Instructors Transitioning to Online Education

Abstract

The motivation and importance of this study was influenced by my own experience of transitioning from traditional face-to-face to online instruction. For this study, I conducted telephone interviews with 12 instructors meeting the specified qualifications. I also conducted email interviews with participants for 5 weeks. Transcripts of all interviews are located in the appendices. I used a combination of first person, hermeneutic and existential phenomenological approaches to investigate the lived experiences of college and university instructors who have transitioned from traditional face-to-face to online instruction. Several minor themes were revealed. The overall theme is that the online classroom system is an emerging culture with some unique advantages. The paper ends with a major question to be further examined: Would the results be different if less experienced instructors were interviewed?