Benefits and Drawbacks of Online Teaching vs. Teaching in Traditional Face-To-Face Settings

¶ … online teaching compared to teaching in traditional face-to-face settings?" With this topic in mind, there are several important research questions that I am considering. One of the research questions if "instructors from online universities report better job satisfaction than do their traditional brick and mortar collogues." Another one of my research questions asks about instructor perceptions of student understanding as measured by formative assessments. Specifically, for example, in regards to different instructional feedback, a research question I could investigate is "do instructors from online teaching programs provide different critical assessments of student assignments than do instructors from traditional settings"? This research question provides for an easy to use survey research design, which I like because of the simplicity of implementing surveys in qualitative research. The importance of this research question, I believe, is that it will provide some data to support a hypothesis that student success can be improved by the type of feedback students receive from instructors. So what I'd like to understand is how differences in the types of instructional feedback affect student outcomes and goals. Specifically, what instructional feedback methods are correlated with increased academic achievements? Are online instructors provided an opportunity to critically assess student assignments with greater or lesser degrees than their traditional school collogues? If so, what is the process involved? Shank (2006) suggests that measurement and accuracy are essential for improving reliability. Therefore, the tools and measurements I use for this survey should already have pilot studied and have some proven validity and reliability.

Memo 2:

The focus of my study is identifying some of the various benefits and detriments of online teaching compared to teaching in traditional face-to-face settings. With such a large research question, I've decided to focus my question to quantitatively measurable criteria. Hence, the locus of the study involves analyzing pedagogical differences in providing meaningful feedback to help students achieve greater levels of academic success. The locus of the research involves analysis of what factors are related to student success in online schools vs. traditional schools. Do online instructors have more time to dedicate when providing feedback to students or are traditional instructors more able to provide substantive and meaningful feedback to students? What effect does increased feedback have, if any, on overall student successes? Are there differences in student perceptions concerning the quality of feedback received from online vs. traditional settings? For now, I consider feedback meaningful and substantive if it allows for the recipients (students) to not only identify areas of improvement, but also contributes to a better understanding of the subject matter. So, of concern, then, is identifying different types of formative assessments and rubrics instructors from online universities use and how they are both similar and different from traditional formative assessments.

Memo 3: