It is difficult for college teachers today to climb out of the financial morass they find themselves in at traditional universities and colleges. The physical post-secondary academic institutions are suffer greatly due to the budget cuts for the state level, and there is no apparent end in sight for the economic pain. However, and this is big however, it is possible for alert college instructors who understand the changing academic labor model and the importance of mastery of computers and the Internet to use online adjunct jobs as stepping stones to a decent income. The vast majority of new and returning college students, including the non-traditional college students that are swelling the student populations almost to bursting now, look quite favorably on the prospect of earning an online finance degree, an online engineering degree or an online undergraduate business degree from their personal computers at home and at work. Of course, every online college course in every accredited online degree program that offer college students accredited online university degrees needs qualified online adjunct instructors to teach the online classes.
The interesting and often overlooked element to success with adjunct online faculty positions is the need for extremely well-honed technical skills. These computer abilities are necessary because, of course, the online college courses exist on the Internet. In fact, all aspects for online teaching occur on the Internet, from finding online adjunct instructor positions to applying to teach online college classes for a specific college, university or for-profit school to being paid by way of direct deposit. Naturally, all the online teaching activity, such as interacting with college students in discussion forums, grading assignments, posting announcements and answering students’ questions is generated from a personal computer. Additionally, the associated administrative tasks that are a part of online teaching, such as compiling student participation reports, attending online faculty meetings and producing statistical data for associate deans, are initiated and completed on the Internet.
The upside of all of this online teaching on the Internet is an unprecedented personal mobility and professional scalability. The personal mobility comes from the ability of an online adjunct instructor to literally pick up the online degree programs being taught, place them under the arm in the form of an inexpensive laptop and carry them to another physical location such as a new coffee shop across the street, another city with a lower cost of living or an entirely different country with an excellent currency exchange rate. Imagine being able to teaching online for three or four accredited online college degree programs that offer students the bachelors degree online and the online master’s degree from a Mexican beach or from the lobby of a small hotel in Italy while continuing to receive online adjunct income from the various online degree programs. At the same time, there is an inherent scalability built in to online teaching since it is up to the individual online adjunct instructor as to how many online classes to teach at one time. This means it is acceptable to search for more online classes to teach online or to decline offered online classes as the circumstances dictate from time to time. In the end these online teaching elements allow college instructors to use online adjunct jobs as stepping stones to an independent academic career.
August 16, 2010
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