Date of Conferral

2020

Degree

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

School

Education

Advisor

Katherine Garlough

Abstract

The problem examined at the local site was that online faculty members were resistant to their new role of online advising and program administrators felt faculty may be underprepared for the task. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the perspectives of online faculty advisors and program administrators regarding the challenges associated with online advising and suggestions to improve training and online advising overall. The conceptual framework was based on Betts’ online human touch concepts. The research questions focused on gathering perceptions about the challenges associated with online advising and ways to improve the online advising component. A purposeful sampling method was used to select 7 online faculty advisors and 7 program administrators who worked with the online degree program. A basic qualitative design was used to capture the insights of participants through face-to-face semi-structured interviews. Four emergent themes were identified through axial coding: effective advising impacts student success, accountability in advising ensures student success, guided change communicates cohesion, and academic advising requires understanding. A few key results included that participants perceived their challenges as the lack of preparation for online student advising and inability to effectively impact student success. The resulting project from these results were a professional development training workshop developed to prepare online faculty advisors for effective online advising practices. The implementation of this professional development workshop could bring about positive social change by improving the online advising program's effectiveness and the quality of online faculty advisors, ultimately assisting in retention and support.

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