But what if this assumption were wrong, or at least questionable? This is the finding of recent research by Christian J. Grandzol, PhD, and John R. Grandzol, PhD, both of Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. In a recently published paper entitled “Interaction in Online Courses: More is NOT Always Better,” the authors report that “our key findings indicate that increased levels of interaction, as measured by time spent, actually decrease course completion rates. This result is counter to prevailing curriculum design theory and suggests increased interaction may actually diminish desired program reputation and growth.”

The research: Questioning the value of interaction
The value placed on interaction in a course is second nature to anyone familiar with student development and pedagogical theory. The authors note that five of the seven principles identified by Chickering and Gamson relate to interaction in learning. (These include “between students and faculty, reciprocity and cooperation among students, prompt feedback, emphasis on time on task, and communication of high expectations.”)

However, as time has passed, some research has begun to question the value of interaction, suggesting that there could be too much interaction required in a course. Summarizing 2007 findings by Arbaugh and Rau, the authors report, “learner-instructor interaction had the strongest correlation with perceived learning; learner-learner interaction actually had a negative correlation with delivery medium satisfaction. The more participants a learner had to pay attention to, the less satisfaction they had with the learning environment.”

It is possible, in other words, that requiring students to read and respond to posts and conversations from many different classmates may actually cause a good deal of frustration and dissatisfaction with the course experience. This study, which looked at online MBA courses, suggests that there may be an optimum level of interaction for graduate-level courses, and that more is not always better.

Excerpted from “Is There Too Much Interaction in Your Courses?” Distance Education Report, 14.7 (2010): 1,2. You can read the complete article by downloaded our free report Designing Online Courses: Models for Improvement. Download report »

Fred Lokken is chairman of the Instructional Technology Council and associate dean for teaching technologies at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nev. As part of an ITC Conference panel, he and his colleagues considered some of the challenges that distance education administrators face. Some of the issues identified include the following:

1. Learning curve and lack of historic place
“Distance education administrators face a different set of challenges than [do] any of the other administrators,” Lokken says. He explains that most universities’ senior administrators are uncertain about how to handle distance education, and part of this is due to the lack of historic precedent about how distance education fits into the larger academic scheme.

Many administrators take a distance education position after spending their career as a faculty member in a traditional academic department, Lokken says. This means the new distance education administrator faces a steep learning curve as he or she learns the special concerns of distance education.

“Other areas have career tracks,” says Lokken. Deans of traditional academic departments typically rise through the faculty ranks, taking on increasing areas of service and responsibility and observing the way the department is handled for many years before becoming dean.

On the other hand, a dean of distance education may assume that position with very little experience in the field, and there is not an established career track at most institutions for those who wish to become a distance education administrator. “Our responsibility or role is defined day by day and interpersonal relationship by interpersonal relationship,” says Lokken.

2. Campus politics and lack of power
Distance education administrators are also affected by a lack of power, as the successful discharge of their responsibilities often rests on the decisions of others. “We’re always outside our traditional silo,” says Lokken. For example, he explains, traditional departments often decide their future course offerings well in advance. However, some distance education departments don’t know which courses the departments wish to have offered online until they pick up the printed schedule for the upcoming semester.

This is a problem, because distance courses require “a longer planning cycle than almost any other kind of course on campus.” The lack of lead time leads to “train wreck after train wreck,” he says. These disasters happen when the departments want the distance courses taught by faculty members who are untrained or inexperienced in distance delivery, or who are unprepared for its particular challenges.

Added to this concern is the challenge of campus politics. Departments typically want control over what courses they offer and which faculty teach them, and they often resist attempts by the distance education office to give input on the hiring and assignment process, such as insight about the characteristics that are needed to teach successfully online. “Teaching online is dramatically different,” says Lokken. The distance education department, like any other, must meet its charge of maintaining quality of courses and meeting accreditation standards. “When we offer a degree online, it needs to meet the expectations of the traditional classroom,” he says.

3. Loss of autonomy
“There is a need for distance education administrators to be very proactive, to know what’s coming,” Lokken says. Sometimes, the failure to predict the worst can damage a reputation built during a time of success.

At the ITC Conference session, one participant told of a program that received a substantial federal grant for development of its distance education courses. The money was enough to allow for careful development, training, and execution. “They were really able to do it right,” says Lokken. “Doing it right” yielded good results. The distance education offerings “went from being a miniscule part of the enrollment to a significant part,” Lokken says. This was threatening to some of the traditional departments, and they responded by pulling back some of the autonomy of the distance education department and dividing this authority between the traditional departments and the deans. The distance education department’s success in this case led to its being rendered less powerful by the traditional departments.

