Moderator: Peter J. Shea

Recognition: Open SUNY Online Teaching Ambassadors have been nominated by their campus as  exemplary online educators, who are both enthusiastic and effective in online teaching. They will receive a certificate of recognition for their positive contributions to the field of online teaching in SUNY followed by a panel discussion. 

Panelists: Open SUNY Online Teaching Ambassadors TBD

Day 2 Panel Presentation

A continuing failure of online education has been its inability to convince the most important audience – higher education faculty members – of its worth. (Allen & Seaman, 2014).

Numerous national studies have documented issues of acceptance of online learning on the part of faculty in US higher education.  For example, more than a decade of survey research conducted by Sloan-C and the Babson Survey Research Group has found that Chief Academic Officers report a minority of faculty in their institutions of online education. Indeed, in the most recently study for which data was collected only 27.6% of academic leaders believed faculty at their college accepted online education, a lower percentage than when the first study was conducted in 2002 (Allen & Seaman, 2015). An even more recent national survey of faculty attitudes (Jaschik & Lederman, 2014) concluded that only 9% of the professoriate nationwide strongly believe outcomes for online learning were equivalent to classroom outcomes.   However SUNY faculty were far more likely to strongly agree with statements indicating the possible achievement of equivalent outcomes between online courses and in-person courses in a variety of contexts than were faculty in a recent national survey (Jaschik & Lederman, 2014). An ongoing study within SUNY seeks to understand the formation of positive attitudes toward online learning.

This panel will feature Open SUNY Online Teaching Ambassadors relating their own personal narratives reflecting the formation of their positive attitudes.  Such accounts are currently missing from the research literature and can help us develop a richer picture of the successful adoption process of online instruction.