Teaching In Pajamas "How Many Online Courses Is Too Many?"

PLEASE READ: An article against teaching numerous courses online

http://www.adjunctnation.com/blogs/teaching-in-pajamas/?p=49

 

Good article! The adjunct faculty where I work can only teach 2 courses per 10 week term. Our full time salaried faculty can only teach up to 15 classes per year and can only teach more if they get approval from the Dean, but normally this is if a class needs an instructor and they cannot find anyone (with today's economy, this rarely happens). Of course there is nothings topping the adjuncts for working elsewhere, but that has been tossed around, making the adjuncts sign statements agreeing to only teach for just another university while they are working with us, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon.

 

No way I'd agree to that.

 

I agree with you! Currently our full time faculty have to sign such agreements that they can not work for another university or college while employed.

 

It depends on the pay

If they gave me the right amount I'd gladly limit my teaching work to them. For me, anything over 5 classes is too many. A few years ago I was working for two schools at once and it made my life miserable. I hated to go near the computer. It burnt me out and I haven't taught since.

 

I'll agree with you on that but therein lies the problem; adjuncts are poorly compensated and must take on multiple schools at once to make online teaching worth their efforts. This is especially true for those who make online adjuncting their sole source of income.

 

The pay isn't usually worth the trouble

The pay isn't worth it considering the workload. Traditional teaching allows you to be at work and then go home. The students have limited access to you. These days, with a ubiquitous Internet, the emails chase you everywhere. Most of the schools require a response within a certain period of time and there are stacks of papers to grade daily. For the amount of work you should get at least 4k per course (and that's not really much), considering that a course might take 10-15 hours per week and last for sixteen weeks. Instead, you're getting less than you might earn working part-time something a little less intense.

I worked for a DETC school that paid me to grade graduate papers by the hour. It paid $20 per hour, and there was no teaching. Basically, the school paid a distinguished scholar to write a course packet with grading instruction for master's educated graders. It was a mass production system, but very quality controlled, economical and efficient. I sometimes wish I'd have held onto that job, but my online teaching gig (plus my two regular jobs) was too much and I threw in the towel.

Anyway, maybe it's just me, but online teaching seems like a part-time gig at most. I think it would be a miserable fulltime career.

 

I teach for few schools online and salaries haven't increased in the last 5 years but the requirements keep increasing. At some point I was working 80 hours a week to make a salary. Online schools require you to reply emails within 24 hours, work weekends, prepare weekly feed backs, make phone calls to students, etc. In addition, it seems that the PhD is becoming the minimum requirement for most of the online schools so I had to finish one to remain competitive.

Online teaching can be good as extra income but wouldn't do it as a full time career.

 

I think the turn-for-the-worse was the arrival of third-party online class management systems. As a student and instructor I've thoroughly disliked discussion boards. I get the concept of trying to create an asynchronous re-creation of a classroom discussion, but it never really does the job. There are always unnatural standards, like an original posting of 250 words and two responses of at least 100 words apiece or something that. It's always been a distraction and chore that offered little learning value (for me, anyway).

Like someone said above, a simple format like we use here would suffice. A lot of what you get these days, in my opinion, is just bling that raises the costs and slows the learning. When you're on your own it really comes down to the textbook, the assignments and taking exams. Using the technology to let people pretend they're in a classroom together is just locking everyone into an old paradigm. There are classrooms, and they are wonderful, and there is distance learning. Providers are spending too much energy and money on interaction that is just fluffy. In the end you just need to read the book and do the work. LSU and some other correspondence providers still provide good education for very cheap, because they stick to the basics.

 

Me neither unless it was a full time gig.