4. Staffing concerns
Distance education can also present staffing challenges, as it is particularly vulnerable to damage from changes in personnel. Lokken notes that a single change in administrators can mean the loss of a champion of distance education, something that has a far greater impact on these programs with shorter histories than it would have on a traditional department with a long history of operation and success.

Faculty who teach online for the first time also “find it offers brand-new professional development challenges,” says Lokken. “It challenged me to think about teaching in ways I never had.” Some traditional faculty members will find they thrive in the online environment, while some will find their traditional classroom skills do not translate well.

This creates further problems for department chairs who “feel they’re robbing Peter to pay Paul,” Lokken says. Some chairs find they are “losing their best to teaching online,” and suddenly they find themselves “struggling to cover classes they never had [problems with before],” Lokken says. This creates an administrative headache that may make traditional departments question the need for distance education.

5. Student concerns
Campuses also need to be aware of student concerns and demands, particularly in a climate in which higher education options are plentiful and sometimes seem to have few differentiators. “Students don’t have to be loyal to your campus. If you’re not offering [the desired classes] online, then they will find another option,” Lokken says.

Distant education programs are also charged with maintaining quality and assuring that students have a good chance at success. Some attempts have fallen flat, however, like a program that mandated an on-campus orientation for its distance learning students. The students responded very poorly, and administrators had to rethink the program’s approach.

Excerpted from “Distance Ed Administration: 6 Hard Lessons.” Distance Education Report, 14.9 (2010): 5.

While this might be the reality for some instructors, online learning has given birth to a new kind of full-time adjunct professor. This “professional adjunct” has very often chosen a life that includes a variety of adjunct appointments with a number of institutions, managing this workload from a location of their choice.

Laurie A. Bedford, Ph.D., is an adjunct professor in the school of education at Capella University. In an article in the Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration titled “The Professional Adjunct: An Emerging Trend in Online Instruction,” she details results of her qualitative study of adjuncts who have chosen this path for themselves.

The growth of professional adjuncts

The reliance on professional adjuncts is born of simple demand. Bedford writes: “Expanding enrollment in online programs has concurrently created a demand for qualified faculty to assume the increasing workload. As tenured or full-time faculty have been unable to fulfill these roles due to workload or resistance, organizations are more frequently turning to adjuncts to meet the needs of their online learners. (Carnevale, 2004).”

This need for adjunct instruction has sparked a great deal of debate, much of it surrounding the quality of instruction delivered by these adjuncts. “Much of the dialogue has focused on the organizational structure of the institutions that rely on adjuncts as well as the ability of part-time employees to deliver high-quality instruction (Shakeshaft, 2002),” Bedford writes.

However, these debates often overlook a new class of instructor: the professional adjunct. Bedford explains: “These full-time part-timers, as described by Schnitzer & Crosby (2003), make up a portion of individuals who seek online, adjunct work and, according to Carnevale (2004), are finding that they can build a network of opportunities with an entrepreneurial spirit. They capitalize on the need for organizations to hire competent, part-time professors who have significant expertise in their discipline as well as the demonstrated skills necessary to successfully mentor online learners. They are also finding that they have negotiating power as organizations struggle to fill their teaching vacancies and full-time, tenured faculty resist. Furthermore, as more online programs emerge, adjuncts are not bound by scheduling or geography to fill their employment needs (Carnevale). They are finding that, as they build their competencies, they are situated to capitalize on a growing market for their skills that involves multiple opportunities for part-time positions with diverse organizations.”

Professional adjuncts respond
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Bedford conducted a qualitative study that sought to understand the perspectives and motivations of these professional adjuncts. Some of the most interesting findings include:

All of the adjuncts surveyed considered online positions to be their primary employment. One participant explained, “This makes sense because of the logistical challenges associated with teaching on multiple campuses.” Bedford also found that her respondents felt this arrangement better suited their own teaching style and work preferences, which might also include short-term consulting.

