Community College Faculty Compensation for Online Course Development and Delivery

The purpose of this dissertation was to determine the most common compensation practices community colleges in the United States provided to faculty for online course development and delivery. Many community colleges provided compensation as an incentive for faculty participation in supporting their online learning initiatives; however, limited research was available on fair compensation for these services. The population consisted of 980 community colleges that were identified using the American Association of Community College’s membership directory. Data for this study were collected using a survey that contained 31 closed and open form response questions requesting demographic information and current practices for compensating community college faculty for online course development and delivery. Descriptive statistics using frequencies/numbers and percentages and ANOVA were used to determine most frequently used compensation practices. Eighty-four participants (30%) were from institutions serving between 2,000-4,999 students. One hundred-sixty-four participants (58.6%) offered between zero and four online programs. Two hundred-forty participants (85.7%) provided instructional design services to faculty developing online courses, and 232 participants (82.9%) provided instructional design services to faculty teaching online courses. The results of this study established that the average online course cap limit was 30. The results of this study also established that 29 participants (23.4%) provided financial compensation in the range of $1,000.00 - $1,499.00 for online course development making it the most common compensation practice provided for online course development. Thirty-five (31%) of the participating institutions provided financial compensation in the range of $1,500.00 - $1,999.00 for online course delivery making it the most common compensation practice provided for online course delivery. However, the majority of participating institutions expected faculty to develop and deliver online courses for no additional compensation, suggesting online course development and delivery as being part of the faculty workload. In addition, this study determined large and very large institutions tend to compensate more than small institutions for online course development and large institutions tend to compensate more than small institutions for online course delivery. Finally, this study determined that institution size does not matter when it comes to compensation of full-time and part-time faculty for online course development and delivery