The Transition From Teaching F2F to Online

Background

Online education has continued to grow and play an increasingly important role in higher education. The enrollment of online learners has increased from 1.6 million students in 2002 to 6.7 million online students in 2012 (Allen & Seaman, 2013). These significant enrollment numbers have not gone unnoticed, as a recent study found almost two-thirds of college and university administrators perceived online education as critical to the institution’s long-term strategy and success (Allen & Seaman, 2016). While it was previously found that students preferred traditional face-to-face courses over online courses with regard to course quality, counter to this they continued to enroll in online courses at increasing rates (Weldy, 2018). As online education programs increase in both size and scope, it is important that educators continue to establish online learning environments that not only foster learning, but also promote positive experiences for students.

It has been noted that online courses have some distinctive features that set them apart from the traditional face-to-face classroom experience, such as a reliance on technology, differences in learner participation and content delivery, college affordability, student flexibility, and accessibility (Ascough, 2002; Deming, Goldin, Katz & Yuchtman, 2015; Kauffman, 2015; Nguyen, 2015). Many factors impact the quality of online education and the learning experience, which has been a long-standing topic for consideration (Twigg, 2001; Yang & Cornelious, 2004). Twigg (2001) made the distinction that “any discussion about quality in a distributed learning environment must first ask: From whose perspective are we considering quality?” (p. 1). Students may perceive differences in the quality of their traditional face-to-face courses in comparison to the quality of their online courses; similarly, students may also perceive the quality of their online courses differently than faculty members guiding the online courses.