• Far from the stereotype of adjuncts eager for the pay, benefits, and stability of a traditional faculty appointment, Bedford found that many respondents thought of themselves as entrepreneurs who could design their own work. One respondent explained: “I am self-employed. That means I don’t get benefits. I understand that and that’s okay. Self-employed people can successfully plan for retirement, budget for vacations, and organize health insurance coverage through sources such as professional affiliations. I have been able to do that, too.” Another said, “Perhaps as adjuncts, we can redefine ourselves as entrepreneurs who can take charge of our own needs rather than plead with organizations for added benefits and more appropriate compensation. … This might mean seeking employment elsewhere.”
• Professional adjuncts reject the notion that they are less prepared than their full-time counterparts. “Some people believe that my part-time status somehow makes me less qualified. This I don’t understand. I have the same degree and much more experience in the online classroom than many of the full-timers,” said one respondent. Another maintained that a professional adjunct may be uniquely qualified to occupy these positions: “Since most of the faculty I know are more comfortable in traditional classrooms, I have found a niche for myself in the online world. I feel like I have the skills and the temperament better suited for online learning so when schools are in need of online faculty, I am a good fit.”
• Most respondents included reasons such as flexibility and ability to work from home as motivations for choosing to become a professional adjunct, but only a few took this to the extreme of noting the benefits of working in one’s pajamas. “I wish they would stop with the ‘teach in your pajamas’ crap,” one adjunct commented. “Who cares what you’re wearing. It’s about serving students and my discipline. This kind of garbage gets in the way of the advancement of all online teachers.”
• Finally, professional adjuncts identified the ability to determine their own scholarly engagement as a benefit. These adjuncts did not want to avoid scholarly involvement, but rather celebrated their independence as scholars. “I engage in all of the scholarly activities that I would if I was vying for a tenure role—research, publishing, service, etc. The only difference is that I engage in the activities that I enjoy and interest me with no pressure from an organization to find something that will benefit them,” one said.

Overall, the professional adjunct appears to be a permanent faculty type that universities will need to work with. Bedford concludes that institutions should “acknowledge the full-time professional adjunct as a legitimate career path. In this way, efforts can be made to understand the characteristics associated with those professional adjuncts that can bring quality, rigor, and unique expertise to the instructional staff….Rather than consider all adjuncts a homogenous group, they need to be seen as entrepreneurial consultants in command of their own work environment and professional growth. Through this perspective, they can be seen as collaborative partners in the educational process and be treated as unique individuals with diverse needs and assets.”

Reference: Bedford, L., (2009) The Professional Adjunct: An Emerging Trend in Online Instruction. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, v12 n3.

Excerpted from Understanding the Professional Online Adjunct. Distance Education Report, 14.1 (2010): 3, 6.

Muriel Oaks is dean of the Center for Distance and Professional Education at Washington State University. During the recent seminar titled New Ideas for Selling Blended Learning to Your Faculty, she offered an in-depth discussion of ways to convince administrators, faculty, and students of the value of blended learning, including:

When talking to administrators, point out that blended learning…

• impacts the entire institution.
• offers a learner-centered pedagogy.
• may integrate with the strategic plan.
• improves classroom utilization.
• can help match delivery to academic need.
• can help fill under-enrolled courses and programs.

When talking to faculty, point out that blended learning….

• gives them access to new resources.
• introduces them to online learning.
• is an opportunity for faculty development and lets them experiment with new pedagogies and techniques.
• helps meet student expectations and build student skills.
• allows for more flexible scheduling.
• retains the face-to-face aspect faculty may cherish.

When talking to students, point out blended learning…

• meets their expectations for utilizing technology.
• develops independent learning skills.
• offers increased flexibility and convenience.
• provides better access to those with job, family, or distance barriers.
• helps reduce educational costs.

Offering blended learning requires more than just setting up an LMS and telling the faculty to integrate it into their curriculum. Institutions must understand the variety of delivery modes available, investigate their potential audience, learn about the competition, and provide adequate support for both students and faculty.

Unfortunately, handling complaints is an unpleasant part of the job of an academic administrator, and it is one that must be done regardless of comfort level, says C.K. (Tina) Gunsalus, author of The College Administrator’s Survival Guide. Academic administrators must learn their own conflict style and how they can work within this style to set boundaries on the amount of time they’re available to meet, the topics that are in-bounds for the conversation, and the boundaries of privacy and confidences within the role the administrator occupies, she says. These are skills that take practice and the formation of habit, just like a surgeon learns to wash his or her hands regularly to prevent the spread of germs.

