Online Faculty Positions » Online Faculty Positions

Online Faculty Positions Are Worth the Effort to Acquire Them

adjunct — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 20:44:52 +0000

The last thing a recently laid off public school teacher needs to do is distribute the few remaining resources, time and energy, on any attempt to return to the traditional classroom. Granted, the hope of returning to teach in a physical setting is strong and constant, but the reality is that the academic labor model is now changed in favor of distance education and it is vitally important for an educator to understand these changes. The academic administrators are faced with choice between continuing to pay academic salaries, including, of course, extremely expensive health care benefits, for multiple decades to dedicated instructors that expect a healthy retirement package at the end of their long tenure and continuing to pay for the physical plants knows as campuses and classrooms. The administrators simply do not have the budgetary funds now to do both and their only hope of keeping their salaries is to utilize distance education technology to meet the educational needs of swelling student populations at the post-secondary level of the academy. Obviously, the administrative decision has been made to depopulate the ranks of educators in public schools. The question is that must be faced by all academics wishing to continue earning a decent living from teaching students is how to accomplish this task. The alert educator will no doubt notice that online bachelor degree programs and online master degree programs are springing up at every post-secondary academic institution. Of course, with the addition of each new online college degree a need for academically qualified and technically savvy online adjunct instructors is generated and must be filled by academics willing to grasp the idea that online faculty positions are worth the effort to acquire them.

The search strategy for discovering available online adjunct jobs is to use a personal computer to navigate the Internet to the websites of the thousands of community colleges, state universities, technical schools, for-profit colleges and four-year state colleges. Each of these academic institutions already offers their students an opportunity to participate in distance learning. In the case of community college and technical schools there are numerous online classes being offered to student populations and these courses must be taught by an online instructor with at least a master degree. An unemployed teacher with an earned graduate degree will be able to construct an online teaching schedule populated with multiple online classes simply by continually making applications in the faculty application section of each school’s website.

While it will be extremely easy for a career academic seeking to transition out of the physical classroom to fall into a state of hopeless resignation over the current budget battles being conducted at the expense of teachers, there is every reason not to view the emergence of online college courses with intellectual distaste and an emotional attitude of avoidance. To be blunt in an effort to illuminate reality, there probably isn’t any time in the foreseeable future when teachers in public education will regain their financial status on the traditional campus. However, it is possible to earn a full time online adjunct income that can equal or even surpass the income lost in the traditional academic setting. The vast network of community colleges, and there are thousands of them today with the majority being in states such as Texas and California, is an excellent market for prospective online adjunct college professors. The way to apply for online teaching positions with a community college is to first locate website of the individual schools, identify the link on the first page and follow it to the application section. It will take some time to learn how to quickly spot the links, but after a week or so of constantly looking they will start appearing easily with each visit. The more important aspect of this process of submitting evidence of academic achievement and classroom experience is gaining a level of mastery over the actual interfaces that accommodate the submission of academic credentials in the faculty sections. This is far more difficult to standardize because each community college can have a different way of permitting prospective online instructors to enter application information for online teaching jobs, and many of these sections are not well maintained by the staff that manages the website.

In an effort to provide examples of these faculty application sections the following three examples are offered to readers.

Barstow Community College

Butte College

Cabrillo College

As can be seen the interaction with each interface needs rapid assessment and a willingness to endure new actions with each application. However, the observant online adjunct instructor will recognize that the majority of the time the same materials are requested for the application process. Simply by pushing forward the invitations to attend the mandatory training session every newly-hired online adjunct must complete before being put in an online college courses will begin arriving in the e-mail inbox. Granted, it may take some schools as long as a year before responding and there is every reason for the academic wishing to teach online full time to repeatedly apply to the same community college until some response is made by the academic institution, but the time and focus is well worth it since online learning programs and online teaching positions will continue to appear with the end of each academic semester.

The Entire Point of Online Faculty Positions

adjunct — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 19:26:53 +0000

The employment situation in public education is in the ditch because of budgetary cuts for faculty salaries. Granted, there are teachers going back into the physical classroom on the traditional campus this academic year, but for the vast majority of them the benefits they have enjoyed in the past will be diminished and the amount of work, which translates into the increased number of students in the individual classes, will increase, thus diminishing the already insufficient salaries paid to them by administrators. It would be somewhat unfair to place the responsibility of the literal defunding of public education on the shoulders of academic administrators simply because they are just as frightened as the teachers about the very real prospects of losing their positions, and their incomes, from the work they do on the large physical plants called campuses. That said, it is vitally important for any educators, teacher or administrators, with an earned graduate degree, a master degree or doctorate, to understand that the necessary monies to support the campuses and the classrooms on them is not coming back at all. Obviously, an alternative to teaching in the physical classroom is needed if there is any intention to continue earning a living form providing educational instruction to students at any level of the academy.

Fortunately, distance education technology has matured to the point that it is possible to supply college and university students with a wide variety of online bachelor degree programs and online master degree programs that they can participate in from their personal computers at home and at work. The speed at which online college classes are appearing each academic semester is almost impossible to measure simply because the drive to create them is being fueled by the need to meet the educational needs of swelling students populations with fewer budgetary dollars, and the administrators at community colleges, state universities, four-year state colleges, technical schools and four-profit colleges know full well that their incomes depend on figuring out how to provide online college degree programs in practically every academic discipline as soon as possible without asking for additional physical space in which to teach them. The alternative, therefore, of directing enrolled students into online degree programs is extremely attractive because there is literally no limit to how many online college classes can be fielded every semester and eventually the cost of these online programs is substantially less than the traditional classroom since computer servers do not need the level of maintenance a physical building and the grounds around them need every day.

Even with this emerging shift in the academic labor model, which is occurring as a direct result of the same economic issues that are changing how college and university students earn an academic degree, in the faces of educators with decades of classroom experience, there is still far too little recognition of just how to harness distance education as a way to make a real living. Basically, if an educator with a modest level of computer skill can learn to navigate the Internet efficiently enough to quickly locate the faculty application section of the thousands of post-secondary academic websites it is possible to submit evidence of classroom experience and academic achievement. Of course, it will be necessary to submit online faculty application materials dozens of times a day for weeks on end, but this activity will eventually generate at least a few invitations to participate in a telephone interview and the mandatory training every new online adjunct instructor must successfully complete before being placed in an online class. While making all of these applications for online faculty positions may seem like an enormous amount of work in the beginning, it will bear fruit later as the online teaching schedule begins to fill out and the analysis period begins to become a significant part of an online teaching career.

An online teaching schedule can be populated with multiple online adjunct jobs. It is possible for a technically adroit online adjunct instructor to manage a dozen online college classes at one time. Alternately, it is possible to teach online part time for one or two online bachelor degree programs while continuing to teach in a physical classroom. In both cases, the online adjunct instructor needs to learn how to analyze the individual online university classes from the perspective of the educators, not the community college or for-profit college. The individual online courses should be examined in terms of how much it pays and how much administrative work is required by the online degree program. For example, a six week course that pays the online instructor a flat fee of two thousand dollars is more profitable than a similar course that last the traditional sixteen weeks and pays the same amount. The goal any online college professor should pursue is to acquire any many online classes as possible that pay the most money for the teaching involved and the associated administrative tasks required for each student. This analysis should begin with the first online courses an academic teaches from a computer.

Naturally, before an educator can teach online for online bachelor degree programs or online master degree programs, it is first necessary to find the place to make applications for online adjunct instructor jobs with the thousands of post-secondary academic institutions. While there are several academic employment websites that daily provide information about available online teaching jobs, a more efficient and effective approach is to contact he schools directly and make an application in the faculty application section of the site. It is fairly easy to locate the faculty application section because each academic website has an identifiable link on the first page that leads to the section that will accept academic credentials. Once the link named employment, jobs or faculty position has been accessed the application sections will be gained, and there will be considerable information about the different areas of study in the school schedule that are already being offered in the form of online degree programs. It is important to understand that every academic discipline that can be offered in the form of an online college degree programs will eventually be deployed by academic administrators.

The alert, prospective online adjunct instructor will continue to submit online faculty applications to community colleges, state universities and for-profit colleges until an invitation is received to attend the training program. Then, after a few online classes are in the online teaching schedule the online college professor should continue to submit applications to teach online to additional colleges and universities. After all, the best way to analyze an ongoing class in an online college degree program is to have several more to use as a system of comparison.

The budgetary funds needed to pay traditional faculty salaries seem to continue to decrease with each passing academic year. The academic with a master degree or Ph.D. needs to recognize the benefits of being able to continue teaching at the post-secondary level of the academy in the event that the salary earned from teaching in the physical classroom on the traditional campus disappears during the next round of budget cuts.

Learn to Love Online Faculty Positions or Lose Them

adjunct — Thu, 27 May 2010 19:06:57 +0000

There can be some measure of resistance to teaching online because of a lack of information about the emergence of distance education as a vehicle of delivery for post-secondary knowledge modules and a deficiency in what should be properly named perception of the posture necessary for addressing the rapid emergence of the new digital college campuses. The simple, unavoidable reality of college teaching as a career path is that it is important to now learn to love online faculty positions or lose them to those with the wit and drive to acclimate themselves to the new educational paradigm. It should go without saying that grasping the implications of teaching for traditional community colleges, state colleges and private universities versus having a variety of online adjunct jobs for academic institutions which offer, for example, an engineering degree online, an online doctorate degree or any of several bachelors degree online is not an easy matter since much that is required to be successful in this new academic and intellectual landscape is not taught in graduate courses.

Teaching on an adjunct basis for schools that offer online bachelor degree programs and masters degree programs online to their students is more akin to being an independent contractor than it is to being a college professor. For example, most people with an earned graduate degree, a masters degree or a Ph.D., have been taught that being hired by a traditional school is the brass ring in terms of not having to look for another teaching position ever again; this is understandable since most of the professors teaching in graduate programs ten years ago probably did have a lifetime job. Therefore, it would have been impossible for these teachers to inform their students that if they wanted to actually earn a decent living in the coming years it would be vitally important to grasp the implications of distance education technology and the rising prominence of online college faculty positions with degree programs online.

With the current economy in a seeming free-fall, faculty budgets are being destroyed left and right, and the gloom now spread over the traditional campus environment it is encouraging to know that accredited online degree programs offering online accounting degree programs and an online bachelor degree in criminal justice, among many other university degrees online, are providing a strong ray of light and hope for not only college adjunct currently teaching but also for those who have recently lost their corporate positions. The little know aspect of distance education is that almost anyone with a graduate degree can learn how to find, apply for and teach new and returning colleges students trying to earn enough credits to qualify for an accredited degree online. Now that the situation has developed to the point that it is revealed to almost any adjunct instructor the way to earn a decent living that produces multiple paychecks is to engage in academic entrepreneurism on an active basis. Once the concept of engagement is understood it is a simple matter to put a plan of action into pay and begin landing multiple online adjunct jobs, each paying a specific amount of money that over the course of a year’s time can prove to be much more substantial than what it is possible to earn during the two long semesters that are traditional at most post-secondary academic institutions, with multiple online college programs.

Of course, as time goes on more and more people with graduate degrees will discover the personal freedom and economic independence of teaching college students enrolled in online education courses. Further, as the months go by and the corporate positions do not re-appear those who earned a masters degree or doctorate degree and did not go into the academy to teach immediately upon graduation will begin to figure out that online teaching opportunities with schools that offer an online teaching degree is full of students that need a competent online adjunct instructor in the online college class.

