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Full and part-time distance education faculty.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

In order to address concerns about assigning part-time faculty to teach using distance education, a study was conducted to compare full and part-time faculty who teach via the Internet in terms of student satisfaction and course completion rates. Results indicate that students who completed online courses from part-time faculty were more satisfied with their learning experience than students taught by full-time faculty in a community college distance education program. Fulltime and part-time faculty were equally effective in terms of student retention.

Background

Faced with increasing enrollments along with declining budgets in the mid-1990s, community colleges began to rely on part-time instructors (Avakian, 1995). Numerous reports indicate that part-time faculty constitute a majority of the community college faculty workforce (Berry, 1999; Parsons, 1998). Yet, educators continue to debate the ultimate impact that use of part-time faculty has on academic quality (Banachowski, 1997; Head, 2002). Another controversial accommodation to shifting demands is the increased use of instruction delivered via the Internet.

Advocates for increasing in the numbers of adjunct faculty at community colleges cite the need for specialized and/or practicing vocational faculty in a wide range of disciplines and fields, scheduling flexibility, and lower instructional costs (Head, 2002). Others oppose reliance on part-time faculty on the grounds that only full-time faculty can provide sufficient stability and continuity with long-term commitments to their colleges (Berry, 1999; Brewster, 2000). Additionally, given their other obligations in order to make a living, part-time faculty rarely have sufficient time to spend on campus to devote to committee service, curricular development and evaluation, and student advising. National surveys indicate that full-time and part-time community college instructors differ (Freeland, 1998; Rifkin, 1998) with regard to professional attitudes: Part-time faculty report less involvement in scholarship, hold higher expectations for students, and lower commitment to maintain academic integrity than full-time faculty.

Policies regarding the use of part-time faculty tend to be restrictive based on the assumption that disadvantages outweigh advantages. For example, the California Code of Regulations, Title 5, Section 51025 (Assembly Bill 1725) mandates that 75% of all class hours in community colleges be taught by full-time faculty (Higher Education and National Affairs American Council on Education, 2002). Another example is the profile measures for the Virginia Community College System that include "Percent of Lower-Division Courses Taught...

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