Expert Online Faculty Strategies for Motivating Online Students

• In Event: Roundtable Session 127
  In Roundtable Session: Strategies for Encouraging Self-Regulation and Motivation in an Online Environment

Abstract

Cognitive task analysis interviews with top performing online faculty were used to develop survey items offered to 280 randomly selected online faculty (from a population of over 3,000) at a large private university. Items asked respondents to rank whether they would suggest the use of each strategy suggested by the experts to newly hired online colleagues. Results indicated that most successful faculty valued empathy and motivational strategies. Correlations and decision tree analysis revealed that with every .5 increase in an instructor’s overall mean score on the empathetic and motivational items on the survey (range of 0 to 6), their students dropout rate decreased 1.6 percent and their GPA increased .15 points (in a 4 point system).

Authors

• Richard E. Clark, University of Southern California

• Bror Valdemar Haug Saxberg, Kaplan Inc.