Online Faculty Positions » online teaching opportunities

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.

Act with Conviction When Searching for Online Teaching Opportunities

adjunct — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:45:37 +0000

The current academic landscape is ragged enough to give any traditional college instructor pause. Physical postsecondary academic institutions are currently suffering under tremendous budgetary pressures due to the shortfall in funding sources. As a result of the shortfall, traditional colleges and universities have to pare back the numbers of adjunct college instructors on the faculty. The result is that adjunct college teachers who are losing what little income they have from teaching in the physical college classroom are making every effort to recoup the investment they made in their graduate education. Since the non-academic economy is in such tatters the best option for individual with an earned graduate degree, a PhD or Masters degree, is to search for and acquire online faculty positions with various online bachelor degree programs and online master degree programs. Distance education technology has matured to the point that any academic institution, college, university or for-profit college, can offer bearer student populations online college classes at a very low cost when compared to what it cost to maintain and repair a physical college classroom.

The vast majority of college teachers now working on adjunct basis did not participate in online degree programs in order to earn their academic credentials. It is important for a prospective online adjunct instructor to become very familiar with how accredited online college degree programs function in terms of their benefits for the online instructor. For example, an aggressive online college teacher can scale the online faculty positions in a teaching schedule up or down at will, which means online college courses can be added or subtracted to the online teaching schedule according to how much online adjunct income the college instructor wants to earn at any given time.

This scalability of the teaching schedule is of great value to the person with an earned graduate degree because it is a simple matter to either accept or decline offered online college courses in order to increase the amount of income or decrease the teaching load. Further, the online adjunct teacher does not have to wait or a department head or Dean to offer or not offer classes to teach.

This ownership of the teaching schedule, so to speak, transforms the college teacher from a college or university employee into an academic entrepreneur with the power to control the teaching career arc. The availability of inexpensive personal computers and the widespread wireless access to the Internet makes it possible for an online adjunct instructor to teach eight to ten online classes every day. This many physical college classes would be impossible to acquire at a physical postsecondary institution at this time because the current trend is to limit the number of classes a traditional adjunct has access to on a daily basis. What is more, college students of every stripe actually want to earn an online mathematics degree, an online bachelor degree in accounting or an electrical engineering bachelor degree online from their personal computers.

The simple case with online teaching is that there is plenty of it. If an online adjunct instructor wants to add online courses to the teaching schedule, and thereby add online adjunct income to the budget, it is simply a matter of applying to additional online college degree programs. This can be accomplished by visiting the thousands of websites maintained by colleges, community colleges, universities, technical schools and for-profit colleges that confer the online degree.

Make Your College Teaching Right with Online Adjunct Positions

adjunct — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 15:50:30 +0000

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.

An Action Plan for Online Adjunct Instructor Jobs

adjunct — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 02:33:09 +0000

For those who have heard about the decent money that can be earned from multiple online adjunct instructor jobs the question of how create an action plan that can land as many of these part time positions teaching online college classes can be created and put into place is paramount. It is understandable that there is a good deal of confusion about online adjunct jobs with colleges and universities that provide their students with a chance to earn an online bachelor degree or an online masters degree. By and large, when a person earns a graduate degree that person is not taught have to use that academic credential to earn a living by teaching on an adjunct basis.

Today, with faculty budgets at traditional colleges and universities being slashed to the bone, and with the maturation of distance education technology, the adjunct instructor landscape is changing in a dramatic fashion and people with earned graduate degrees need to be aware that the schools are making every effort to hire qualified online instructors to lead their new and returning college students in the various accredited online degree programs. In the end, the post-secondary academic institution are being forced by financial considerations to offer the online IT degree, online rn nursing degree and online mba degree to their student populations, and both the schools and the students attending the schools online degree programs need online adjunct instructors.

The first step to take when seeking online adjunct instructor positions is to accumulate the necessary application materials. The list of documents will include a unofficial copy of a graduate transcript indicating the degree was awarded at the end of the course of study. There is no need to send an official graduate transcript in the beginning of the application process. If a person is attractive enough to the university to be invited to attend in the mandatory training sessions each school will require a prospective online adjunct to participate successfully in before being placed in an online class then the school will request an official transcript from the graduate program, and in some cases the school will pay the fee for the official transcript. The unofficial transcript should be scanned into a computer in a format that can be opened by any other computer. In addition, a cover letter, resume and letters of reference should be in a document format that is common to any computer. The idea here is that when a prospective online adjunct instructor locates online adjunct professor jobs there isn’t a moment lost when applying for online adjunct employment.

The second step is to locate the application section of a school’s website. There are over five thousand post-secondary academic institutions with websites, and on the first page of each site is a link that will take the visitor to an application page. Sometimes the link to the application page is named employment, jobs or human resources. Regardless of the name of the link, there is a place on the colleges or universities web site that will allow someone with an earned graduate degree to apply for any available online adjunct instructor jobs. In the event that the school doesn’t list any immediate openings the application should be made anyway. As time goes on there isn’t any technical school, community college, college or university that will not have some online college courses for their students because it is extremely cost-effective to offer an online college degree program when compared to the cost of maintaining a traditional college campus.

If a prospective online adjunct instructor will gather the required academic documents and begin making applications to online university programs, it will not be long before this action plan for online adjunct instructor jobs begins to pay off in the form of invitations to teach online college classes.

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.