The way to start a serious search strategy for online college faculty positions is to visit the websites of the nearly five thousand community colleges, colleges and universities and for profit schools that offer their college populations a chance to earn a bachelor degree online or a master degree online from their personal computers at home. On the front page of each school’s website is a link that will take the prospective online adjunct instructor to a section of the site that will permit the submission of academic credentials. It should be understood that each school can design its own application interface, so the alert individual will have a resume, a cover letter and copies of unofficial graduate transcripts in hand before starting the application process. It is a very good idea to have these application documents in a document form that can be opened on any computer since there are many application interfaces that allow for document attachments. It should be understood by any online adjunct that it will be necessary to continually apply to schools that offer online bachelor degrees and masters degrees online because it may become necessary to stop teaching for one school and begin teaching online for another online degree program at another school because the circumstances change suddenly and without notice.

It is that sudden, unannounced change in an individual college’s or university’s teaching requirements or compensation amount that makes the professor versus business person attitude so very important. It is inescapable that any large organization, including post-secondary institutions of all size, are going through some very confusing times, and it is paramount that an online adjunct instructor be able to leap, if that is the appropriate word to use, from one online bachelor degree program to another online university program at the drop of a hat. The best defense is a good offence, as the saying goes, and in the world of distance education from the online adjunct perspective this is not only a truism but a valuable economic survival posture since there is no telling how the situation with accredited online degree programs will evolve over time. The only aspect of online college faculty positions that can be counted on is that they are growing now and will continue to grow in as a realistic way for someone with a graduate degree and a well developed time management skill set to make a sustainable living. It is important for any online adjunct instructor, whether he or she is actually engaged in teaching college students enrolled in online psychology degree programs or online business degree programs at the moment or is giving some serious thought to how comfortable it would be to earn multiple paychecks from a personal computer located in almost any spot on the globe, to fully realize that the competition for online adjunct employment is growing daily. The best way to overcome the competition for the available online faculty positions is to be proactive in the application process, which means making applications for these online adjunct job openings every day, and to learn how to market one’s intellectual and academic skill set with vigor and intelligence so that the greatest possible financial return for the effort to teach college students attending online college programs is maximized to the greatest possible extent.

Online Faculty Positions Database

adjunct — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:51:01 +0000

An accredited online degree program is the way to go if you want one of the many online faculty positions available today. The number of online bachelor degree programs, online masters degree programs and online phd programs is growing daily, and, of course, the number of online faculty positions also grows on a daily basis. It would be great to have a centralized location on the Internet that would provide academics with at least a general number of online faculty positions available every day, but, sadly, such a database simply does not exist now. This is probably planned because centralized information about employment is not good for employers despite their protests to the contrary. The truth of the matter is that you, the person qualified to teach college classes, have to scout around on your own time and our own dime, which drains your energy and time, which could be better put to use teaching in an online degree program. However, and, apparently, forever, the academic labor force in place today is entirely too mystified by their own place on the economic food chain to ever demand a centralized location for academic employment opportunities that includes an online faculty positions database that would help academics find employment. The very best thing an unemployed or underemployed academic can do is start building their own online faculty positions database.

Online Faculty Positions Collection

You should have the skill set to compile a database if you teach college classes; of course, many liberal arts majors missed acquiring this skill set, so they are completely at the mercy of those who sling online college faculty positions out on the Internet and let academics pick them up when and where they can. The way to build this database is to constantly acquire links to college and university application web pages. One the links are acquired and loaded into a database application, start sending out an application package to each one. After you have sent a few out, start keeping notes about their responses, and choose a new date to re-send the ones who do not reply or turn you down. Of course, this sounds just like the on-ground academic search for academic work, and it is just like it, but the difference is that you will eventually have more than one online faculty positions to choose from if you keep up the routine. The primary path to securing a position with a distance education university is to comb the various schools’ web sites on a daily basis and keep a running your own online faculty positions database.

