An Examination of Perceptions, Attitudes, and Levels of Job Satisfaction of Faculty Teaching in a Distance Education Environment

Abstract

Distance education programs have been encumbered with numerous issues concerning the quality of the delivery of distance education. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions, attitudes, and levels of job satisfaction for faculty teaching in a distance online education environment. This study explored theories and concepts relating to adult education, self-directed learning, pedagogy, andragogy, behaviorist, and constructivist instructional models. The findings consisted of the demographic descriptions of the faculty that participated in this study. The mean, standard deviation, distribution and percentages of various aspects of the demographic information such as gender, occupation, education, and institution type for faculty participating were considered. Results from the bivariate correlations were presented that suggested that the dependent variable means were different; however, a relationship existed between them. The results showed that the correlation analyzes were statistically significant for all eight correlations. A one-way repeated-measures ANOVA was conducted to analyze the relationships between perceptions, attitudes, levels of job satisfaction, and training, level of ease, and knowledge in relation to technology use among faculty teaching distance education courses. The results indicated a strong relationship between the dependent variables, overall perceptions, overall attitudes, overall levels of job satisfaction, and technology use.