Elements of Quality Online Education cation

Using Blended Learning to Drive Faculty Development (And Vice Versa)revenue. What’s more, being public, CUNY has little revenue from other sources (endowments and thelike). Now that CUNY has experienced significant enrollment growth and has, in consequence,substantially increased its faculty over the past three years, the only thing standing in the way ofaccommodating more students (and the revenue they bring with them) is classroom space. To the extentthat online instruction frees up classroom space, it more than pays for itself, and we have reached a pointwhere the University and college administrators are eager to see that happen.Administrative interest has much to do with the fact that online instruction is so broadly targeted inCUNY. From the beginning, the plan has been to permeate the curriculum. Which student constituenciesare served? The answer is all of them. There is no campus, no discipline that does not offer onlineinstruction. From a student perspective, the only problem with online instruction is that there is not moreof it currently available. (Online and hybrid sections are always the first to close out during registration).From an administrative perspective, the one unmet challenge is that hybrid courses are not offered in suchnumbers and in such programmatic ways that they can free up enough classroom space and soaccommodate expanded enrollments in the land of expensive real estate. The one thing needed to satisfythe interests of both the administration and the students is faculty readiness and willingness to engage inonline instruction.III. THE CHALLENGE OF FOSTERING FACULTY READINESSA. Are the Faculty Interested?Everything about the situation in CUNY now, from motivations to resources, seems to suggest theUniversity is poised for exponential growth in online instruction. Technically, for instance, the newenterprise version of Blackboard is capable of creating a course site for every course offered in CUNY.And the prospects for saturation look almost as good from a user’s standpoint: recent surveys done byCUNY's Office of Institutional Research show that students at most campuses (even freshmen—indeed,especially freshmen) have at-home access at rates of 90% or more. They are already online, waiting forthe faculty to show up.Will they? That is the question. Because let’s face it: faculty need to show up in droves. Those samesurveys showing most students' have Internet access also show most are eager to participate in onlinelearning. Is that eagerness shared by their teachers? Here's a better question: Why should faculty be eagerto teach online? Why should they trade in established practices and proven methods for new-fangledapproaches? There is still a vast reservoir of doubt and resistance, as documented by 2003 Sloan Surveyof Online Learning. While that survey finds that trends among students and academic institutions point tosignificant growth for online learning, “The findings for faculty are less clear than for either students orinstitutions. Some, but by no means all, faculty have embraced online education...” Indeed, the last ofitem in the survey’s Summary of Findings acknowledges faculty attitudes “remain more conservativewith regard to the quality of online education and its ability to equal face-to-face learning.” Clearly, as thesurvey itself states, persuading faculty of the effectiveness of what seems to many of them “a new andunproven delivery method is a formidable challenge” [4].D. Reasons for Faculty ResistanceSince change is not always easily embraced, what will prompt faculty to engage in the work it takes tomake the move to online instruction? And since doing this work is not (or at least should not be) a mereshift or dump—online instruction is a transformative medium that alters as well as facilitates forms ofinteraction—how do faculty get support in the many little changes this big change entails? The questionsbecome all the more important when we consider how little training in pedagogy academics usually have.75