The amount of income that can be earned from teaching a single online college class or even three or four online college courses is important to consider, but what is even more interesting is that there are so many online degree programs now in place on the internet that it is possible to add or subtract online classes form the online teaching schedule based solely on the amount the pay the online adjunct instructor. For example, every post-secondary academic institution is now fully committed to employing distance education technology as a way replace expensive college and university classrooms. The result of this adoption of distance learning by academic administrators will be an infinitely expanding number of online faculty positions that must be filled by academically qualified and technically proficient online adjunct instructors. The alert educators will take advantage of this growing academic employment market by learning how to offer an intellectual and technical set of skills to the thousands of college and universities that need them.

The best approach to building an income from online adjunct instruction is to collect all the appropriate documents, graduate transcripts, letters of recommendation and a philosophy of teaching, in an electronic form so that they can be quickly and effortlessly submitted to the digital interface located in the application section of each academic website. Of course, given the bureaucratic hesitancy inherent in any state school such as university or community college, a delay can be expected when anticipating a positive response in the form of an invitation for a voice interview and inclusion in the mandatory training every new online instructor must complete. These delays should not slow down the application activities of an online college professor because it only after hundreds of applications for online teaching positions have been completed that there will be any online classes offered by one school or another.

After a few online classes are being taught, it will be time to evaluate each one in the light of the amount of money the college or university pays for the individual class and how much administrative activity is expected by the program leaders. For example, a traditional sixteen week class that pays fifteen hundred dollars will produce less weekly online adjunct income than a similar online class that lasts only six week. The best arrangement for the online instructor is to submit online faculty applications is to schools that offer six week online courses and replace the online classes that do not pay as well. There is also the issue of how much time the administrative tasks take each day. Some online degree programs requires constant interaction online with the enrolled students and some schools are satisfied to just have the online instructor answer the students’ questions about the individual assignments. The perfect mix for teaching online from the perspective of actually earning a living is a short time span for the class and a minimum of administrative tasks. Frankly, the intellectual requirements on both students and educators involved in distance learning programs is the same as that encountered in the physical classroom, but the control an online college professor has over the size of the online teaching schedule and the online adjunct income it generates is a far cry from the stress caused by waiting on the traditional campus for the next round of educator layoffs.

Online adjunct Instructor participation in discussion forums

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.

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.