In the recent online video seminar Basic Guidelines for Handling Complaints, Gunsalus outlined the 10 key guidelines for handling complaints. These include:

1. Don’t take it personally: Avoid the temptation to take complaints personally and become defensive. Find out what action the person making the complaint expects from you; perhaps listening is all that is required. Keep your demeanor calm and courteous.
2. Never act on only one side of the story: Many problems stem from differences in perceptions. As you collect information, keep your stance neutral and remind people you are gathering data in the face of a problem presented to you.
3. Nobody knows what everybody knows: If someone tells you “everyone knows” something, it is a good idea to drill deeper into the facts of the case. Often, things that some believe are common knowledge have little basis in truth.
4. When in doubt, leave it out: If you are thinking better of making a statement or putting something in writing, don’t do it. Emphasize facts and decisions, not opinions and motives.
5. Never attribute to malice that which incompetence will explain: Most bad things happen not through nefarious intent but through inattention, inaction, or miscommunication. Ask for clarification of facts, and repeat back what you have heard until you get it right.
6. Say what you’ll do, and do what you say: Just as giving a screaming child a candy bar trains that child how to get a treat, you can also train adults to behave inappropriately if you break the rules out of pressure or desire to have the problem solved. Let the person know the plan of action and its timeline, and stick to it.
7. In the absence of facts, people make things up: If you leave people hanging for a long period of time waiting for the next step or response, they will imagine the worst. Stick to your time schedule to alleviate this kind of worry.
8. Keep notes: Notes can serve as everything from reminders of your action plan to facts required for a lawsuit. Only four things belong in notes: the date, who was present, the facts brought to you, and the action you promised. Leave out speculation, analysis, and thoughts.
9. Trust your instincts: If you have an anxious or fearful feeling about a situation, don’t hesitate to call in someone else to help handle the situation properly with the appropriate boundaries.
10. Some problems require formal process: It is possible that most of the problems brought to you will require only a calm ear to listen. However, some situations, like reprimands, discipline, and terminations, will require formal action. The more complex the problem, the more likely it will require a formal process. Acquaint yourself in advance with the resource people on your campus.

Unfortunately, it is part of administrative life to have to handle conflict. But with a little advanced planning and practice, you will be ready for the situations that occur.

Dana Tesone, assistant professor in the Rosen College of Hospitality Management at the University of Central Florida, and Peter Ricci of Barry Kaye College of Business at Florida Atlantic University, set out to learn more about the way that students perceive online education today. Their work shows the equality of student perceptions of online versus face-to-face courses, and it has implications for how we think about these two delivery approaches.

The study
Tesone and Ricci, both professors in the hospitality field, studied a series of 450 students enrolled in a senior-level hospitality management program. These were largely traditional-age students (mostly 20 or 21 years of age), skewing female and non-minority. Some 70 percent were employed in the hospitality industry.

Quantitative results showed that student perception of their courses was similar, regardless of whether courses were delivered face-to-face or online. The areas the survey measured include:

• feedback concerning student performance in the course,
• instructor’s interest in student learning, use of class time,
• instructor’s overall organization of the course,
• continuity from one class meeting to the next,
• pace of the course,
• instructor’s assessment of student progress in the course,
• text and supplemental learning materials,
• description of course objectives and assignments,
• communication of ideas and information,
• expression of expectations for performance,
• availability to assist students,
• respect and concern for students,
• stipulation of interest in the course,
• facilitation of learning, and
• overall assessment of the instructor.

Students were given the option of providing comments, and the comments were also interesting. Students in the asynchronous online course gave favorable comments about convenience regarding time and travel. Also intriguing was the fact that the face-to-face course employed what the authors called a “sage on the stage” learning method, while the online course employed learner-centered methods—but both types of pedagogy were rated equally highly by students.

The implications
The first implication of these findings is the importance of using the more appropriate learner-centered pedagogy in the online classroom. “We have people who just don’t get the change in pedagogy,” says Tesone. “Everyone should be trained in this; it’s a major mental shift. If you aspire to be a sage on the stage, then this is not for you,” he says.

If the online environment presents a challenge for faculty, it also presents a challenge for students, perhaps in part because of misperceptions about the rigor of the courses brought about by experiences with poorly-designed courses. “We teach students who have had other classes that were treated like correspondence courses; that’s what gives us a bad name,” he says.

But today’s students are not taking a correspondence course, locked into distance delivery because it is the only way to complete a course. “Today, students who live 200 yards away take the [online] course because they don’t want to come to the classroom. They took the course out of convenience, not realizing the interaction is more intense than sitting in class.”

Today, technology adds a dimension to education, and students ultimately value both the increased convenience and the experience. “It has allowed us to become closer to students because of the software, and they learn more as a result,” says Ricci.

