Online Faculty Positions » online classes

Teaching Online College Courses is a Viable Alternative

adjunct — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:04:02 +0000

Many public school educators are facing economic uncertainty as state budgets previously dedicated to public educational pursuits dry up and lave academics in the proverbial career ditch. It is not necessary for a high school or elementary school teacher with a graduate degree to remain without employment, and the traditional college adjunct professor teaching in a physical college classroom on a traditional post-secondary campus can certainly improve his or her financial condition by recognizing that teaching online college courses is a viable alternative in these parlous days for educators of all stripes. The welcome issued by academic administrators and new and returning college students alike to distance education technology has a real grounding in the technology’s ability to solve myriad problems. For example, the administrators responsible for maintaining the physical plants known as college and university campuses and paying faculty salaries are currently in a real dither because the expense of building out and maintaining physical college and university classrooms with ever diminishing budgetary funds precludes actually paying faculty members a living wage. There is only so much to go around, and the academic administrators know all too well that they will be unemployed if they do not find an alternative for the delivery of post-secondary instruction since the student populations are swelling larger than at any time since the middle of the last century. Fortunately, the ease of implementing and offering college students enrollment in online bachelor degree programs and online masters degree programs is a genuine solution that essentially saves the administrators, engages the college and university students and provide outstanding employment opportunities for academics willing to learn how to navigate the Internet with a personal computer.

The college students have demonstrated an overwhelming enthusiasm for online college courses that they can participate in from their laptops at home or at work. This makes sense in this day and age because it is much more cost efficient to earn an online law degree, an online nursing degree or an online engineering degree from a computer accessing online classes than it is to travel in a costly vehicle to a remote community college, state college or four year university campus and sit for hours, then use the same expensive car or truck to return home or work. As more online college degree programs become available the more students will enroll in them, and eventually it should be expected that earning an online college degree will become the normal route for matriculation to an online bachelor degree or online master’s degree.

The alert academic with a graduate degree, a Ph.D. or master’s degree, will quickly recognize the lay of the academic landscape given their emerging educational circumstances. For example, there really isn’t any intelligent expectation of returning to the physical classroom for secondary and elementary public school teachers, and there is any realistic expectation of a traditional tenure-track college positions on the part of current adjunct college professors barely earning a living form teaching college and university students on a physical campus. Therefore, it is entirely reasonable to view teaching online college courses as a viable alternative to not teaching at all or teaching for so little in compensation that it is hardly worth the effort.

Online Faculty Positions Going Forward

adjunct — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:27:45 +0000

Online faculty positions continue to offer college teachers a way to replace income that has disappeared due to the current economic crisis, or to supplement income that is already in place. In either case, online faculty positions can come in mighty handy because the income from them is nothing to sneer at in this day and time. Imagine how an extra two or three thousand dollars a month would make the downward pressure college teachers at community colleges, state colleges and state universities. The fact of the matter is that it is time to think outside the traditional academic box if you make your living teaching college classes in composition, psychology or any other core area of study for first year college students. Take a few minutes away from grading freshman compositions or true or false psychology quizzes and look at the web sites of a few of the over five thousand institutions of higher learning. Once you have found a college or university web site, dig around and find the application or employment page. Sometimes you will discover a pdf to fill out and submit, or you may be able to simply e-mail your cover letter and vita or resume. It is a pain to go through this process, but it will be worth it if you can lasso one or two online college classes. If you continue to do this day after day, you will soon land enough teaching gigs to actually qualify as having one of the glorious online faculty positions.

