Abstract
Online instructors play a critical role in online student success, and need various forms of institutional support to succeed in online teaching. This article describes the creation, validation, and results of the Online Instructor Support Survey (OISS) consisting of six sections (a) Technology and technical support (b) Pedagogical (Course Development and Teaching) support (c) Online Education Academic Support Services (d) Institutional Policies for Online Education, and (e) Online Instructor Recognition, Rewards, and Incentives. Online instructor (N=275) responses highlight areas of support that are largely prevalent and areas where further support and awareness of such support is needed at higher education institutions.
Highlights
Online instructors play a critical role in online student success and need various forms of institutional support to succeed in online teaching
Given the importance of faculty support for online teaching, it would be helpful to institutions, departments, and administrators to be able to use a survey to identify the various forms of support available to online instructors at their institutions, and those that might be needed for online education to succeed
The results revealed a culture of support for online teaching (Espiritu & Budhrani, 2019; Marek, 2009), with higher support in the areas of technology infrastructure, technical support, online course development and teaching support, institutional policies and procedures, academic and administrative support, and less support in the area of incentives and recognition for online course development and teaching, and support for teaching assistants, program leaders, and copyright issues
Summary
Online instructors play a critical role in online student success and need various forms of institutional support to succeed in online teaching. Given the importance of faculty support for online teaching, it would be helpful to institutions, departments, and administrators to be able to use a survey to identify the various forms of support available to online instructors at their institutions, and those that might be needed for online education to succeed. The literature reviewed was independently analyzed and discussed by two researchers to identify different forms of support for online instructors This resulted in seven identified areas of support for online instructors in higher education: technology infrastructure; technical support; online course development and teaching; online instructor incentives and rewards; administrative and academic support; institutional culture and policies; and program and legal support. Moore and Fodrey (2018) assert that four critical components—systems, objectives, evaluation, and personnel—are needed for technology infrastructure in online education
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