The siphoning off of traditional faculty salary budgets by college and university administrators in an effort to salvage the physical plants known as college campuses, which are really a collection of buildings and parking lots costing exorbitant amount of cash to maintain and repair every year, is causing many traditional college instructors working on an adjunct basis to wonder what is wrong with the college teaching profession. Generally speaking, the problem is that the university chieftains are in a real financial pickle since they refrained from making online bachelor degree programs and online masters degree programs available earlier to their swelling student populations.
Certainly, the for-profit colleges that read the future of post-secondary education with clearer eyes have had large successes employing distance education technology. Now, the physical colleges and universities are trying to catch up, so to speak, by offering their student populations online elementary teaching degrees, an online project management degree or an online rn to bsn degree that can be earned from a personal computer at home or at work.
This transition from the physical classroom to the online college classroom can be a vehicle to make college teaching right again with online adjunct positions. The advantages of teaching online are numerous, but a full time online adjunct instructor needs to grasp the dynamics of the emerging academic labor model to fully take advantage of the financial aspects of acquiring multiple online college classes. First, mastering the time management techniques and technical skill are paramount to navigating the many accredited online college courses available to teach for today.
For example, a very high level of self-discipline is required to meet the numerous deadlines imposed by the department heads and deans in charge of the online college courses. For the most part, computer technology is used to keep track of online adjunct instructor engagement with the online college courses, and this computerized tracking is a daily concern for the adjunct instructor. However, with the right level of focused attention it is very possible to meet every timeline demanded by the online college degree programs.
The way these deadlines for responding to college students in discussion forums, grading tests and offering answers to student questions about the functionality of the distance education technology can be managed, in fact the only way they can be effectively confronted on a daily basis, is with superior computer skills. Since all the online teaching activities and the associated administrative duties are located on the Internet, the only way to coordinate them in a satisfactory manner is by learning how to use a personal computer to access the online college courses. At first, these requirements for success as an online adjunct college teacher with eight or ten online faculty positions to manage every day may seem burdensome and outside the scope of traditional academic activity. However, the financial incentives to make college teaching right in the sense that online adjunct positions can earn the online adjunct instructor a full time living and restore confidence in having made the decision to make the effort to acquire an earned graduate degree.
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