Online Faculty Positions Once Found

The important idea for you to remember as you slog through your teaching day at the local state college or university is that there is a better way to teach, and the better way to teach is to acquire several online college classes. There is no reason to quit your teaching position right now in order to take on one or two online college courses for an online masters degree program because it is entirely possible to fit in a couple of online classes filled to the brim with students seeking to earn one or more university degrees online. You, the college teacher, can use your office computer and Internet connection to do all of this online academic work. You can visit the college or university web sites and find the application page while sitting in your cheap state-supplied chair. After you have submitted your application materials enough times to online degree programs, you can count on receiving a positive response. After you receive a positive response from and online college degree program, you can agree to teach one or more online college classes. The online school will require you to engage in a training program that can last up to six weeks, but the training program usually last about four weeks. You can take this training from your office computer will holding office hours for college students who hardly ever show up. After you have successfully completed the required training for the online school offering, say, a psychology degree online, you will be offered a class sooner or later. This offer may take its own sweet time showing up, but it will probably happen. In the mean time, you still have your state job teaching college students as you wait for the online faculty positions to materialize on your office computer screen.

Online Faculty Positions Locked In

The entire point for college teachers is that you do not have to give into panic or despair as state budgets are cut further and further in the coming months and years. The opportunity to earn additional income or a full time adjunct income from online faculty positions is very real. It is worth your time to at least try and salvage part of your college teaching income by applying to as at least one accredited online degree program today. If you, the college teacher, take nothing else away from this writing today, please take away the assurance that if you are proactive in your search for online faculty positions you will be able to weather the economic dislocation being endured today by many people who never once considered that it would be possible to be show the door. The mere possession of a graduate degree and college classroom experience does not provide any kind of protection against unemployment or loss of college teaching income. It is only through positive, energetic action on your own behalf that you can find online faculty positions.

Online Faculty Positions Search Strategy

adjunct — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 18:55:33 +0000

Online faculty positions really are out there for the taking, but in order to find them, it is vitally important to have a search strategy. First and foremost, it is always a good idea to become convinced that there really are online faculty positions you can apply for every hour of the day. From a psychological perspective, a search strategy, which by its very nature is time consuming and labor intensive, is much more effective if the searcher knows in advance that there will be a definite payoff at some point in the search. Surprisingly, one of the online faculty positions out there can fall into your lap in an unexpected fashion. In one search the instructor was offered several online adjunct employment opportunities because the instructor had applied online to group of online schools and there was an opening in one of the school’s online master’s degree programs. The instructor literally had no idea the group of schools had programs that offered online masters degrees to their students. This is an example of how a search strategy that takes into account that accredited online degree programs often have multiple online faculty positions that are not readily observable at first glance. Plus, the belief that an income, a good income, can be a motivator in terms of how much effort and time you put into your online faculty positions search every day. The only real way to find and secure these jobs is to re-think how higher education is organized today. For example, academic faculty members are now left to their own devices to earn a living as a college teacher. The administrations of colleges and universities have learned that there are plenty of potential college teachers with college classroom experience willing to work for practically nothing, and so they are paid practically nothing and they keep teaching in an effort to stave off financial insolvency.

Online Faculty Positions Can Save You

The truth of the matter is that college instructors have to stop thinking like academic employees and begin thinking like academic entrepreneurs. This change in thinking will, if organized correctly by confronting the taken-for-granted articles of faith that say life on the public payroll, be it state or local taxes that fund the public payroll, is a safe bet that will bring reward through longevity. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the number of college and university faculty that are finding themselves thrown under the bus, so to speak, because of diminishing tax rolls across the board will be forced to engineer a new and, perhaps, unsettling vision of higher education if they are to survive. The very best thing any college teacher can do for himself or herself is learn how to find and apply for online faculty positions. These offerings to teach college students will only become more numerous because online classes leading to online accredited degrees are extremely inexpensive to offer the massive number of new and returning college students now entering the higher education system because they can’t find employment. Therefore, the alert college instructor will immediately compile a search strategy for online faculty positions because that will be where the employment opportunities will present themselves. Granted, the online faculty positions will not come with expected perks, such as health care, and there will be no simplistic notion the value of long service because it is so easy to replace one online adjunct instructor with another online adjunct instructor, but if one accepts these dynamics as reality, there is actually light at the end of the tunnel.