Amy Hale: Academic Mercenary

It is a frequent maxim among online educators that’s the discussion board is the heart of the online classroom. Indeed it is, and it is also the part of online teaching that is perhaps the most daunting for novice online professors. There are a number of different strategies for managing a discussion board, and while I won’t get into those here, I think it’s worth while discussing the types of things that make good discussion questions.

I firmly believe it is my role as an educator to have students engage with and demonstrate knowledge of the material that I am presenting to them. I also require that they demonstrate critical thinking skills, and can apply the coursework to their everyday lives. I teach humanities, and I think a lot of students go into the course believing that there is no real application for this stuff, and most of them leave feeling quite enriched, much to their surprise.   So, when I craft my discussion board, I want the discussion to meet certain criteria:

1. I want the question to be stimulating and open ended, possibly a bit provocative.

2. I want the question to force the students to engage with the material they have read or viewed, and to form opinions about it.

Tn the past when I have been given course shells to alter, the problems with the discussion board questions have come in two categories : the first problem is that some of the questions did not require critical thinking skills, they were questions with specific right and wrong answers that ONLY demonstrated command of the material. The second bit of that is good, but it completely shuts down discussion.  If there is one right answer, students really aren’t going to be discussing very much, now will they?

The second kind of problematic discussion question, from my view, is the one that refers to the course material, yet does not require students to engage in it. An example of this would be to state that gladiatorial games in ancient Rome were nasty and exploitative, can we think of any similar sporting or entertainment spectacle today that may have similar features. Sure, that’s going to get the students talking, and they may understand at the end of it that gladiator games were nasty, but because that can be inferred from the question itself, and it does not force the students to do any extra reading or to show that they themselves know anything about the context of the original sport. In other words, they can totally fake it.

One of my favorite discussion questions from my early Western Humanities courses involves getting them  to read a section from the Roman poet Juvenal, to discuss the ways in which his writing may still be relevant today, and to see if they can relate to it at all. I have been amazed by how much his work deeply resonates with my students, and the frustrations that it inspires in them that they are all too willing to discuss.  And in reading the discussion posts I can tell that they’ve read it, and they’ve taken something away from it. And that makes me feel like I’ve done my job.

This is an essay I wrote a couple of years ago and have updated it to reflect changes in my life and career. I hope it is of use to people.

I am frequently asked for details about my rather unusual career and how I got to be doing what I’m doing. I started with online education in 1999, when I helped develop a set of blended delivery courses (online and face to face) for the MA in Cornish Studies for the University of Exeter. I continued working with these until I returned to the States in 2001 on a 10 month grant project for the State of Florida. I had the good fortune to arrive three short weeks before 9/11 which caused a moratorium on most academic hiring in Florida and elsewhere. I did find that there was a need for people to teach courses online, however. I had done it before, so I signed up to teach two online Humanities courses for St. Petersburg College. I figured that it would tide me over while I looked for more “permanent” work, read “tenure track”, through the rough times. I just loved it, though. I enjoyed the challenges of building courses online and teaching students who would otherwise not have the opportunity to pursue higher education. My students were special, and the teaching was some of the most satisfying I had ever done. Online teaching calls for a completely different pedagogy, and it was one that I found very challenging. I realized I was the happiest and most satisfied I had ever been. I asked “could I make a living this way?” I ran some numbers and the nature of my job search changed. Today I am an adjunct for four different schools, St. Petersburg College, Florida Community College, Northampton Community College, and University of Maryland University College. I primarily teach Humanities and Anthropology core courses, and the amount I teach varies per term. There are some great things about earning a living this way, but it’s not for everyone. Here I will address some of the very real benefits and drawbacks to becoming a cyber prof.

PROS
This job can be very comfy. I don’t have to get dressed up to go to work, in fact, I don’t have to get dressed at all. I can teach from anywhere that has a decent internet connection, anywhere in the world, and I can do it on my own time. I can live where I want and travel when I want. If I have an illness or family emergency, I can attend to it without worry, and as I have elderly parents, this is a good thing. If I want to leave for a couple of weeks in the middle of a term, I can just do it as long as I set aside time to get my work done. I don’t have to sit on committees, or go to meetings. I have no commute, and no stacks of papers to deal with. It’s very environmentally friendly! Since my only office is a home office, I get great tax deductions. There is no pressure to publish so I do it for myself. I am making a pretty good living for someone with my type of degree, and I have the freedom and flexibility that I love. It works for me at this stage in my life where I need these things. However there are things to consider…