Excerpted from How Your Students See Your Courses, February 1, 2009, Distance Education Report.

“Ethics comes out in small decisions as well as big ones,” says Nancy Matchett, director of the Institute of Professional Ethics at the University of Northern Colorado.

Matchett works with applied ethics, and she seeks to educate her colleagues in education about three main ethical frameworks that people use to make decisions. Understanding these frameworks can help people understand their own decisions, as well as how others think about ethical issues.

The Consequences Framework
In the Consequences framework, the thinker focuses on the future effects of the possible courses of action, considering the people who will be directly or indirectly affected. This person asks him or herself about what outcomes are desirable in a given situation, and this person considers ethical conduct to be whatever will achieve the best consequences. The person using the Consequences framework desires to produce the most good.

This ethical framework has some definite advantages and disadvantages. It is a pragmatic way of viewing an issue, focusing on the results of an action. It works well with issues that involve large numbers of people, especially those that might involve trade-offs between good consequences for some and bad consequences for others.

On the other hand, it is not always possible to predict the consequences of an action, so some actions that are expected to produce good consequences might actually end up harming people. Additionally, people sometimes react negatively to the pragmatism embraced by this framework, and they recoil from the implication that the end justifies the means. It also does not include a pronouncement that certain things are always wrong, as even the most heinous actions may result in a good outcome for some people, and this framework allows for these actions to then be ethical.

The Duty Framework
In the Duty framework, the thinker is focused on the duties and obligations that people have in a given situation, and the thinker considers what ethical obligations he or she has and what things he or she should never do. Ethical conduct is defined by doing one’s duties and doing the right thing, and the goal is performing the correct action.

This framework has the advantage of creating a system of rules that has consistent expectations of all people; if an action is ethically correct or a duty is required, it would apply to every person in a given situation. This even-handedness encourages treating everyone with dignity and respect.

This framework also focuses on following moral rules or duty regardless of outcome, so it allows for the possibility that one might have acted ethically, even if there is a bad result. Therefore, this framework works best in situations where there is a sense of obligation or in those in which the thinker needs to consider why duty or obligation mandates or forbids certain courses of action.

However, this framework also has its limitations. First, it has no way of explaining how one should act if the “moral” or duty-driven action will have a bad result. It also does not explain whether an action can still be moral if it is known that something bad will result. It also does not help distinguish between conflicting duties, and it can be rigid in applying the notion of duty to everyone regardless of personal situation.

The Virtue Framework
In the Virtue framework, the thinker tried to identify the character traits (either positive or negative) that that might motivate people in a given situation. The thinker is concerned with what kind of person he or she should be and what his or her actions indicate about character. The thinker defines ethical behavior as whatever a virtuous person would do in the situation, and he or she seeks to develop his or her character.

Obviously, this framework is of great use in situations that ask what sort of person one should be. As a way of making sense of the world, it allows for a wide range of behaviors to be called ethical, as there might be many different types of good character and many paths to developing it. Consequently, it takes into account all parts of human experience and their role in ethical deliberation, as it believes that all of one’s experiences, emotions, and thoughts can influence the development of one’s character.

Although this framework takes into account a variety of human experience, it also makes it more difficult to resolve disputes, as there can usually be more disagreement about virtuous traits than ethical actions. Also, because the framework looks at character, it is not particularly good at helping someone to decide what actions to take in a given situation or determine the rules that would guide one’s actions.

Excerpted from Understanding Ethical Frameworks for E-Learning Decision-Making, December 1, 2008, Distance Education Report.

A connected world
According to research Kitahara has surveyed, up to 75 percent of students report engaging in some form of academic dishonesty. And it is clear that academe is not equipped to respond quickly to new threats, as students have proven remarkably able to change tactics.

“Part of our problem is, in our effort to make things more portable, we haven’t kept up. We need to put in security measures, [but we’re] behind the power curve,” Westfall says.

“It’s a losing battle; for everything we dream up, the students will get around it,” Kitahara adds.

Troy University is experimenting with tools like the Securexam Remote Proctor, a piece of hardware that connects to a computer’s USB port and records the exam as the student completes it. It also allows students to identify themselves by fingerprint at various points in the exam as stipulated by the instructor, so that another student is less likely to be able to step in to complete the exam.

The Remote Proctor may allow for better monitoring of students who are taking exams outside the classroom, but the need for such a device is the result of a cultural shift that has long-ranging implications beyond just cheating on a test or copying a few lines from Wikipedia.

