This research explored 19 higher education faculty members' perceptions related to their satisfaction with their online teaching jobs, identified elements that enhance or inhibit these higher education faculty members' online teaching job satisfaction, and provided a theoretical framework, higher education faculty online teaching satisfaction, a conceptual model , to understand the relationship among these elements. The study participants represented eight different university campuses, three academic disciplines, and ten online programs. Data was collected from multiple sources including an online background questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, and public documents. Data was analyzed using the procedures for developing constructivist grounded theory proposed by Charmaz (2006).

The researcher posits that the individual context component in this conceptual model affects, and is affected by the work context component as follows, online teaching work-related experiences are subjectively interpreted by individuals and groups of individuals, i.e., work-related perceptions, which affect, and are affected by individual(s) socially constructed and subjective interpretations of their online teaching work, i.e., individual(s) interpretations of work circumstances. The work-related perceptions and individual interpretations of the online teaching work circumstances reciprocally interact with each other, affecting and being affected by the first two components, individual context and work context, which also reciprocally interact and affect, and are affected by the faculty member(s) affective and cognitive evaluations of their online teaching work. These affective and cognitive evaluations result in a continuum of online teaching satisfaction. The resulting continuum of online teaching satisfaction can reciprocally affect, and be affected by any or all of the previously mentioned components of the conceptual model of this research.