Date of Award

6-30-2016

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Department

Educational Leadership and Policies

First Advisor

Katherine Chaddock

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether distance education technologies, institutional support services and/or faculty demographics have a relationship to the job satisfaction of faculty teaching in American Library Association (ALA) accredited master of library and information science programs (MLS) delivered through online distance education. A better understanding of faculty satisfaction in these areas will allow universities to more effectively select technologies and design/maintain support services that can contribute to faculty morale, teaching effectiveness, and program quality in distance education.

The researcher studied faculty in MLS programs because the discipline of library science interconnects academe, information collection and dissemination, and technology assisted teaching and learning. The study was framed by the notion of measuring levels of faculty satisfaction with technology and other support services provided to enhance teaching.

In this study, descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage) and inferential statistics (Pearson rho correlation, chi-square test) were used to examine ordinal and nominal variables in the data. The research was conducted using an electronic survey, which was distributed electronically to faculty teaching in ALA accredited master of library and information science programs in the contiguous 48 states of the United States.

Findings of the study showed various significant faculty perspectives regarding support services for distance education teaching. The data indicated a statistically significant relationship between faculty support services and perceptions of satisfaction with online teaching. The findings further revealed a significant number of the faculty perceived insufficient technical training and support for faculty teaching online courses. Finally, the study found no statistical significance between several demographic characteristics (age, ethnicity, gender) and teaching employment status, perceptions of teaching effectiveness, and perception of support services. The study did reveal a strong significance between years of teaching distance education and quantity of distance education courses taught over the previous year.

Rights

© 2016, David S. Adams

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