Confidence in Online Teaching and Quality Matters A Self-Efficacy Survey of Agricultural and Natural Resources Faculty at a Land Grant University

• Published in: NACTA journal Vol. 64; pp. 386 - 396
• Main Authors: Loizzo, Jamie L., Rampold, Shelli D., Bunch, J.C., Weisberg, Lauren, Jordi, John
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture (NACTA) 01.10.2020; 01.11.2019
• ISSN: 0149-4910

Many university faculty and instructors have migrated their instructional practices from face-to-face approaches to online to keep up with the growing demand for distance education. Some land grant institutions are implementing Quality Matters (QM) instructional design standards to demonstrate rigorous online course development. Past research indicated college teachers have varying levels of online teaching self-efficacy (SE), including high to low levels of confidence using web-based tools for fostering knowledge growth. However, there is little research regarding their SE in fulfilling QM standards to achieve excellence in online instruction. An online survey questionnaire was distributed to agricultural and natural resource faculty and instructors to gauge their online teaching SE in four areas (i.e., student engagement, instructional strategies, classroom management, and use of computers), as well as QM SE. Respondents (n = 48) were less self-efficacious in areas of online classroom management, student engagement, and applying QM standards to encourage student online community building and containing instructional video length to less than ten minutes. Results indicate a need to incorporate information about online assessment strategies, customizing learning for a variety of learner needs, fostering community building, navigating uncivil online discussions, utilizing synchronous discussion tools, copyright material use, and preparing focused content videos.