It can be tough to condense a large report with many tables and figures into an hour-long webinar, including questions; here are responses to questions not fielded during the webinar:
1. Would it be possible to break out the data re: student orientations to those who had optional and those who had none? There is a significant difference there.
Only about 2% said that there is no online student orientation. But many respondents indicated a more complex situation in which some programs or levels of study had an orientation requirement and others had an optional requirement or none.
2. Has the data for the course development model changed over the last 4 years? For example, are we seeing more instances where faculty are required to collaborate with instructional designers?
No – very stable results.
3. Will you be releasing a cummulative report? Maybe after CHLOE 5 to look for trends?
There is a cumulative component in each report identifying trends that continue and new findings that challenge older findings.
4. On your survey, do you ask universities if there is a difference between pay for online faculty and traditional faculty? My fear is a lower pay offered to online faculty could then give the impression that online teaching is of lesser obligation and can give the impression of easier work. Of course, there could be reasons for lower pay similar to why some schools offer lower tuition rate for online courses/program.
We have not addressed pay differentials between online and on-ground faculty, but one of the factors in a full judgment of relative costs would be reliable information about the greater use of part-time and adjunct faculty in online courses – which would lower costs substantially.
5. How would the data and conclusions drawn from CHLOE be integrated into any existing or future guidelines for best practices in Online Teaching/Digital Learning among North American Institutions?
In CHLOE, we benchmark our findings against best practices as established in such sets of standards as the QM Rubric and the OLC Scorecard. We have not attempted to create a CHLOE set of best practices, and we believe that we should keep our survey separate from the advocacy of particular best practices. However, we hope that CHLOE findings continue to inform best practice discussions.
We recognize that there may be additional questions. Please contact Ron Legon or Richard Garrett with any questions.
