This work-in-progress paper seeks to identify the barriers faculty face when using active learning in an online setting. Much research has been conducted in the past that focuses on the barriers that faculty face when trying to implement active learning in their STEM classrooms, but little has been done to address if similar barriers exist in online instruction. Past research has found that faculty barriers to using active learning in a face-to-face setting could be broken into seven main categories: infrastructure/culture, lack of knowledge or skills in effective teaching practices, fear of student resistance, time/effort, classroom and curriculum, teacher disposition, and community. With the sudden shift in classroom instruction to online settings, this paper seeks to answer what barriers exist for faculty using active learning in an online setting using this previously established framework for face-to-face instruction. 32 instructors from across the Midwest participated in online focus groups that sought to identify these barriers. The instructors were broken into four categories, based on the type of schools in which they were teaching (doctoral granting, masters granting, bachelors granting, and associates colleges), with recruitment aimed at equal participation from each category. We found that many of the same barriers exist in the online classroom setting that were found in the previous literature focused on face-to-face instruction. This includes infrastructure, lack of knowledge on the use of active learning in an online setting, student resistance (e.g. students refusing to unmute themselves), time/effort for the instructor, and curriculum. In addition, current online technologies do not allow teachers to easily "read the room".
This paper is part of the 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Proceedings.