Experienced Faculty Perceptions of the Online Teaching Practice

Purpose - This inquiry focuses on faculty who have several years of experience teaching in a virtual learning environment and examines their 'lived' experiences with online pedagogy in order to (1) understand how teaching in a virtual environment affects pedagogical style, academic identity and student-instructor interactions and (2) to explore how the virtual teaching experience evolves as faculty continue to teach online. Design/methodology/approach - Using Mezirow's transformative learning theory as a framework, this inquiry takes a basic inductive qualitative approach to analyzing faculty perceptions of the online teaching experience and aims to understand how faculty use their previous teaching experiences, assumptions and expectations as frames of reference to construct a new or revised interpretations of their role as an online instructor (Mezirow, 1991; Merriam, 2002). Originality/value - This inquiry extends the existing online learning literature by focusing on faculty who have several years of online teaching experience and seeks to understand their 'lived' experiences as they have continued to teach in the virtual learning environment. Practical implications - University leaders will be better able to identify the challenges online faculty face, recognize the aspects that motivate them to persist, provide the support they need to teach well and create institutional policies that fully support a strong online faculty and successful online learning enterprise.