Student Satisfaction and Perceived Learning with On-line Courses: Principles and Examples from the SUNY Learning Network

Abstract

The State University of New York (SUNY) Learning Network (SLN) is the online instructional program created for the 64 colleges and nearly 400,000 students of SUNY. The foundation of the program is freedom from schedule and location constraints for our faculty and students. The primary goals of the SLN are to bring SUNY's diverse and high-quality instructional programs within the reach of learners everywhere, and to be the best provider of asynchronous instruction for learners in New York State and beyond. We believe that these goals cannot be achieved unless faculty receives appropriate support.This paper will examine factors that have contributed to the high level of faculty satisfaction we have achieved in the SLN. The analysis will be done on several levels. This first section will look at the SLN at a program-wide level and will provide information regarding the systemic implementation of our asynchronous learning environment.The second section examines issues that contribute to on-line teaching satisfaction from a faculty-development and course-design perspective. This section will present the evolution of the four-stage faculty development process and a seven-step course design process that was developed by SLN and comment on lessons learned.The third section presents results from the SLN Faculty Satisfaction Survey conducted in spring 1999. This section examines factors from a quantitative analysis that significantly contributes to faculty satisfaction with online teaching and offers recommendations for course and program design based on these factors.The fourth section examines faculty satisfaction at the level of individual institutions with examples from specific courses. This section will introduce the reader to local implementation of SLN courses at two college programs in the SUNY system: the Department of Educational Theory and Practice at the University at Albany (UA), and the Internet Academy (IA) of Herkimer County Community College (HCCC). These case studies present and examine important evidence of faculty satisfaction from a single-institution and individual-faculty perspective.