic storage Radio broadcast Televison broadcast Videotape Audiotape Other (specify .) Face to face classroom meetings Video Teleconference Email Synchronous chat Asynchronous computer bulletin board Total -------------------------------------------------- 100%

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Estimate below the time required to develop the following features of your course. If others assisted you in these activities, indicate whom and how much.

C o u r s e D e v e l o p m e n t Classroom Delivery Distance Tech. Delivery Feature used Faculty Time

(hours) Other staff (indicate )

Time (hours)

Faculty Time (hours)

Other staff (indicate )

Time (hours)

Syllabus Assignments Lecture Tutorials Tests/exams Discussion (synchronous chat)

Discussion (bulletin board)

Grading E-mail

What do you think was the most important contributor to the difference in time required to develop the two courses ?

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Estimate below the time required to maintain the following features of your course. If others assisted you in these activities, indicate whom and how much.

C o u r s e M a i n t e n a n c e Classroom Delivery Distance Tech. Delivery Feature used Est. % of

use (time)*

Faculty Time (hours)

Other staff (indicate )

Time (hours)

Est. % of use (time)*

Faculty Time (hours)

Other staff (indicate )

Time (hours)

Syllabus Assignments Lecture Tutorials Tests/exams Discussion (synchronous chat)

Discussion (bulletin board)

Grading E-mail

*Indicate the % of time that your students are engaging in this course activity What do you think was the most important contributor to the difference in time required to maintain the two courses?

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