Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Sun, Yan

Committee Member

Beriswill, Joanne

Committee Member

King, Stephanie B.

Committee Member

Yu, Chien

Date of Degree

5-1-2020

Original embargo terms

Visible to MSU only for 2 years

Document Type

Dissertation - Open Access

Major

Instructional Systems and Workforce Development

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D)

College

College of Education

College

College of Education

Department

Department of Instructional Systems and Workforce Development

Department

Department of Instructional Systems and Workforce Development

Abstract

This study examined online collegiate instructors’ perceptions of web-conferencing as an online instructional tool and as a tool for creating social presence and teaching presence and their perceptions of barriers discouraging them from using web-conferencing in online instruction. Adopting a quantitative survey research design, this study collected and analyzed survey data from 62 instructors who facilitated online instruction at a major university in northeastern Mississippi. The researcher developed the Assessment of Collegiate Instructors’ Perceptions of the Use of Web-Conferencing for Online Instruction questionnaire and administered the questionnaire via Survey Monkey to collect data of the participants’ demographic information and their perceptions about web-conferencing. Four research questions guided this study. Descriptive statistical analysis using frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations, independent samples t-tests, and a Mann-Whitney U test were used to analyze the data to answer the research questions. The results of this study revealed that collegiate instructors who use web-conferencing in their online instruction have a better perception of web-conferencing as an instructional tool and as a tool for creating social and teaching presence than instructors who do not use web-conferencing. This study also shows that online collegiate instructors using web-conferencing have lower perceptions regarding barriers of using web-conferencing than those not using web-conferencing. In addition, the results from the study indicated that gender affects online collegiate instructions’ perceptions of web-conferencing as an instructional tool and as a tool for creating social and teaching presence, with female instructors having better perceptions than male instructors. The findings from this study contribute to the literature of online instruction and web-conferencing research by providing empirical evidence supporting Rogers’ (1995; 2003) innovation diffusion model and pointing out the directions for future efforts to promote online collegiate instructors’ adoption of web-conferencing. Based on the findings, this study made recommendations for future research and for facilitating adoption of web-conferencing by online collegiate instructors.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/16650

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