An Exploration of Motivational Factors in an Online Professional Development Environment: A Study of Faculty’s Intention to Teach Online Courses at King Khalid University

الملخص

Online professional development is increasingly occupying a large part of the higher education policies. This exploratory study aimed to investigate whether and how the factors of motivation impact faculty intention to teach online. The purpose was to investigate motivational factors in the online professional development environment among faculty at King Khalid University (KKU) in Saudi Arabia (SA). A questionnaire was sent to a cross-sectional sample of faculty at KKU to collect mainly quantitative data. One research question addressed motivational factors in online professional development courses. Motivation was broken down to the factors of Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction (ARCS model) to measure the extent to which these factors can predict faculty intention to teach online courses at KKU. A valid number of (119) participants responded to the survey, (57) were male and (62) were female faculty. The overall findings of this study showed that there was a positive relationship between relevance and faculty intention to teach online courses. The remaining three factors of ARCS model consisting of Attention, Confidence, and Satisfaction; were not found to be individually significant predictors of faculty intention. Findings also showed that motivation significantly and positively predicted faculty intention. The study utilized a homogeneous sample as all the participants belonged to the same university, KKU, and the same country, and so further research is recommended to shed more lights on faculty motivation in online professional development.