This study invited doctoral students of educational technology or related fields (eg, instructional
systems technology, instructional technology) from three universities in the USA (two in the
Midwest, one in the South) to participate. The selectionwas based on the size of doctoral program
in order to obtain a comparable representation of student population and program resources. At
the time of the survey was administered (2009–10), there were 13 institutions in the USA that
offered doctoral program in related fields. Among the 13 institutions, 6 had enrollment of more than 30 students. An invitation to participate in the survey was sent out to the six programs,
three of them responded and agreed to participate. Each university had approximately 30 to 85
doctoral students. A total of 119 respondents completed the survey, thus the respond rates for the
three responding institutions were approximately 40%, 47%, and 61%. The majority of respondents
were under the age of 40 (54.7%) and female (58.3%). They spent more than 6 hours per
day on a computer (61.3%), and had no experience with online teaching (61.3%). Table 2
summarizes the percentage distribution of demographic and background variables