LEADERSHIP EDUCATION FOR ONLINE LEARNERS: A CASE STUDY

摘要

This qualitative case study involved 36 subjects as a purposeful sample selected for gender, ethnicity and generation variability bounded by two sequential six week online adult graduate education courses. Subjects wrote a paper stating their personal definition of leadership in the first week of the first course and in the last week of the second course. Content analysis based on the 11 leadership approaches used in the course text (Northouse, 2013) was used to code both the first and last paper. A pair of researchers coded the manuscripts cross checking their codes to ensure a kappa of .67 or better. The case study indicated that leadership definitions were impacted by the leadership education intervention. Caucasian students were more likely to change their personal leadership definitions than African American students, Generation Y students were more likely to change their personal leadership definitions than Generation X and men more likely to change than women.