A Study Of Instructor Persona In The Online Environment

Higher education continues to witness a significant increase in the demand for online courses delivered via the World Wide Web. Institutions are challenged to position and prepare faculty for successfully developing and delivering this increasing number of online courses from a distance. Becoming successful in the online classroom presents difficult and time-consuming challenges to the novice faculty member. Instructors who transition from the face-to-face classroom find that some characteristics, strategies and procedures carryover into the online classroom. The new teaching environment presents an evolving spectrum of possibilities for the online professor, a new paradigm for teaching and learning. This research provides a multi-dimensional case study of the online teaching persona of four successful undergraduate college professors. The literature presents mounting evidence of the growth and momentum of the online college education. Also, the literature presents evidence that multiple resources become necessary if best practices and strategies are to be successfully integrated into online courses. The research has found that a persona change occurs when the faculty member transitions from the face-to-face to the online classroom. Utilizing this foundation, this study adds to the literature and clarifies the online teaching persona, incorporated characteristics, and strategies used by four successful undergraduate professors in a large university setting in the southern United States. Using face-to-face interviews and (non-participant) class observation, this researcher determined the transitory nature of the online teaching persona of the four participants in the study. The study revealed the characteristics, methods and strategies that enable the online professor to successfully deliver undergraduate courses using the World Wide Web