University Faculty’s Perspectives on the Roles of E-Instructors and Their Online Instruction Practice

Despite the rapid use of e-Learning in higher education, the beliefs of instructors about and their practices during online instruction have been seldom addressed. This study explores the role perceptions of e-instructors in higher education. In total, 106 instructors from 20 Taiwanese universities filled out a questionnaire. Analytical results indicate that “content expertise” and “instructional designer” are perceived by university faculty as the key components in e-instruction in higher education. A gap exists between ideal and practical roles of e-instructors in higher education. Role perceptions and rolebased practices of e-instructors in higher education differ significantly in terms of gender and teaching experience. This study also provides suggestions for e-instructor training.


Introduction
Over the last decade, the number of colleges and universities offering e-Learning courses has increased dramatically, meaning that the number of faculty teaching online courses has also increased (Allen & Seaman, 2008;Aspden & Helm, 2004;Barker, 2003;Wallhaus, 2000;West, Waddoups, & Graham, 2007). As the number of online university courses is increasing rapidly, the awareness of the roles of e-instructors has also increased. Changes in the roles of e-instructors are particularly important when students engage in e-Learning (Barker, 2002;Denis, Watland, Pirotte, & Verday, 2004).
Therefore, e-instructors now play a very important role in e-Learning success and face many new challenges in higher education (Davidson-Shivers, Salzaar, & Hamilton, 2005;Goold, Coldwell, & Craig, 2010;Hass & Senjo, 2004;Johnson, 2008;Keengwe & Kidd, 2010;McQuiggan, 2007;Morris, Xu, & Finnegan, 2005;Tao & Yeh, 2008). Ryan, Scott, and Walsh (2010) proposed that e-instructors must be aware of issues associated with complex information. One primary challenge for e-instructors is to provide clear guidance during distance learning. In the conventional classroom, verbal and nonverbal communication delivers information and knowledge and helps students understand learning tasks. Changing communication modes requires e-instructors to adapt to e-Learning environments (Ryan, Scott, & Walsh, 2010). A large body of literature suggests that the roles of e-instructors may be more complex than those of traditional instructors (Baran, Correia, & Thompson, 2011;Barker, 2002;Bawane & Spector, 2009;Berge, 2001;Craig, Goold, Coldwell, & Mustard, 2008;Denis, Watland, Priotte, & Verday, 2004;Goodyear et al., 2001). Teacher beliefs typically encompass values, attitudes toward learning and learners, and conceptions of teacher roles and teaching practices. Therefore, information and knowledge about teacher beliefs are very important to improving instructional effectiveness (Farrell & Kun, 2008). However, most discussions of the relationship between teacher beliefs and teacher practices have focused on secondary and primary school teachers. Little attention has been paid to this relationship in the university or college context (Kane, Sandretto, & Heath, 2002). The online environment changes the fundamental nature of the interaction between the teacher, student, and content. Teachers are expected to adopt more facilitative approaches in online instruction; there is a strong need to require a re-examination of the roles teachers take and practice (Baran, Correia, & Thompson, 2011). Understanding what is lacking in online instruction is critical to help researchers and practitioners develop online programs and supports for e-instructors in higher education. Thus, this study attempts to answer the following questions : (1) Does a relationship exist between e-instructor beliefs about instructional roles and practices? (2) Do beliefs about the roles of e-instructors differ significantly? (3) Do online instructional practices of einstructors differ significantly?
The New Faculty Roles in Online Instruction As online instruction is becoming increasingly common, the importance of exploring challenges faced by e-instructors has increased dramatically. O'Neil (2006) argued that the role of an online instructor requires a paradigm shift in perceptions of instructional time and space, virtual management techniques, and ways of engaging students during e-Learning. Berge (2001) characterized the roles of e-instructors as (1) teaching, (2) socializing, (3) management, and (4) technology integrating. E-instructors are also expected to have the necessary technical, counseling, and facilitation skills to integrate technology and teaching to improve personal, active, and cooperative learning strategies. Ryan et al. (2000) proposed that the main role of online instructors is facilitator. E-instructors must facilitate the transition for students from the classroom to an online learning environment as well as guide students through the complexities of learning activities (Salmon, 2003). Goodyear, Salmon, Spector, Steeples, and Tickner (2001) demonstrated that the key roles of e-instructors are (a) process facilitator, (b) consultant/counselor, (c) assessor, (d) researcher, (e) content expert, (f) technician, (g) designer, and (h) manager/administrator. A process facilitator promotes a range of online activities that support student learning, particularly those associated with highlevel thinking. A consultant/counselor advises or counsels students; an assessor grades student work and provides feedback; a researcher adds new knowledge to content areas; a technician makes technology decisions or choices to improve the e-Learning environment for learners; a designer designs learning tasks; and a manager must manage students to maintain successful online learning experiences. For example, einstructors may promote online debates, identify controversial issues, and encourage discussion to generate additional evidence, and to summarize the discussion (Goodyear et al., 2001). Spector and de la Teja (2001) suggested that e-instructors must have the ability to manage learner time for reflection, keep discussions active, and organize discussions for use in curricula. Denis, Watland, Pirotte, and Verday (2004) defined the e-instructor profession via seven roles-content facilitator, metacognition facilitator, process facilitator, advisor/counselor, assessor, technologist, and resource provider.
They considered these roles essential for delivering online courses. Bawane and Spector's (2009) study proposed the roles of e-instructor include professional, pedagogical, social, evaluator, administrator, technologist, advisor/counselor, and researcher. Similarly, Guasch, Alvarez, and Espasa (2010) reported that instructors play the multiple roles of design/planning, social, instructive, technological, and management in online environments. Notably, these roles and those proposed by   (2009) indicated that the teaching load remains consistent and a relatively strong relationship exists between teaching load and technology use by faculty.
According to Schifter (2002), faculty rank (i.e., lecturer, assistant professor, associate professor, and full professor) significantly impacts technology use. Status is important in academia as rights, privileges, and pay are commensurate with status. Lecturers are typically concerned about the compatibility of technology and instructional material.
Further, administration exerted greater pressure on lecturers than status. These analytical results suggest that before hiring temporary teachers, lecturers, university managers, or program directors, a candidate's technical and computer skills should be assessed in relation to the overall goals and expectations of a university. Zayim, Yildirim, and Saka (2006) also noted that faculty rank and computer use self-efficacy are the two most powerful predictors of technology adoption. They demonstrated that faculty members with a rank lower than professor and faculty whose self-efficacy is strong are most likely to be early technology adopters. Moreover, appropriate levels of technical and administrative support must be provided to all teachers (Schifter, 2002  The alpha reliability coefficients suggest that the questionnaire has acceptable internal consistency.

