The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of an Instructor Effectiveness Course designed specifically to retain adjunct faculty and improve their overall success in teaching. The study also investigated the ''online'' and ''face-to-face'' groups of the Instructor Effectiveness Course and compared faculty who take this course to those who do not in order to detect any significant differences. Differences were measured through students' class grade point averages, (GPA's), and course completion rates for the three groups of faculty, as well as through the faculty performance on student evaluations. This mixed method, causal/comparative study looked at the adjunct faculty members who have taken the Instructor Effectiveness Course at a large southern community college compared to those who have not taken the course. This large southern community college employs approximately 1,400 adjunct faculty members. Four hundred of these adjunct faculty members have completed the Instructor Effectiveness Course offered at the college. For the past couple of years, the course has been offered both face-to-face and online. These adjunct faculty members teach both in the associate of arts (A.A.) programs, as well as the associate of science (A.S.) programs. The adjunct faculty members were divided into four groups: by those with less than one year of teaching experience, those with one year of teaching experience, those with two years of teaching experience, and those with three years of teaching experience. The adjunct faculty members were also divided by those teaching A.S. courses and those teaching A.A. courses, and by those teaching night and day classes. The adjunct faculty members with prior teaching experience who have been exempted from taking the course were not included in the study.
The adjunct faculty members who had never taken the Instructor Effectiveness Course had significantly higher class GPA's than those who had taken the course online or face-to-face. Student evaluations showed that adjunct faculty members who had completed the online version of the Instructor Effectiveness Course had a higher weighted average for all questions than those who had not taken the course.
This study had three major objectives. The first was to investigate adjunct faculty members' retention rates. The second was to investigate students' success as measured by GPA and course completion. The third was to investigate adjunct faculty members' success as measured by students' evaluations. The research questions, hypotheses, participants, instrumentation, data collection, and data analysis have been provided in this chapter. The participants have been identified, and the rationale for their selection was described. The community college used as the research institution has been identified.