“I don’t believe people will behave differently in one context than they do in another,” says Kitahara. Therefore, the student who today is cheating on a test may be the employee who tomorrow is fudging the accounting books. How many people involved in the Enron debacle committed academic dishonesty in school? How many loan officers who talked a financially marginal customer into a subprime mortgage in order to make quota were ones who thought copying from an encyclopedia was OK if they didn’t get caught?

The costs of academic dishonesty
One reason that students are able to commit academic dishonesty is that the punishments are far less onerous than the behavior they punish.

“The cost/benefit is in favor of the student,” says Kitahara. After all, it takes a great deal of investment from the university to police student behavior, verify academic dishonesty, and pursue punishment; for the student, the decision usually involves weighing the benefit of quick completion of an assignment with a better grade than could be earned alone against the by-no-means-certain threat of being caught and the likelihood of a slap on the wrist, such as failure of a single assignment or at most a single class.

For Kitahara, all of this points to the need for more stringent consequences to academic dishonesty. “A failing grade in one class isn’t going to do. It has to be something that everyone can see, like a permanent notation on the transcript,” he says. The notation would be something that would stay with the student, marking an episode of academic dishonesty for future graduate schools and employers to see, and it would remediate part of the problem of lack of student concern about cheating. “Too many students simply don’t care; all they have to do [now] is take the course over again,” he says.

However, Westfall and Kitahara agree that these measures are “just band aids,” as Kitahara puts it. Until students develop an internal sense of right and wrong that governs their behavior, we will continue to need Remote Proctors and ever more creative methods for making academic dishonesty more difficult.

Excerpted from A Problem of Core Values: Academic Integrity in Distance Learning, Distance Education Report, April 1, 2009.

Take, for example, Coastline Community College.

Coastline Community College was formed as a college without walls, dedicated to the distributed learning model. They have three traditional locations plus several “one stop” centers dedicated to job training, development, and placement and about 50 additional locations in which courses are held.

The college is not a small one; total enrollment is about 18,000. However, unlike many colleges, this group is primarily comprised of part-time students, with the largest number taking nine hours per term or fewer.

The Office of Instructional Systems Development licenses and sells the course content they develop. Today, there are up to 500 schools using CCC’s content, says Dan Jones, ISD’s executive dean. In addition, about 51 percent of their courses excluding those delivered to the military are distance learning. This experience has led to a large body of knowledge about the realities of the business of online learning.

For example, while the district has licensed course content to hundreds of institutions, it rarely sees financial support provided to faculty to acquire such media for a course. The district also sees growing concern about copyright issues and the acquisition of media for repeated use. These concerns have generated ideas about how the college handles their distance learning and its supporting materials and content.

Develop Course Content in Multiple Modes
One of the priorities CCC has is developing their content in multiple formats and offering more multimodal delivery. For example, the college serves a significant number of active-duty military as well as a number of students who are incarcerated. One thing that these population have in common is a lack of 24/7 connectivity, meaning that they may not be able to successfully complete an all-online course with synchronous requirements.

Develop Coordinated Learning Packages
Jones notes that the college has shifted to developing coordinated learning packages. While previously courses were tied to existing textbooks, they now develop their own texts and workbooks, creating a suite of learning materials that all work together to create a coherent whole.

Involve More Voices
Since CCC offers its course materials to other institutions across the country, Jones says it makes sense to involve multiple experts in their development. He notes that a single course might involve up to 20 faculty members across the country, in an effort to better represent different perspectives and aggregate expertise.

The college also encourages faculty developing a course to draw on modules and materials when developing a course. “While we recognize and respect academic freedom, [there are] advantages to teamwork in development,” Jones says. He further explains that the intention is not to take away a faculty member’s right to make their course their own, but that it is not necessary for every course to continually reinvent the same wheel.

Excerpted from Throwing Away the Old Business Model, Distance Education Report, Oct. 15, 2008.

Kristen Betts, assistant professor in the school of education at Drexel University; and Bernadine Sikorski, deputy human resources division leader for Bechtel Systems and Infrastructure, Inc., at Los Alamos National Laboratory, have set out to change this. In a recent paper, “Financial Bottom Line: Estimating the Cost of Faculty/Adjunct Turnover and Attrition for Online Programs,” the pair identify a variety of costs that can result from turnover and attrition of online faculty.

Divided into three categories – direct costs, opportunity costs, and indirect costs – the extensive list of potential line items will help online program administrators understand the potential financial impact of failing to retain qualified, enthusiastic faculty and staff for the program.

