Teachers in Distance Education

The likelihood of significant increases in distance learning enrollments within the next decade will have a profound impact on faculty members' instructional roles, according to Beaudoin (1990). The changes that he envisions are tied to distance education's more learner-centered system, and he predicts that teachers accustomed to more conventional teaching modes will have to "acquire new skills to assume expanded roles not only to teach distance learners, but also to organize instructional resources suitable in content and format for independent study" (Beaudoin, 1990, p. 21)

A key player in the distance education team should be the teacher since the use of telecommunications inhigher education requires faculty acceptance (Dillon, 1989). But "negative faculty attitudes, ranging from apathy to open antagonism, remain a major barrier" to implementation of distance education programs (Brock, 1987, p. 40). A growing acceptance among university faculty is acknowledged by Brock and he blames faculty attitude on a resistance to required changes in familiar teaching patterns and the faculty having to relinquish a degree of control over the teaching-learning process.

A survey of Oklahoma administration, faculty and telecourse coordinators led Dillon to suggest expanded rewards and more faculty development efforts, and to express the belief that the success of distance education will "require changes in the practices and attitudes of faculty in an environment that is still suspicious of or threatened by the nontraditional. Only the system which effectively rewards it will succeed at change" (1989, p. 42). A survey of teachers using satellite delivery methods showed a significant growth in credit course delivery since 1984, but it also identified several problem areas. According to Albright (1988), needs assessments were rarely conducted prior to course development, interactivity was minimal due to the practice of uplinking videotaped lectures, the visual components of most courses were underutilized, faculty training was limited to technical considerations, and faculty efforts were largely unrecognized for promotion and tenure. A study by Clark (1993) has also attempted to measure faculty attitudes toward distance education and specific media used in distance education. Among Clark's finding were: 1) that university faculty who were slightly positive about the concept of distance education were more negative about their personal use of distance education, 2) faculty who were more familiar with distance education were more receptive, and 3) faculty was more positive toward telecourses and video conferencing, and less positive toward correspondence and audio conferencing. Respondents expressed the normal concerns about course quality, student-teacher interaction, and faculty rewards for teaching distance education courses. Clark suggests that, with faculty still being ambivalent about distance education, a cautious optimism regarding the future of distance education in the U.S. is appropriate.