Developing a taxonomy of faculty participation in asynchronous learning environments—an exploratory investigation Seugnet Blignaut a,b, * ,1 , Stanley R. Trollip a a Capella University, 222 South 9th Street, 20th Floor, Minneapolis, MN 55402-3389, USA b Department of Curriculum Studies, Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria, 0002, South Africa Received 2 December 2002; accepted 24 March 2003 Abstract Anecdotal evidence suggests that instructor performance in the online discussion portion of online courses has a major impact on learning and learner satisfaction. If this is the case, faculty development is an important component of success. This paper describes the development of a taxonomy of six categories to describe instructor postings to asynchronous discussions in online courses. This taxonomy was used during the inspection of 18 post-graduate level course sections at a Midwest university. The resulting data show that there is considerable variation in faculty teaching styles, interaction, and the amount of content- related feedback. The process also allowed issues such timeliness of feedback and responsiveness of faculty to be quantified. In-depth interviews with instructors and learners with experience of online courses were conducted to validate the qualitative data. # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Computer-mediated communication; Distance education and telelearning; Distributed learning environ- ments; Interactive learning environments; Teaching/learning strategies 1. Background Many public, private, and for-profit educational institutions now offer courses via the World- wide Web, and this presentation mode has become a commonplace option for learners in higher education (Schrum & Hong, 2002). There is a growing body of literature relating to online learning that deals, amongst others, with such topics as: 0360-1315/03/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0360-1315(03)00033-2 Computers & Education 41 (2003) 149–172 www.elsevier.com/locate/compedu * Corresponding author. Tel.: +27-12-420-2372; fax: +27-12-420-3003. E-mail addresses: sblignau@postino.up.ac.za (S. Blignaut), strollip@capella.edu (S.R. Trollip). 1 Affiliation Capella University until 30 June 2003.