Direct Costs of Faculty Turnover
Direct costs, Betts and Sikorski write, are “fixed and variable costs related to hiring, salary/benefits, training, and support.” These are all costs essential for recruitment and retention of employees; the category also includes separation costs for employees that leave. Direct costs include the costs of recruitment, the application process, hiring, orientation and training, professional development and ongoing support, technology support and training, separation costs for the staff member, separation costs related to student attrition, and overtime. These subcategories encompass a wide range of potential costs, such as personnel costs to conduct reference checks, pre-employment drug testing, decreased productivity for the new employee until he or she masters the new position, severance pay, and overtime for faculty to teach courses left uncovered when a faculty member leaves.

Because of the many costs associated with recruiting a new faculty member, getting him or her up to speed, and dealing with separation, it is important to look to retention efforts as a cost-saving move rather than an additional expenditure. “Not everyone can teach online; it really is a different skill set,” says Sikorski. “The care and feeding of adjunct faculty should be looked at right away.”

Opportunity Costs of Faculty Turnover
Even more significant, in Betts’s opinion, are the opportunity costs associated with faculty and staff attrition. Opportunity costs, Sikorski and Betts write, are costs associated with “loss of business and loss of students resulting from diminished resources and/or decreased service quality due to faculty/adjunct turnover/attrition.” This category encompasses costs from loss of business, loss of students, loss of faculty/adjuncts, and loss of reputation.

Loss of students and the consequent loss of reputation is the element that Betts finds most dangerous. “Once you start losing students, you can’t seem to stop it,” she says. “Online students are savvy. They will call and want to speak to students and faculty. If there is any sense that there is attrition [they won’t attend]. You can’t get reputation back,” she says.

These opportunity costs can result in other damage to the program or the university beyond the loss of students and reputation. Faculty and staff attrition, if serious enough, can lead to limitations on course offerings due to lack of staff, a decrease in research and publication coming from the school, decreases in donations, and even loss of accreditation.

Indirect Costs of Faculty Turnover
Indirect costs, which Sikorski and Betts define as costs relating to “productivity, morale, and ultimately the climate of the university,” are the most difficult to quantify, but they still play an important role in understanding the impact attrition has on the bottom line. Examples of this category of costs includes lower staff productivity and burnout from covering for colleagues that have left, inability to secure grants, mistakes made by new hires, and low morale on the part of faculty and students.

“When people see a lack of productivity, it can put your program in a negative space,” says Sikorski. And lack of productivity can also come from missing staff. Betts tells of an example of losing an academic advisor, which negatively impacted the program during the six to eight weeks that it took to recruit a new person, in addition to the time it took to bring the next person up to speed. During this time, new students especially, who require a lot of attention, did not have the resources they needed to help them be successful. “Staff are just as important or more so than faculty because they have daily contact with students,” Betts says.

Excerpted from How Much is Faculty Turnover Costing You?, Distance Education Report, May 15, 2008.

These offerings include an online teaching tutorial; on-site beginning, advanced, and instructional design workshops and open labs at all campus locations; online peer mentoring by discipline, an online faculty recourse center, and a variety of personnel to support faculty training. The center of all of this activity is Mary Jane Clerkin, coordinator of online faculty support.

Tip #1: Remember that although not all online faculty will be physically located off-campus, that doesn’t mean they will have a great deal of available time for face-to-face training. Online training can be a good solution to varied and busy schedules.

Clerkin notes that the college piloted an online workshop with just seven faculty members as participants. This initial group liked the training, so the college made a two-week workshop for beginning online instructors available. The team is now working on offering courses for advanced faculty and for instructional design.

The online workshop also includes an online faculty resource center, which features tools and resources that faculty likely will need. This includes a faculty handbook, a checklist for a successful course created by the dean, and a section on academic integrity.

The online faculty resource center is conceived as “a place where faculty can share,” says Clerkin. For example, all faculty meetings are held online through a section of the resource center dedicated to discussions. This section also includes discipline-specific discussions for faculty in certain subject areas, and an option for voice discussions. There is even room for faculty-initiated interaction projects; for example, one faculty member has asked to run an online book club, so that discussion area is now found online.

Tip #3: Allow faculty the chance to personalize online space in order to keep them coming back. An online book club or other non-work interaction may make them feel more at home online.

The site also includes a number of forms that the faculty members will need as they do their work, such as progress reports. “All they have to do is click to take any one of those forms,” says Clerkin.

