An examination of competencies, roles, and professional development needs of community college distance educators who teach mathematics

This study describes the rankings of both distance education administrators and faculty who teach mathematics online in a Florida community college setting with regard to the relative importance of core competencies and roles in teaching online courses and the need for professional development that is supportive of these competencies and roles. The rankings of administrators and online faculty for level of importance indicated for core competencies and skill area needs for faculty development when teaching an online course were examined.;The Survey of Competencies for Teaching an Online Course, a 23-item instrument designed by the researcher, was mailed to 28 distance education administrators with membership to the Florida Distance Learning Consortium (FDLC) and 100 faculty teaching mathematics or statistics online during spring term 2006. Twenty administrators and fifty-two online faculty returned surveys, for a usable response rate of 71% and 52%, respectively.;Results from the study suggested: (a) distance education administrators and online faculty ascribed a similar level of importance to core competencies and roles for teaching an online course; (b) providing grades and feedback, facilitating online activities to support learning, and creation of online assignments and tasks were perceived to be the most important competencies and roles for online instruction; (c) distance education administrators and online faculty ascribe varying levels of importance to skill areas needed for faculty development to support a fully Web-based course; (d) knowledge of distance education instructional techniques and planning and instructional design skills were perceived to be the most important skill area need to target for faculty development; and (e) neither gender nor age had any bearing on distance education administrator and online faculty perceptions of the need for faculty development to support online instruction.;Recommendations for further study included conducting a parallel study by varying the faculty subject area, the institution type, or geographic location. Further research is also suggested to examine ethnic minority representation within distance learning. For this study, the distance education administrator sample was just above 5%, and it was only 10% among the online faculty as it relates to ethnic minorities.