by Tamar Snyder
Reneé McKnight has been teaching math at a public high school in Cheatham County, Tennessee, for the past 12 years. Lately though, she’s been dreaming of leaving the 7:30-to-3:15 grind to teach online.
“I would really love more flexible hours,” she says. She’d also like the opportunity to give her students more individualized attention. And she wouldn’t feel terrible about relinquishing extracurricular responsibilities like gate patrol for ballgames, parking lot duty, and participating in the numerous committees that are constantly being formed at school.
Problem is, Reneé has no idea where to begin her job search. She’s never taken an online course and worries that she doesn’t have the qualifications needed to teach online.
Reneé is not alone. Nearly 1.5 million college students are taking courses online, according to a 2005 Eduventures study, up an estimated 28 percent from the previous year. As the popularity of online courses continues to grow, the demand for eTeachers will undoubtedly increase, too. So the good news is that online adjunct positions are on the rise. But to land an online teaching gig, aspiring eTeachers need to do their homework.
The first step to becoming an eTeacher is to create a professional-looking curriculum vitae, says Dani Babb, co-author of “Make Money Teaching Online.” “A common mistake is to submit a resume–resumes are not sufficient for online teaching,” Babb says. The standard CV should include a statement of teaching philosophy, teaching experience, areas of teaching expertise, publications, presentations, research, certifications and references, as opposed to a one-page resume that lists qualifications using the words “I,” “me” or “my.”
After creating what Babb calls a “killer CV,” aspiring eTeachers should identify 20 to 30 schools for which they would want to work. Then, they should send their CVs to the Human Resources department (usually listed on the school’s Web site), along with a cover letter indicating which courses and programs they’d like to teach. “This saves the deans and HR a lot of time,” Babb says.
Although she completed some graduate coursework with UT Knoxville and Oak Ridge Laboratories, Renee is not actively pursuing her master’s degree. That may be a mistake.
Most online educational institutions prefer that applicants have a Ph.D., but will consider applications from experienced teachers who hold master’s degrees. Without a master’s, it can be difficult to find a job teaching for an online university.
“The master’s degree is really the minimum educational requirement,” says Thomas Green, the provost at National University, which has 36 fully-online degree programs serving more than 11,000 students.
Experience in the online classroom is an added plus–but not absolutely necessary. “We know that we can provide the training and the tools to be successful in the online classroom,” Green says.
Most online universities provide new teachers with intense training, meant to help them acclimate to teaching in the online classroom. “Teaching online requires a very different set of skills,” Green says. “Since much of the course content is already there, teachers become facilitators of knowledge instead of lecturing for hours.”
Online teaching can be more time-consuming than teachers expect. eTeachers must be organized and accessible by email at all hours of the day and night, and should be active participants in online discussion forums. “Students are used to immediate feedback,” Green says.
Universities tend to hire online adjuncts on a course by course basis, depending on their needs for the upcoming semester–which is constantly changing. While in-demand teacher specialties differ from school to school, certain courses are perpetually in need of online instructors. These include popular courses like forensics, as well as education and nursing courses. “Accounting and introductory finance courses are also notoriously difficult to fill,” says Green, adding that these are popular areas of study.
Russell Parkman is one of National University’s accounting and business law professors who was asked to make the transition to teaching online about two years ago. “National University has done research showing that for Generation X’ers and beyond, the computer is the learning interface,” says Parkman. He participated in specialized training and says that staying on the cutting edge of technology and upgrading equipment is crucial.
At Grand Canyon University, teachers with backgrounds in the hard sciences– biology, chemistry and advanced physiology–are especially in demand, says Provost Kathy Player. “Nursing is an area that we’re always looking for faculty, as well,” she says, adding that teachers equipped to teach advanced sciences and math courses should apply.
A quick search for online teaching gigs at specialized Web sites, including HigherEdJobs.com, Educause.edu, and AdjunctNation.com, can give you a better idea of the teaching areas that are in greater demand.
If you’re currently teaching in a brick-and-mortar but are considering the possibility of heading online, you may want to take a course to boost your comfort with online teaching and help your CV stand out.
In March 2007, PBS TeacherLine (a division of PBS) began a Web-based course entitled “Mastering the Skills of Online Teaching.” The six-week, 45-hour course costs $525 and trains existing K-12 teachers to build and master online facilitation skills. Instructors are taught how to provide effective feedback, deepen online discussion and encourage students to construct knowledge together. “The training has colored the way I write emails and converse with others online and face-to-face,” says Sandra Gothard, a master facilitator for PBS TeacherLine who is also an online adjunct for Lesly University.
The key component of the program is the Facilitator Training Lab, a simulation environment that allows teachers to practice and refine their online instructional skills. For additional fees, teachers can earn graduate credits for the course from either Adams State College or Indiana University.
“We have filled the course to capacity with every offering and have added additional sections,” says Melinda George, senior director of PBS TeacherLine. She attributes the success of the program to the growing popularity of online learning and “the recognition by teachers that taking this course and garnering these skills can help broaden the arenas in which they are eligible to teach.”
The Sloan Consortium recently launched an online teaching certification program as well. Teachers with at least one year of instructional experience at an accredited higher educational institution can apply for the certification program, which costs $1,499. The program is divided into two parts: a nine-week commitment to take the first three courses, and then a two-year time frame in which teachers must complete three additional electives, each requiring a one-week time commitment. The program will train educators to build online courses, give and receive peer feedback and learn to apply pedagogical principles that work best in the online classroom.
Sarcasm doesn’t come across well online. And well-intentioned comments can easily be taken the wrong way when delivered via e-mail. That’s just some of the advice Cindy Lauer would offer to new eTeachers. Lauer, a superintendent from Texas who also works as an online instructor for the University of Phoenix, and National University, first began teaching online educational administration and educational psychology courses in 2002.
Teaching online has its benefits, she says: “Since moving into administration in my ‘day’ job 14 years ago, it would be easy to lose touch with teaching. However, when teachers in my district have grade-related questions like ‘Should we award extra credit?’, I can say, as someone who is still teaching, ‘Here’s what I do in my classes.’”
She also enjoys the freedom of being about to teach classes dressed in a robe and slippers on a Saturday morning. Logistically, if it were not for online teaching, she wouldn’t be able to teach at all. “I would not be able to take the time to drive to a university several nights a week to teach a class,” she says.
The most rewarding part of her job is listening to solutions to education obstacles offered by her online students. “They often apply to my Texas pre-K-12 students,” she says. “I learn right along with the students in the classes I am teaching.”
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