Faculty Survey Results

E-LEARNING COUNCIL| SPRING, 2015

2014-15 eLearning Council Members

• Dena Laney (Chair)

• Jennifer Anderson

• Jason Aqui

• Joyce Carroll

• Pamela Charney

• AJ Duxbury

• Katharine Hunt

• Emily B. Kolby

• Nicole Longpre

• Jocelyn Ludlow

• Sukirti Ranade

• Ekaterina Stoops

• Taija Tevia-Clark

• Mark Veljkov

Why an eLearning faculty survey?• Ensure that the goals and priority initiatives in the 5-Year eLearning Plan align with faculty needs

• Campus-wide eLearning Needs Assessment Survey in Spring 2015

• 138 faculty responded, across all divisions

Survey questions

SUPPORT FOR FACULTY

• What instructional support services are currently available in your division?

• What instructional support services do you wish were available?

ACCESSIBILITY

• Rate the accessibility of your courses.

• What support services do you need to make your online courses accessible?

DESIGN CHECKLIST

• Will use of a consistent college-wide course design checklist help ensure quality and accessibility?

SERVICES FOR ONLINE STUDENTS

• What online services do you wish were available to your students?

Overall themes that emerged from responses

POSITIVES:

• Faculty want to make courses high quality and accessible for all students

CHALLENGES:

• Confusion/lack of knowledge about what help is available and where to find it

• Lack of support staff (e.g. for captioning or redesigning courses)

• Lack of time/financial support for work involved

• Lack of accessible training

• Particular issues for adjuncts

What instructional support services are currently available in your division?

• A quality course design checklist: 35%

• Accessibility guidelines: 30%

• Help with course or instructional design: 46%

• Don’t know: 45%

Themes in comments: • Nothing available

• Guidelines in progress but not yet available

• No centralized support

“Very little is available beyond harsh criticism when a few students complain.”

What instructional support services are currently available in your division?

Common Themes in comments

• Nothing formal available • Guidelines in progress but not

yet available• Resources mentioned: Faculty

Commons, A109, A&H, SSLOG, colleagues, Jim Dicus, DRC, Library.

Sample comments • “None. Some have been passed on

through email. Some has been discussed. A few programs have established more support than others - it's not division wide.”

• “There is nothing currently in my division that aids with this, that I'm aware of.”

• “Very little is available beyond harsh criticism when a few students complain.”

What instructional support services and resources do you WISH were available?

ANSWER CHOICES RESPONSES

Closed captioning services 74%

Instructional designer consultations 66%

Multimedia and video recording services 66%

Quality design checklist 64%

Accessibility guidelines 62%

Online faculty training in instructional media and platforms

62%

Video conferencing tools 48%

Consultations about “Open Educational Resources” 36%

Online “Quality Matters” training 33%

What instructional support services and resources do you WISH were available?

Common Themes in comments

• Need paid eLearning staff to help create courses

• Need more options for training (e.g. different times, online)

• Need more funding to pay faculty

• Captioning services

Rate the accessibility of your courses

All Most Few None Don’t know

Alt Text on images

9.7% 24.3% 18.5% 15.5% 32.0%

Videos are captioned

7.0% 21.4% 21.4% 41% 10%

Descriptions on graphics

9.7% 14.6% 14.6% 43.7% 17.5%

Headers/ styles used

33.7% 20.2% 11.5% 13.5% 21.2%

% “few” “none” or “don’t know”

56%

72.4%

75.8%

46.2%

Rate the accessibility of your coursesCommon themes in comments

• Time

• Captioning

• Support staff

• Payment for extra work

• Training

Sample comments • “I need a sense of what standards the college

intends to hold us to. Then, I need a place to go where I can get advice about it.”

• “If you want courses that are more accessible for students, pay us for the time it takes to make them that way.”

• “By having a dedicated staff person as a go-to rather than speaking with colleagues and hoping they know the answer, I feel that there will be more instructors willing to reach out for help instead of trying to work around the issue and not solve it.”

What support services do you need to make your online courses accessible?

Workshops/ webinars to make courses accessible

Consultations with an instructional designer

Common themes in comments about support services and accessibility

• Time

• Captioning

• Support staff

• Payment for extra work

• More options for training (e.g. different times, online)

Thoughts on a campus-wide online course checklist

Strongly Agree

Agree Undecided Disagree Strongly Disagree

38% 31% 19% 6.5% 5.5%

Do you agree that the use of a consistent, college-wide checklist would help ensure the quality and accessibility of online and hybrid courses?

69% agree or strongly agree

Thoughts on a campus-wide online course checklistCommon themes in comments

• Consistency is good for students and the checklist could help ensure quality

• Academic freedom, flexibility, diversity and creativity should be preserved

• Questions about “enforcement” and training/support

Thoughts on a campus-wide online course checklist• “It would give students a uniform experience instead of different instructors putting up online content in

different formats, which they find confusing.”

• “I think that so much standardization will limit the creative part of teaching which comes from individuality and allows faculty to teach to their strengths which benefits students.”

• “It would allow for consistency across campus. I would worry, though, that some creativity would be given up if the course design was too strict at the college level.”

• “While some instructors may complain that it could take away some academic freedom, accessibility and universal design are more important issues. A checklist to help instructors make sure their classes are meeting accessibility and design requirements could be an easy way to resolve such issues.”

• “There is simply too much variability in classes and methods used; further, I know that "quality" is most definitely subjectively defined. A "checklist" won't work, but "suggestions" can work.”

• “I agree because it would save new online instructors A LOT of time if they knew ahead of time what was required.”

• “I think there should be a uniform set of features that should be included in every course. I wouldn't like to see a "one size fits all" template for all BC courses, however. Instructors should be given the flexibility to work within a framework of features/components.”

What online services do you wish were available to your students?

Faculty who teach online coursesChoices ResponseseTutoring 85%eAdvising 71%eCounseling 63%Virtual spaces and student social learning networks that support collaboration inside and outside the college

50%

Issues for Adjuncts

• Time/payment

• Lead time before the quarter for design

• Ownership of materials/amortizing investment of time

• Training

• Equipment

Issues for Adjuncts

Sample Comments

• “The college MUST CHANGE the way they offer online or hybrid courses to adjuncts new to the course--there needs to be several weeks of lead-in time with a written guarantee that the adjunct will be teaching that course if there are enough students to run it. The days of an adjunct being asked to teach a hybrid or online course 2 or 3 weeks ahead of time (with only a verbal guarantee) must stop. It's been really hard on us.”

• “When I recently asked for the loan of a computer to record a soundtrack….my request was denied because I was a part-time instructor."

Representative General Comments• “Given the size of our college, it's shocking that we don't have more

robust support in place to help instructors and students with eLearning. …… If we want to commit to QUALITY online instruction (why do it otherwise), we need to think of it as a distinct institution that supports the unique goals of quality online learning, including online advisers and eLearning tutors, tech support, and guidelines for preparing and succeeding in an eLearning environment. Just for starters.”

• “It's a mess, especially for those of us who are part time and make up the majority of the workforce here. Please fix it. Thank you for putting out this survey.”