learning - Academic Conferences Limited

Constructing a Survey Instrument for Assessing
Characteristics of Effective Online Teachers
Jonathan Barkand
Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, USA
Jbarkand@gmail.com
Abstract: This paper will report on a proposed research project, which seeks to create and validate an
instrument that can be used to determine the effectiveness of online teachers. This study is the first step in a
comprehensive research project that is intended to establish the reliability and validity of a survey for online
teachers. A significant body of research has been conducted in identifying and quantifying characteristics of
effective online teachers. However, to date, a standardized survey instrument has not been formally accepted or
approved to make a qualitative assessment of which characteristics are considered to be most essential for
success in an online environment. As education continues to make the shift to a completely online environment,
there will be a need to design an assessment system to determine effective and ineffective online teachers.
Paralleling this transition is the need for the training and education of teachers to be more effective in an online
environment. Certificates in Online Teaching and Learning (OTL) are being offered at universities at the graduate
level. These programs are designed to prepare teachers for teaching and learning online. The quality of OTL
programs would be greatly increased with a survey instrument to be used with current and graduated students.
The survey results will be categorized based on the frameworks used by the National Council for Accreditation of
Teacher Education (NCATE). Data will be sorted into the three NCATE categories of Knowledge, Skills, and
Professional Dispositions. This categorization will create an easy to use characteristic breakdown for effective
online teachers. The use of these results is not limited to self-improvement, but could be used by supervisors and
school administration. Based on the literature and results, an assessment matrix will be developed that will allow
teachers from any discipline to see a measurement of their effectiveness as an online teacher.
Keywords: online teaching, eLearning teachers, teacher characteristics, effective teaching survey instrument,
quality online teaching
1. Introduction
Teachers are a key component of students learning in the education environment. There are many
state and national standards for effective teachers in a traditional classroom, though there are very
few, if any, standards that relate directly to effective online teachers. An online teacher will be
accessible to hundreds of students, and the students should be learning from a highly qualified and
effective online teacher. The transition for students from a traditional education setting to a fully online
setting has been increasing each year. An instrument that can reliably measure teacher self
perceptions and also student perceptions of effective online teachers will be necessary if we are to
continue to improve the quality of online instruction.
The expanding enrollments in online courses are occurring in both higher education and K-12
institutions. In fall 2009, the enrollment of higher education students who take at least one online class
increased 21% over fall 2008 (Allen & Seaman, 2010). Since 2002, there has been a compounded
annual growth rate of 19%, bringing the total enrollment to 5.6 million students in 2009 (Allen &
Seaman, 2010). A growth rate of this level will eventually peak, but until then, more students are
taking online courses each year. The enrollments in basic education K-12 institutions are more difficult
to predict, although certain estimates can be extrapolated from previous data. For example, there
were an estimated 1,030,000 students engaged in online courses in 2008 according to a survey of
school district administrators (Picciano & Seaman, 2009). The number of K-12 students is lower than
higher education students, which is likely due to the fact that K-12 education is years behind higher
educations’ shift to an online environment. An interesting fact is that the 2008 survey figure
represented a 47% growth over two years since 2006. Both K-12 and higher education trends appear
to be following similar growth patterns. Given these growth patterns, online education should already
be a part of both K-12 and higher education institutions education plan ( Kim & Bonk, 2006).
A survey instrument which can be used to determine the effectiveness of online teachers in this ever
increasing online learning environment will be necessary for improving the quality of online teaching
and learning. Based on literature and published standards, a survey instrument will be developed
which can be used for K-12 or higher education online environments. The National Council for
Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) framework was used to categorize each of the
standards into the three categories of knowledge, skills, and professional dispositions. Each question
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