ABSTRACT
When faculty teach courses online for the first time, they may do so for any
number of reasons, ranging from the course having been slotted that way prior to
their putting it in their workload, to their wanting more flexibility in their own
schedule, to the administration encouraging them to meet the needs of students.
And they may be new to teaching a particular course, new to teaching online, or
both. Furthermore, their technological comfort zone may range widely depending
on their fluency: They may be guided by a strong orientation toward print-based
composing, or they may be as technologically fluent as their students. The process
we describe below characterizes the experience of teachers who came of age
before the emergence of new media and who were encouraged by administration
to offer courses that would meet the needs of students and lighten the demand for
on-site classroom space. However, our experience may inform younger faculty
who have not yet taken the plunge or program administrators who supervise
contingent faculty who prefer the flexibility of teaching online. Once faculty have
committed to teaching online, many of them most likely begin to familiarize
themselves with the campus delivery system available and soon realize that their
courses can be ultra-technologically sexy or pretty dang technologically straight-
forward, depending on the system, their knowledge, available support-and
their comfort level. They should also be aware that as online enrollments have
increased, so have distance course attrition rates, so they will need strategies
for engaging with their students (Carr, 2000).
