Abstract:
The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify leadership styles that community college leaders have used to influence the willingness of community college faculty to teach online courses. The data collected confirmed that faculty resisted teaching online because of five major reasons: The comfort of using technology as part of their content delivery; the age of the faculty member; many faculty question the quality of online courses and the ability to teach effectively certain courses online; and the time needed to develop and facilitate properly an online course. This study found that administrators of community colleges who were interviewed for this study relied primarily on transformational and situational leadership models. In terms of overcoming faculty resistance they relied on six key strategies for overcoming this resistance: intrinsic and extrinsic incentives; peer to peer influence, release time, responding to student needs; assuring high quality online course and offering technology skills. Out of these six, peer influence was seen as the most influential. More importantly these administrators acknowledged that it is the way in which an administrator influences faculty to teach online that determines the success of a faculty member's efforts for this delivery format. Predominantly, these administrators noted that enticing faculty in the water a little at a time was extremely important for their acceptance and willingness to teach online. Beyond this effective strategy, administrators noted that it is important to reach buy-in for online learning within a small, respected group of faculty first and then let them disseminate the importance and approval of teaching online.
