Who's doing the online teaching in higher ed? My Story

I don't know how representative my experience was, but it definitely makes me want to know more about how e-learning is happening in higher ed, and who is doing it, and how much support they have.

So context: I was in my second year of teaching.  That fall, I'd finally gotten what felt like a stable teaching job: 3 sections at my alma mater, benefitted, in the union.  I spent a lot of time that fall developing a curriculum, learning about my students & developing my teaching tools for English 101 - and learning how to grade 70+ papers in a week, six times a semester.  In December, I learned that I wouldn't be offered any course for the spring semester starting January.

 I raced around like crazy, and replaced my income with four writing courses - two at a community college, two more in another department at my school.  This meant developing two new curricula and learning one new LMS (Moodle, at the community college).  One week before classes were to begin, I found out one of my classes was being canceled - and I would lose my benefits & health insurance.  At the same time I overheard my supervisor musing that he didn't have enough students to fill my face to face class, but he had all these online nursing students that needed a class.  Seeing an opportunity and desperate to keep my health insurance, I offered to get a Blackboard shell and turn my section into an online section.  As I keep going deeper into learning about e-learning & ID, I just laugh to myself as I remember my supervisor talking to me about teaching online: he said, "It's not big deal!  Just take what you do in the classroom and put it online!" and shrugged.   Ha ha ha.  Turns out it's not the same...

So that was my experience - building the course as I went, with absolutely no knowledge or background in online pedagogy or tools.  It was a TON of work and stress - not the least because I had to keep revising the course on the fly.  I know it wasn't what you'd call quality onlineinstruction.  I eventually got help from our instructional designers at the school - but because of the way we did it, I definitely wasn't compensated for any of the building, revision or coaching I got.  But I jumped into online teaching because I felt I had to - it was either teach it or lose 1/3 of my income & health insurance.  I wonder how often other adjunct professors face the same choice.

 As I taught my class, I kept putting off simultaneous sessions because I didn't know how to use the technology.  Luckily, my students were extremely forgiving, and did a great job of following my intense weekly "to do" lists and giving me feedback about what was working and what wasn't.  But since then I've refused to teach online - because I know how much work it is to build a course, and because I also now know how much I don't know and what it takes to do it right - pedagogy, video production, course design, etc.  The next time I do it want to do it right - and I feel strongly that us instructors should get compensated for the hours we spend on our learning curve!

 I know that there's a course that instructors at my school are supposed to take before teaching online- and there's a stipend for online instructors to build a course.  But I have another friend that teaches online in my department, and when I asked her how much she was paid to build her course she responded, "ha - getting paid?  That would've been nice!"

Point being...understanding trends in higher ed and coming up with innovative new technologies & delivery methods is one thing.  But operationalizing these ideas, re-skilling instructors for new technologies, and getting best practices actually put into place & reaching students  - that's a whole 'nother story.