No substitute for seeing the look on someone's face?

Most of us can agree that the look on someone's face when they're doing what they love is contagious and inspiring. Keep reading and you'll find that faculty still prefer to see that look on a student's face when synapses are firing and connections are being made. This is true even though online education enrollment has increased1  and is now identified as the fastest growing segment of higher education.2 

Even with increased online course offerings, only 9% of faculty said they prefer to teach a class that is mostly or completely online. About half (51%) prefer to teach courses that are blended, i.e., face-to-face with some use of the online learning environment.3  Faculty still want to see the faces of their students, but they want to use the online learning environment to do the more mundane tasks, such as distributing syllabi (figure 1). As we found in 2017, previous teaching experiences continue to influence current teaching environment preferences.4  Faculty who taught only face-to-face courses in the past 12 months almost always preferred a face-to-face approach (73% completely and 19% mostly face-to-face). Even for those who teach online, the appeal of engaging students face-to-face remains quite strong. Among instructors who have taught at least one online course in the past 12 months, nearly twice as many prefer a mostly or completely face-to-face environment, compared to those who prefer a mostly or completely online engagement with their class. However, the more courses instructors teach online, the more comfortable they are teaching online and the greater their preference for blended learning and fully online environments.

Older faculty also gravitate toward online courses. Baby Boomers and Gen Xers are about twice as likely as Millennial instructors to prefer teaching fully online. Why? It may be a matter of priorities. One of the most frequently cited barriers to online instruction is time commitment.5  Junior faculty may be more focused on conducting research, presenting at conferences, or finding external grants.6  A faculty member told us, "Give me more time to work on technology in my teaching role. Between teaching, college service, and other professional development, I don't have time to learn what is available, how to use it, and develop content that uses it." Tenured faculty may be seeking challenging, unique opportunities at their institution.7  And older faculty may be tenured and also likely free of the tyranny of teaching evaluations that often stifle pedagogical experimentation and creative approaches to teaching. Compared with younger tenure-track faculty or adjunct instructors who have professional (and personal) incentives to curry the favor of students, tenured faculty can (and should) leverage their positions of authority to serve as catalysts of change for their departments, institutions, and higher education writ large.8 

Analysis of faculty teaching environment preferences for assignments and activities showed that preferences fall into two domains: activities or assignments that would likely rely more on face-to-face interactions (i.e., "human centered"), such as discussion, lecture, or labs/demonstrations; and those more efficiently accomplished asynchronously (i.e., course management functions not needing direct interactions with instructors or peers). Our findings suggest that faculty may see online activities as functional time-savers: online quizzes increase class time, online syllabi likely decrease emails requesting another copy of the syllabus, and posted course guidelines may cut down on questions in class. Faculty are still highly invested in face-to-face environments for discussion, lectures, labs/demonstrations, conferences, and presentations (but less so for collaboration). Even here we find variation in preferences for particular assignments and activities. For example, labs/demonstrations (54%), faculty/student conferences (57%), and student presentations (60%) top the "human centered" activities for completely face-to-face preferences. But a majority of faculty prefer a blended teaching environment for collaboration (66%) and course-related discussions (53%). This suggests that although interactions in the classroom are prized, certain functions are better served by online components than by solely face-to-face approaches.

Positive outcomes for online learning are well documented,9  but few faculty want to use online learning environments for activities such as class discussions or collaborative activities. But what about faculty who receive support to use the online learning environment? A majority of these faculty still preferred face-to-face or primarily face-to-face learning environments. Even faculty who received technical support for online collaborative spaces (e.g., an LMS), professional development regarding the integrated use of technology in teaching, or individualized consultations for using technology in teaching—and who rated these services as good or excellent—still gravitated toward seeing their students' faces in the classroom.

This is a challenging position for faculty to hold as higher education enrollments continue to decline.10  If institutions are increasing online offerings to grow enrollment, then assessment of faculty promotion must align with the changing nature of enrollment. To encourage instructors to teach in online environments, institutions need to help their faculty cultivate a culture of excellence surrounding the use of technology in teaching and learning. This includes offering a sustainable and ongoing learning community, incorporating expert mentoring (including peer mentoring), responding to instructors' different levels of expertise, embracing the iterative and experimental nature of teaching practices, and evaluating the impact of these professional development programs.11  It appears that faculty don't want to lose sight of their students' faces when they're making connections with course material. And they don't have to. But it's important that institutions provide the necessary resources for faculty who wish to engage with blended or online learning or who are on the fence.