CONS
To make a decent living teaching online you have to teach A LOT. I generally teach about 10-13 classes per term to earn the kind of money I want to be earning. The reason I can do that is because all the course prep is done ahead of time, so I can handle more courses. I certainly couldn’t do that face to face! However, all the grading can be totally insane. I have lots (but I also assign essays so I do have myself to blame). Online teaching takes a lot of time. It’s like comparing apples to oranges, though, so you need to learn a bit about how it works before you decide if it’s for you. Even with all the nifty bells and whistles, online courses don’t run themselves. Not at all. To be a good online prof, you need to be a good teacher, engaged and personable. There are tricks of the trade, but I will address those in other blog entries.

You don’t get the hassles of working for an institution, but you don’t get the benefits either. As of this writing it’s still hard to be a fully online prof and be tenure track with one institution. I know some who are, but they still have many face to face duties with an institution. Their lifestyle is still quite different from mine. I don’t get insurance or other benefits from my job, I pay my own way to conferences, and I don’t have much by way of collegial stimulation. I do belong to mailing lists with all my institutions and within various disciplines, but it isn’t the same as meeting a colleague over lunch and discussing your latest research. Conferences become even more important in maintaining an academic presence and in just getting the stimulation and encouragement that many academics need.
Also, if you’re one of those academics who just love the prestige and exclusivity of the ivory tower, this may not be for you either. While some academics are terribly jealous of what I do, others look down their noses at online teaching in general. In doing a salary comparison of where I am now and “regular” professors in my field I’m competitive, and earn more than many of my peers in traditional academia, but that may not always be the case. Right now that’s fine with me, but it may be different a few years down the road. I realize that this is a very new way of doing things for universities. I’m hoping that somewhere down the road, institutions won’t care if their profs are on site, and those of us who choose to develop online education as their specialization will be full players. I’d love to be able to develop graduate level courses or seminars, but that isn’t possible for me just now. It isn’t where my bread and butter is, and that’s just fine. I’m helping to impart important concepts to people who need them, and I get greater joy from that at this stage than lots of theoretical noodling. I can do that elsewhere.
Also, realize that it is hard to keep up an active research profile and make good money this way. It’s hard to find the time to keep writing (although I still do). You don’t get the sabbaticals or holidays that most active researchers have the luxury of. Then again, no one is going to ask me to write any grants to earn my keep.

HOW DO I GET STARTED?
So you think you still want to do this? Ok, let’s go. Remember that it may take awhile for you to build up enough institutions to make a good wage. Schools typically have course caps on adjuncts, so you may need to get a few schools together. The first thing to do is look at what you can teach and do a search for schools that have strong online programs. I’d suggest community colleges first because many other universities tend to draw on their own talent pool in developing their online courses. If you’re not in the US look at the Open University or in Distance Learning programs. Very simply, e-mail their distance education coordinator and tell them that you’re interested in getting started. You will most likely need to do some training in online pedagogy and on how to operate and develop content for online learning management systems. I have been trained in Web CT, ANGEL, and Blackboard, as well as taken courses on proprietary systems, and have also taken a number of workshops and courses on advanced online pedagogy. If you already teach face to face, this training will be very valuable for you. As I said, it’s like apples and oranges, and you need to learn to do this properly.
Be sure to make sure the schools you are looking at are accredited and have a good reputation. There are some online programs that don’t, and you don’t want to be affiliated with them. If you are business or technologically oriented, you may wish to investigate accredited and respected corporate training programs and institutions. They are often in need and it could be a good way to go. Right now business, health and technology online programs are more developed than those in the Humanities and Social Sciences. It’s only a matter of time, though, before more curricula go online. If you have more questions or want specific recommendations, please feel free to contact me and I will try to be helpful.

Welcome to my new online enterprise. There are a lot of blogs out there for online educators, both in a university and corporate setting, but I wanted this one to be a bit different. I wanted to not only engage with new online learning strategies, platforms and technologies, but also to share a bit of what my life is like as a “cyber prof”, thoughts about academia, and tips for people wanting to do this. I am passionate not only about the potential of online learning for students, but also for educators. There is real freedom here, and real learning, and I want to share it. I also want to share the pitfalls and concerns. I hope you find my words useful, and maybe even occasionally entertaining and thought provoking.

No reason to get excited!  Dr. Amy Hale’s old website is being updated to this new Wordpress blog!