Abstract:

Education is changing and evolving, trying to adapt and respond to current needs and external events that may influence the content and context of education. The last few years, distance education has been continuously gaining more interest from students and instructors. Critical success factor in the case of distance education includes the instructors, who manage and orchestrate the distance education initiative and effort. In this context, the current paper is focusing on the role and profile of faculty, university professors who are involved in distance education programs. The research initiative collected data for the questionnaire survey participants - instructors. Male professors were the majority of the survey participants and most of them stated that they were married. The majority of the respondents are university professors or associate professors. It is very interesting to note that they are all working in a state government university. Most of the faculty members are indeed certified for distance education. It is also worth mentioning that regarding their level of computer expertise, all participants replied that they have an average to good level of computer level. Regarding the instructors’ attributes it is true that they have a preferred way of doing things and carefully set priorities trying to follow them. Instructors like to be organized in their teaching style and prefer to be detail oriented. Finally, it becomes clear that instructors welcome team teaching.

Keywords:

Distance Learning Education, Faculty Members, Teaching Preferences, Instructors’ Attributes.