This study was designed to identify motivating and inhibiting factors that contributed to faculty members' decisions to participate or not to participate in online teaching. The population for this study included full-time and part-time faculty, and administrators contracted for the spring 2007 semester at East Carolina University and North Carolina State University. The study surveyed faculty and administrators employed within 7 colleges and 38 departments.

Survey research was appropriate as data from a large number of faculty and administrators was sought. The researcher used previously developed surveys for data collection and obtained permission from Dr. Kristen Betts (Betts, 1998) to use and modify the faculty and administrator surreys for this study. The online surveys were sent to 1395 potential respondents (1,299 full-time and part-time faculty and 96 administrators). Data collection began in late February 2007 and was completed by mid March 2007. Overall, 542 responses were received producing a 39% response rate.

Analysis of the data revealed a significant relationship between faculty participation and university membership, college membership, gender, years in current position, years in post-secondary education, having experience as an online student, and gender when controlled by age. A significant relationship did not exist between faculty participation and age, position title, and being in a tenure-accruing position.

The study also identified the top five motivating and inhibiting factors rated by participators, non-participators and administrators. Participators rated intrinsic motivating factors such as ability to reach new audiences as most influential. Non-participators rated extrinsic motivating factors such as merit pay and increase in salary as most influential. Administrators also rated extrinsic factors as motivators.

This study contributed to the literature revealing that only the motivating factors remained significant when analyzing motivating factors in conjunction with demographics. The study also revealed the most influential of the top 5 motivators for participators and non-participators. This information will assist administrators and distance education directors in determining which factors to target when trying to increase faculty participation.