Emerging Online Faculty Positions

adjunct — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 21:14:44 +0000

There can be no doubt that there is an emerging market for online faculty positions, and the basis of this market is the unparalleled growth of online programs offering prospective college students the opportunity to take online degree courses leading to an online degree. The rapidly growing number of those of us who will have a lot of time on our hands, namely prospective college students who have never been to college, will almost demand more and more qualified college teachers capable not only of teaching online degree courses, but also administering online universities. In general, a full time position with online universities or online programs entails tracking a variety of data sets which can include:

Timely grading of course work

Counting attendance of online adjuncts at teleconferences

Developing In-service training modules for delivery to online adjuncts

Compiling and coordinating reports about online student performance

Interviewing and training online adjunct Instructors

Online Faculty Positions Are Portable

In addition, landing and maintaining an online faculty position will probably include teaching online classes in addition to overseeing a number of online adjuncts. Given all of this activity, it might be a good idea to decide how much you can take on. At the same time, having an online faculty position can certainly provide you with full time work. Overall, the job can be quite engaging for those with well-honed time management skills, and there is certainly the prospect of a full time paycheck with benefits, but the amount of work will be high and there will not be any let up since anyone who can not stand the pace can easily be replaced by another seeking one of the growing number of online faculty positions. The best advice if you are seeking this situation is to ask yourself if the portability of the work is something that is attractive; this job, online faculty positions, can be accomplished from anywhere at any time.

Online Faculty Positions On Horizon

adjunct — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 15:02:58 +0000

Online faculty positions are increasing in number every day because the push to increase the college student population is starting to pick up steam. Recently, the folks in charge of making funds available for prospective students to attend online degree courses or traditional college classes have made it abundantly clear that there will be a significant increase in the opportunity to attend institutions of higher learning. It is not too far fetched to propose that attending colleges online or on the ground may become a duty. All of this is good news, of course, for those of us who teach college courses, and it is even better news for those of us who want to or already do teach in online faculty positions. One of the best aspects of teaching for an online school is that the work can be transported from one location to another. The online programs really don’t care where you are located at any given time as long as the tasks are accomplished within the time line established by the university online. If you can secure one of the many online faculty positions available at one of the colleges online, and there are more every day since it is very cost effective to have college students attend online college classes rather than go to class in a physical space, you can teach from any location that offers a connection.Of course, it may take some effort to find a college online seeking new hires for their faculty, and it will also take some effort to determine if your academic area is in demand with that particular online school, but is definitely worth the time and hard work to find those positions. Why, you may ask, is it worth the elbow grease, in the digital sense, to track down those sometimes elusive online college courses that need an Instructor? The simple answer is that you can teach college courses and earn a living while you travel. Think about that for a minute! Imagine being able to take layoffs at state colleges and universities in stride because you have a handful of online classes to teach. Further, since you would have become adept at teaching for online college programs, you would a perfect candidate for one of the online faculty positions that are bound to flower in great numbers as the student population at online programs grows. One of the best places to look for these wonderful online faculty positions is the school’s own employment page. As schools that employ online teachers grow in number, and the classes they offer proliferate at a blinding rate, which they will in the next few years, the more qualified college Instructors they will need, and there isn’t any reason one of them can’t be you. However, it is very important that anyone who wants to teach online degree courses full time realize that any of the online faculty positions also require a certain level of administrative work besides the teaching of on line college courses. Holding one of the online faculty positions really is a full time effort, but it is an effort that can pay off handsomely in terms of mobility.

Seeking Out Online Faculty Positions

To sum up, or to get to the bottom line as the online mba folks would say, the best approach to online faculty positions is to simply make up your mind to secure one and go after it. Start investigating the situation with online schools by simply doing a search for them, then wade through the application process, being prepared to wait for months in some cases for a reply, and have your documentation ready the moment the welcome message shows up. Overall, securing one of the growing number of online faculty positions out there may be the best career move you have every made or sill make in these uncertain times.