I have just obtained a Master's degree in educational technology and I have a Bachelor's of Arts in elementary education with minor's in english, math/science, and early childhood. What online courses can I teach with this? I want to teach college level courses and have really thought about english, but I don't know where to go from here. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks! Lisa
Hi Lisa - Welcome to degreeinfo. Online teaching is not my big thing but I'm guessing that you should be thinking about Community College teaching. Based on sprinting through the want ads most university level teaching jobs require a doctoral degree. Some don't actually "require" a PhD/EdD but you may find yourself in competition with people who have those letters after their names. In any case, scan through the threads while you're waiting for people to respond. You may need to be a bit patient because it is a holiday week and already some people are away from home and their normal routines. Good luck.
Lisa, Typically schools will require 18 graduate credits in a subject to teach. Do you have 18 graduate credits in english? Some schools will accept certain credits as "english" where others may not. What were the courses required for your masters? By the way, I adjunct for two schools and have been teaching for about 3 years.
Congratulation for your M.Ed. With an M.ED in Educational Technology, you can actually design online courses. I would explore this option, there are few companies hiring as we speak including laureate online education.
Thanks to everyone for your responses! Kizmet: I am hoping to go the Community College route. I really would like to teach English online, in which I would have my students write papers and do book reviews. Sort of like my very first college English course taken at a community college. Randall: I have 15 English credits from my bachelors degree in elementary education and a total of 24 English credits from all of my years going to college from 1991 on. The classes I took for my Master's degree were "technology in the classroom" type courses. Classes with names such as "Creating online courses" and "Teaching with Technology". RFValve: Thank you for the congrats. I actually did a huge independent study for my masters in which I created an online version of a research course for one of my instructors. I took his class and basically converted it to an online version. He was really happy with the results and did not change any of what I did. I would not mind designing online courses. Can this be accomplished from home? I'm just really frustrated with the fact that this degree I have is offered and I don't know what to do with it. Hopefully I'll find something soon! Thanks again...
Hi, I deal with few education technologist and all work from home but I don't know if they are required to go to the office during the week. Try with Devry, Laureate, Apollo, Jones International and other online schools. They are always looking for new talent. Education technologist do not really teach but deal with technology part of education, they provide support for course development, education platform management, course content, etc. Teaching online with a master's degree is becoming more difficult even for undergrad courses, if your goal is to teach online I would look for a doctorate in the field of interest. There are few ESL online schools that might want to hire you as online instructor but most of these schools pay very little to make a career out of this.
If you want to teach undergraduate level courses in any subject, you need a masters degree that includes (or you need to add on) 18 graduate semester credits in the subject you want to teach. This can get tricky sometimes, depending on accrediting agencies. For example, I found out a couple of years ago that I can teach Literature in some schools but not in others and I can teach Public Speaking in some schools, but not in others. I have a MS in Education with a focus on Ed Tech. I've done course design and development. I prefer teaching. Unfortunately there's not much you can teach with an MEd degree at the undergraduate level and nothing you can teach at the graduate level (grad requires a doctorate). Your undergraduate course work won't count in teaching college courses. You might be able to teach online high school courses but you'll need the same certification that is required to teach high school in any given state. I got lucky and was able to teach graduate technology courses online for 7-8 years then the university mandated all graduate instructors have phds. So now I teach graduate writing through several online university writing centers. But again, to do that, you must have the 18 graduate credits in Eng. Since the MSED was no good for much of anything at the college level, I got three graduate certificates in different subject areas. English was one of those areas. I've been teaching English comp, technical writing, business writing and professional writing for several years. The only bad thing about teaching English is that you will get paid the same as all other instructors in other subject areas but you'll spend three times the hours each week teaching and grading. So that's why I got two other graduate certificates (18 graduate hours in each) in different subject areas that don't required so much grading time each week. Some possibilities to look at are sociology, math, science, history, etc. Of those, math is the best because all colleges need 100 and 200 level math instructors. I would start right away getting 6 graduate English courses done (since that's what you want to teach). Once you have those, then you can apply to teach Eng online at the college level. And if you can stand all those extra hours grading, then it's a good subject to teach because colleges always need Eng comp teachers because all students have to take at least two Eng classes. Good luck, VirtualProf
