Job expectations for faculty living far, far away

[Myword]

You mean colleges, universities that will hire faculty only for online teaching, who are never on campus? In another state? Virtual classes.
And why would they hire total outsiders?
May I assume these jobs are in subjects or courses that they cannot fill internally, very specialized? Such as medieval history or advanced computer science?

[apl68]

I teach about half my load online, and I haven't seen the problems you all are mentioning. It probably helps that the students in my online classes are not 100% online. In regular semesters, they're taking most of their courses in person, and one online. In the summers, they're all online but they typically take only one class at a time.

I do make my online classes very interactive, even though they're asynchronous. And I make sure I engage with each student individually. For instance, I join in enthusiastically on the Discussion Boards, instead of just having the boards be a place to post mini-essay monologues. So they become real conversations amongst us all. And when I grade the Discussion Board posts, I write each of the students a note about their posts (yes, every week). The students say that this level of engagement is often not typical of their online courses, and they appreciate it. I taught all online last semester, and am teaching all in-person this semester.  The online classes were actually more responsive; I'm having terrible problems getting the students to stay with the program this semester. In my most fun class, only 60% of the students showed up yesterday. I think maybe part of the problem is that when they're burnt out or having rest-of-life problems, it's easier to find time to show up for an asynchronous class than at a specific day and time for an in-person class.

I love this! I also engage on discussion boards in my asynchronous online classes, and always give detailed feedback in grading comments for discussion posts. My students seem very appreciative of high interaction and personalized feedback, and they know I read their work. It definitely makes the online classes fun, and I have students enrolled from all over the world.

Those were the kinds of online classes that I most enjoyed, and the ones that I and others seemed to learn the most in.  Online done right can be a great educational experience.

And then there was the prof in the same program who pretty much ghosted the class for a week or more at a time, and had us buy a textbook that contained a link to a canned course with automatically graded quizzes that made up much of our grade.  Most of the really useful stuff we learned in that course the students pretty much taught each other in discussions without any input from the one ostensibly teaching the class.  I came away feeling cheated--and with an insight into what "colleges" like University of Phoenix probably provide for most of their programs.

[Caracal]

I teach about half my load online, and I haven't seen the problems you all are mentioning. It probably helps that the students in my online classes are not 100% online. In regular semesters, they're taking most of their courses in person, and one online. In the summers, they're all online but they typically take only one class at a time.

I do make my online classes very interactive, even though they're asynchronous. And I make sure I engage with each student individually. For instance, I join in enthusiastically on the Discussion Boards, instead of just having the boards be a place to post mini-essay monologues. So they become real conversations amongst us all. And when I grade the Discussion Board posts, I write each of the students a note about their posts (yes, every week). The students say that this level of engagement is often not typical of their online courses, and they appreciate it. I taught all online last semester, and am teaching all in-person this semester.  The online classes were actually more responsive; I'm having terrible problems getting the students to stay with the program this semester. In my most fun class, only 60% of the students showed up yesterday. I think maybe part of the problem is that when they're burnt out or having rest-of-life problems, it's easier to find time to show up for an asynchronous class than at a specific day and time for an in-person class.

I love this! I also engage on discussion boards in my asynchronous online classes, and always give detailed feedback in grading comments for discussion posts. My students seem very appreciative of high interaction and personalized feedback, and they know I read their work. It definitely makes the online classes fun, and I have students enrolled from all over the world.

Those were the kinds of online classes that I most enjoyed, and the ones that I and others seemed to learn the most in.  Online done right can be a great educational experience.

Some people are just better at teaching online than others. I'm not great at it. It just doesn't play to my strengths as a teacher and emphasizes a lot of the things I'm not particularly good at. I'm sure with practice and some work, I could improve and find things that work better for me, but I'm just better in an actual classroom.

The problem is that I imagine there's only a little bit of overlap between people who have decided they would like to never come to campus and those who are actually skilled at and passionate about online teaching. In some ways it's a similar problem to the one with the students. There can be lots of good reasons to take or teach classes online, but it can draw in people who are doing it for the wrong reasons.

I put myself in that category. I'm teaching an online course this summer. Why, when I've just said I don't think I'm particularly great at it? Well they pay me a decent amount of money for it and teaching online means I don't have to organize my summer schedule around the course, I can go away, be around for kid stuff etc.

[Mobius]

What else do you do? I just can't see discussion boards with constant instructor participation and individualized feedback leading to a great course by itself.

I teach about half my load online, and I haven't seen the problems you all are mentioning. It probably helps that the students in my online classes are not 100% online. In regular semesters, they're taking most of their courses in person, and one online. In the summers, they're all online but they typically take only one class at a time.

I do make my online classes very interactive, even though they're asynchronous. And I make sure I engage with each student individually. For instance, I join in enthusiastically on the Discussion Boards, instead of just having the boards be a place to post mini-essay monologues. So they become real conversations amongst us all. And when I grade the Discussion Board posts, I write each of the students a note about their posts (yes, every week). The students say that this level of engagement is often not typical of their online courses, and they appreciate it. I taught all online last semester, and am teaching all in-person this semester.  The online classes were actually more responsive; I'm having terrible problems getting the students to stay with the program this semester. In my most fun class, only 60% of the students showed up yesterday. I think maybe part of the problem is that when they're burnt out or having rest-of-life problems, it's easier to find time to show up for an asynchronous class than at a specific day and time for an in-person class.

[Hegemony]

Well, I have all kinds of things for the students to do. PowerPoints, readings, videos. It's all pretty lively. I put memes and asides and examples in where warranted. One of the fields I teach (having to do with religion) has a lot of very apt memes!  I introduce each section with my own little written "lecture" (with a few pictures), which I make more personal rather than impersonal — "At this point you might wonder" and "Surprisingly, when our author John Smith looked into this, he found..." and "When I asked the curator about this, she confided that..." so on. The quizzes have pictures and things to identify as well as text questions. So it's not just a long screeds of impersonal text to read.

The discussion boards are great because several courses I teach involve topics where the students often have personal experience they can bring to the discussion. I learn a lot from them, and sometimes we make actual significant discoveries in the field. I require that each response post add something significant to the discussion, rather than just agreeing with the previous post, at whatever length. This avoids the problem of students just saying "Great post, Emily! I agree that this is very interesting!" Also I put topics from the discussion on the quizzes, so they are rewarded for being involved.

I also find that online (asynchronous) discussion boards are great for the more reserved students. They have time to think before "speaking," and don't feel put on the spot. In one of my in-person classes this semester, three out of my 20 students are students who were in my online class last semester. One of them, who was eloquent and thoughtful online, turns out to be one of those students who hides out in the corner of the classroom and is always carefully looking down and avoiding my eyes when I try to encourage discussion. So I'm glad she had a class in which she felt freer to express herself.

[Mobius]

I teach about half my classes online. Most of the students in online classes also attend in-person. My experience is that student participation patterns are similar in either format. The meek or ill-prepared student is going to put the same type of effort in a discussion board post. The slacker student who doesn't bother to turn in the final paper or misses class with a weak excuse is going do the same thing for online classes.