Universities’ design and development staff worked overtime to train faculty for the move to online classes including creating videos of lectures, using synchronous teaching software such as Zoom and WebEx, and using various features of online learning management systems. Although we use the term online instruction throughout this manuscript, the context is a move that represents emergency remote instruction. Hodges, Moore, Lockee, Trust, and Bond ( 2020) refer to this online move as emergency remote instruction. With the March alert about the pandemic, many colleges and universities extended spring breaks to allow faculty to prepare for the move their courses online. These were primarily decisions made by administrators, trustees, and/or state governments meant to promote social distancing and flatten the curve regarding the spread of the virus (NPR, 2020).
In the United States, as part of a move to promote social distancing, colleges and universities moved their face-to-face classes online. The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 virus a worldwide pandemic on March 11, 2020. The findings indicate that creating the best learning situations for students is not one-size-fits-all and that there are discipline and pedagogical issues to consider when moving F2F courses online that are not fixed simply with technology. Administrators should consider the results of this study to better understand the instructional and mental-health needs of faculty especially in an emergency situation, such as COVID-19. Generally, faculty felt frustrated with their ability to best support their students within the online format. Three views emerged: Techies who like to teach (the view most positive in relation to teaching online) Overwhelmed as human beings (populated by caregivers) and It’s about what cannot be done online (those who are focused on the limitations of technology and abilities for online instruction). Each unique viewpoint is described by a representative sort, distinguishing statements, and participants’ post-sort responses. Additionally, the analyses allow for differentiation of views rather than an aggregate of views. This is different from responding to a Likert-type survey. The operation of sorting items allows participants to provide their internal viewpoint.
The Q-sorting process is reflective and self-referent. In Q, similar sorts are grouped together mathematically into factors, each representing a unique viewpoint. The participants sorted 36 statements to reveal and describe their subjective viewpoints. The researcher used Q methodology, a mixed method, to determine and describe faculty views about this situation. The purpose of this study is to examine faculty’s views about the move from face-to-face (F2F) instruction to online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.