Facilitation Matters: Instructor Perception of Helpfulness of Facilitation Strategies in Online Courses

Abstract

Online course facilitation is critical to the success of online courses. Instructors use various facilitation strategies in online courses to engage students. One hundred instructors were surveyed on their perception of helpfulness of twelve different facilitation strategies used in online courses to enhance instructor presence, instructor connection, engagement and learning. Instructors’ timely response to questions and instructors’ timely feedback on assignments/projects were rated the highest in three of four constructs (instructor presence, engagement and learning). For instructor connection, ability to contact the instructor in multiple ways was rated the highest. Interactive visual syllabi of the course was rated the lowest in all four constructs. In the open-ended comments, group projects and synchronous sessions were rated helpful. Descriptive statistics for each of the construct by gender, delivery method, course level taught are presented. Significant differences were found between gender but analysis of variance failed to detect differences between primary delivery method or course level taught.