Reluctance Among Rural Fine Arts Educators In North Georgia To Utilize E-Learning

Benjamin Sexton

The purpose of this performance improvement dissertation in practice was to diagnose and remediate the root causes of reluctance among rural fine arts educators to embrace eLearning as a viable instructional method comparable to face-to-face learning. Participating school districts, referred to by the pseudonyms District A, B, C, D, and E, collectively desired to increase e-Learning opportunities for students and staff while maintaining a rigorous and relevant curriculum. Evidence suggested that fine arts educators were reluctant to devote time and resources to creating an e-Learning environment that rivaled the rigor and effectiveness of face-to-face teaching. A review of relevant literature showed that this issue was not uncommon among rural school systems, thereby opening the door for further research and interventions to remediate the root causes of educator reluctance. I thoroughly investigated how educators and districts could improve and embrace the eLearning process for fine arts courses. Steered by the literature review, I engaged the problem through the human performance technology (HPT) performance improvement model (Van Tiem et al., 2012). This included a complete front-end analysis of the organization and the environment, followed by a gap and cause analysis. I gathered data to determine the current and desired states of organizational effectiveness regarding e-Learning for fine arts. I reviewed extant data in district documents, collected educator attitudes through survey questionnaires, and interviewed educators from all fine arts disciplines. I discovered from survey data that fine arts educators possessed strong convictions about the benefits of e-Learning and the use of instructional technology; these findings were also reflected in the frequency of responses relating to these items during interviews. The degree of support and the availability of instructional technology varied widely from district to district. This was a noted source of discontent among participants. Some participants compensated for the differences by finding sources that were either free or subscription-based and paid for out of pocket. Along with varying resources and support, participants lamented a lack of specialized professional development opportunities for their particular discipline. Other issues included student access to tools and materials, skills transfer, and difficulty adapting traditional pedagogical methods in e-Learning environments. Working as a solitary analyst, I used Rothwell’s (2015) worksheet to locate and define performance gaps. As such, I uncovered negative gaps in all four performance quadrants. I then applied Chevalier’s (2010) reasonable goal approach to determine a milestone between the actual and desired states. I completed the gap priority matrix according to “the value of a task against the effort it takes to complete the task” (Van Tiem et al., 2012, p. 160). Once I identified and prioritized the gaps, I conducted the root cause analysis as a twolevel process. First, I used Chevalier’s (2003) Updated Behavior Engineering Model to narrow the scope of possible root causes. Next, I completed second-level causal analysis procedures using the 5 Whys tool. I focused on the most frequently occurring root causes from the analysis. These included a lack of collaboration opportunities, a lack of targeted training, and varied levels of digital competence. I proceeded to propose a two-fold solution set to the root causes. One solution set addressed the lack of collaboration opportunities. The other addressed the lack of targeted training while considering participants' varied levels of digital competence. Combining these interventions would shrink the associated performance gaps to improved and sustainable levels. I proposed a professional development course for targeted training and a professional learning community to address the lack of collaboration opportunities. I was able to implement the professional development course, but could not implement the professional learning community during this study due to time constraints. The professional development course was evaluated at the formative and summative levels. Confirmative evaluation is ongoing. The evaluation plan for the professional learning community was designed and will be conducted upon completion. I chose Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Evaluation because of its simple, straightforward, and specific model for evaluating training programs. The final portion of this dissertation in practice examined the study's implications and the potential avenues of future study related to the dissertation topic. I concluded the study with a personal and professional reflection on my growth as a person and researcher.

Reluctance Among Rural Fine Arts Educators In North Georgia To Utilize E-Learning

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Reluctance Among Rural Fine Arts Educators In North Georgia To Utilize E-Learning

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