Design and Data Analysis
Data of the perceptions and the practices of e-instructor's roles were analyzed using descriptive statistics and sorted by the means. Pearson's correlation was performed between the perceptions and the practices of e-instructor's roles. T-test was conducted for gender on each dimension of the perceptions and the practices. One-way ANOVA was run for faculty rank, online instruction experience, training support, and teaching load on each dimension of the perceptions and the practices. LSD was performed as the post hoc analysis. Statistical tests were performed using an alpha of .05.

Faculty Rank
Notably, no statistically significant difference existed between e-instructors' ranks of perceptions toward e-instructor roles and practices using one-way ANOVA. The results show that e-instructors with different ranks have the same perceptions and practices about the roles of e-instructor. In perception, full professor reported the highest mean

Online Instruction Experience
Regarding the perceptions of online instruction, a significant difference existed among e-instructors with different experiences in 'Facilitating learning' dimension (Table 3).
Additionally, regarding the practices of online instruction, a significant difference existed among e-instructors with different experiences in 'Facilitating learning dimension (Table 4) in one-way ANOVA and LSD as post hoc analysis method.  Training Support Regarding the perception of online instruction, no significant difference existed among e-instructors with different levels of training support in each dimension. However, regarding the practice of online instruction, significant differences existed for instructional design, learning assessment, and technology use among e-instructors with different levels of training support (Table 5) by the results of one-way ANOVA and LSD.
The analytical result indicates that e-instructors who received enough training support performed better in the dimensions of instructional design, learning assessment, and technology use than e-instructors who receive some or little training support.

This study investigated (a) the relationships between e-instructors' beliefs about roles
and practices about online instruction, and (b) differences in perceptions and practices of online instruction among different e-instructors (e.g., gender, rank, experience, and training). The major findings are summarized as follows.
E-instructors considered 'content expertise' and 'instruction designer' as the two most important roles of e-instructors. Meanwhile, e-instructors ranked content expertise and administration management as the top two highest places as they performed e-Learning instruction. Surprisingly, e-instructors ranked 'administrative manager' as the fourth most important role; they ranked 'administrative manager' as the second highest place in their practice of online instruction. The administrative manager role comprises carrying out the pedagogical tasks related with course management, including establishing rules and regulations, student registration, and recordkeeping (Baran, Correia, & Thompson, 2011;Guasch, Alvarez, & Espasa, 2010). This may indicate that einstructors spent considerable time on administrative work while they taught online courses, due to the shortage of institution administrative supports (i.e., technical support for e-Learning platform or teaching assistant).
Moreover, e-instructors considered 'learning assessor' as the third most important role; they ranked 'learning assessor' as fifth place in their practice of online instruction.
Furthermore, 'learning facilitator' was scored lowest for e-instructors perception, while they ranked it as the fifth most important role in their practice of online instruction. We are aware that today e-instructors face a growing demand from students to offer a more flexible, technology-enriched course delivery and they also face the pedagogical challenges to design innovative learning environments, which integrate technology Vol 15 | No 3 July/14 83 enhancing students learning. In fact, it is the highest priority to redesign and rethink faculty multidimensional roles to be addressed in professional development programs to prepare to teach in online environments (Bawne & Spector, 2009;Guasch, Alvarez, & Espasa, 2010).
Experimental results also indicate that female e-instructors are statistically significantly higher than male e-instructors in their perceptions toward the roles of e-instructors and in their practices of e-learning instruction, except for technology use. This finding is in conflict with the finding obtained by Ahadiat (2005), but consistent with Schifter Fatt (2003) indicating that female e-instructors may be more motivated and committed to online teaching. On the other hand, analytical results reveal that no significant differences existed between different e-instructor ranks, meaning that einstructor position does not affect their perceptions of, and practices during, online teaching.
Further, experimental results indicate that perceptions and practices associated with facilitating learning by e-instructors with a half year to four years of experience in teaching online were significantly different than those of e-instructors with more than four years of experience. One can infer that e-instructors with more than four years of experience had more online facilitating experiences with students and paid relatively more attention to other aspects of online instruction, such as instructional design, than facilitating learning.  , 2000;Fish & Gill, 2009;Nelson & Thompson, 2005). In this study, e-instructors with sufficient training scored practices higher than those with little or no training. Thus, it is important to note that routine training programs (i.e., basic improving the training support to prepare teachers to teach online.
The information obtained through this research study is highly relevant at both a local and a global level. We also hope that our study contributes to enrich the knowledge available on the roles of the e-instructors performing online teaching, whichthey may need to carry out their responsibilities and tasks. The limitations of this study are the fact that the sample size was somewhat small and their generalizability may be limited.