Tip #4: Put all of the forms and information your faculty will need online in easily downloaded formats, so that they can be accessed at all hours from any computer.

The site is filled with models and best practices. One section includes sample courses in a variety of disciplines, which allows participants to view a successful course and learn what aspects they might adopt for their own. There are also many sets of directions and instructions for using common tools, like Blackboard.

Tip #5: Just as you would have tests and assignments for students in an online course, consider having assessment activities for participants in an online training workshop, so that they may demonstrate mastery of the materials.

The online faculty workshop requires the participants to demonstrate competence with practical applications. Each participant is asked to complete certain tasks, like posting a comment, to show their readiness to teach online. At the end of course completion, they are sent certificates of completion to show that they successfully navigated the course.

Excerpted from Distance Education Report, Dec. 15, 2007.

Mehlenbacher is an associate professor in the training and development program at North Carolina State University. His recent research has centered on examining the existing research in the distance education field. With at least three decades worth of studies and papers to examine, Mehlenbacher found that existing distance learning research falls into several main areas. Some lend themselves to future research to expand the knowledge base, but others do not need to be revisited.

Here are the distance education research topics to avoid:

1. The use of technology as its own justification.
Even as recently as ten to fifteen year ago, stating that technology was becoming more important in universities was justification enough for research into the current state of affairs.

The majority of courses at universities have some form of an online presence. Therefore, Mehlenbacher says, the existence of technology in education is no longer justification for investing time in research. It’s time to move on.

2. More discussions of learning styles.
Many research studies involve examinations of the role student learning styles play in the distance learning environment. “It is a smart rhetorical thing,” Mehlenbacher says. But he has read enough about learning styles, and he thinks it is time to tackle the harder questions, such as how do you provide for people with different visual, auditory, and physical abilities.

3. Rehashing the “digital divide.” Along the same lines is research on the “digital divide,” the much-used term that describes a difference between the access to technology that one group has compared to the expectation or norm. Mehlenbacher asserts that it is time to move into discussions of what differences in technological access really mean, both in and out of the virtual classroom.

Another “divide” that lends itself to examination is how teaching in a virtual space impacts the role of the instructor. “I was always uneasy standing in front of the class in an authority role,” says Mehlenbacher. Teaching online, however, changed that.

“I found myself wanting authority in distance education,” he says, noting that his “voice was no different” from that of the other participants in an online forum, and the lack of authority was a different experience. It raises questions about “the previous notion of what it means to be the teacher.”

Excerpted from Four Distance Education Research Topics to Avoid (And a Few to Pursue), Distance Education Report, October 1, 2007.

1. Let go of the guilt. In any given online class, there may be a soldier logging in from Iraq, a student located three time zones away, and a night owl who concentrates best at 4:00 a.m. As a result, the online faculty member likely will receive questions or comments at any time of the day or night.

The desire to serve students, and online educators’ subconscious need to justify their work-at-home existence, leaves many online faculty feeling guilty if they don’t respond to students right away. It’s time to let go of that guilt.

2. Set your working hours. Kelly urges all online faculty to set working hours and obey them. “This [problem] is common to telecommuters; we try to fit in work around everything else,” she says. But instead of continuously checking email, grading papers, running errands, and doing laundry, Kelly suggests carving out set blocks that are just for work.

These blocks may not correspond directly to a standard office work day, for example you may have day when you need to teach one synchronous class in the morning and another in the evening. However, on these days, it’s important to schedule time in the afternoon for non-work-related activities.

3. Manage your time, and learn to explain to others. Part of the secret to the work-life balance is better time management. However, even when online faculty manage their time well, they often have trouble explaining their position to administrators, and vice versa. Questions about time management are often heard as complaints about workload or requests to work harder; learning to communicate with one’s colleagues is often a big hurdle to handling time effectively, Kelly says.

4. Be proactive. If online faculty do not learn to set boundaries, they risk the sort of burnout that could drive them out of the online classroom altogether. While it’s important for administrators to make it clear that a commitment to teach online is not a monastic oath to have no life other than a virtual one, Kelly also encourages online faculty to take charge of their own time.

A critical step to doing so involves managing students’ expectations by explaining instructors’ availability and communication policy upfront. Students, she says, generally understand as long as the online faculty member obeys his or her own promises about check-in times and response turn-around.

Adapted from “Setting Boundaries: Four Tips for Managing Your Time Online and Not Letting Your Work Consume Your Life,” Distance Education Report, August 1, 2007.