Faculty: A success factor in improving quality of distance learning

The quality of the output (students) of any educational institution depends on many factors like curriculum, technology, infrastructure, assessment, students and its faculty. The most important of all these factors is faculty. If faculty members are satisfied, motivated and committed then students' learning is going to be much better. No matter how advanced technology and infrastructure may be, how well designed the curriculum is and how delicate the assessment mechanism is, faculty is a variable that supersedes all. Teaching, whether in conventional or distance learning, is the single variable that can be a decisive factor in students' learning. Teaching in distance mode, where there is no or very little teacher-student interaction may become a boring, routine and unattractive job. Too much research is being conducted on factors like technology and media, whereas the faculty of distance education remains a neglected area. In this study, the Job Characteristic Model developed by Hackman and Oldham (1976) has been used as the theoretical basis and the Job Diagnostic Survey has been used to collect data from teachers of distance learning and traditional universities by using an online link which was sent via email to all the faculty members. The purpose of the study was to gather empirical data about faculty satisfaction in both modes of teaching (traditional and distance learning), compare both modes and explore which factors are considered to be more important by the faculty members. The results show that faculty members in distance education and traditional education systems differ in their perceptions towards their jobs. Higher mean scores have been recorded for skill variety, task identity, autonomy, feedback from work, experienced meaningfulness, job security and growth satisfaction by faculty of the traditional education system as compared to distance education faculty.