Instructors’ Stories Reveal Strategies

Through instructors’ stories we found concrete examples of strategies for balancing workload that can fit a wide variety of settings and apply to many different contexts. You can find them in our book Managing Online Instructor Workload: Strategies for Finding Balance and Success http://www.einterface.me/eInterface.me/Books.html

You may identify with some of these stories, but many will be new to you. While some of the instructors in our examples are prioritizing their time in an efficient way, others are still discovering new ways to effectively manage their workload.

Next week, we’ll look at how to determine the types of course tasks for online teaching and how they can be accomplished within a design framework. For your online course, designing requires planning, intention, and design and an understanding of the online environment. By looking at workload from a design perspective, instructors can better manage and prioritize their time.

Work Smarter, Not Harder: Online Teaching Strategies that Help Manage Your Workload - Oct 23, 2012 Workshop

Work Smarter, Not Harder: Online Teaching Strategies that Help Manage Your Workload – a Wiley Learning Institute (WLI) Workshop

Join us on October 23, 2012 for our two-hour interactive WLI workshop

Register: http://wli.wiley.com/pg/pages/view/2753

We know that teaching online can seem overwhelming. In the always-on 24/7 world of online teaching, students can request feedback or have questions at any hour of the day or night and often expect an immediate response from you, the instructor. If you teach part or all of your class online it may seem like an impossible task to balance your personal life and your work life due to your workload demands, the 24/7 online environment, or your ability to create presence online. Our presentation provides course design and facilitation strategies to help you manage your online workload by working smarter. You’ll assess instructor cases using a template to identify teaching tasks and prioritize time.

And - at the end of this workshop, you’ll be able to:

•Analyze case stories from online instructors to determine potential workload challenges or problem areas

•Develop design, support, teaching, and time allocation strategies for managing workload in the online environment

•Create and/or use a template to identify your online teaching tasks and prioritize your time

Join us! We’re looking forward to your participation! 

New Thinking and Creative Strategies Help Online Instructors Manage Workload

Close your eyes and imagine the differences between the face-to-face and online environments. In the face-to-face environment, you can see your learners, hear their voices, and touch concrete objects. You can easily move among your learners, have eye-contact, feel a very personal sense of closeness, hear voice nuance, read body language, and demonstrate concepts. However, in the online environment everything is very elusive. You have to think much more carefully about how you can relate to and engage your learners, create a sense of closeness, and describe your actions. In this environment, preplanning, intentional design, explicit instructions, and creating a sense of presence become essential.

Planning, intentional design, creating explicit instructions, and creating presence require time, energy, and creativity and can influence instructor workload. Workload is determined by the course discipline, the course format, interactive strategies, the instructor role, technologies, and support. (For the Determinants of Presence, see our book: Lehman, R. M. & Conceição, S. C. O. (2011). Creating a Sense of Presence in Online Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.)

The issue for instructors is to understand and think about what makes the online environment different. The challenge is to think with a new mindset about designing and delivering instruction, developing instructional strategies that work in the online environment, and creating a sense of presence that will make the virtual environment feel more real and personal. At the same time, instructors need to be mindful of workload. This is a challenge but it can be realized. (See our book: Conceição, S. C. O. & Lehman, R.M. (2011). Managing Online Instructor Workload: Strategies for Finding Balance and Success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass)

Increasing Demands for Higher Education Online Courses - Implications

Increasing demands for higher education online courses have implications for educational institutions and instructor course design, teaching, and workload.

From the institutional perspective a shift to systems thinking is required - looking at how change involves all parts of the organization and how the parts influence one another within a whole. When traditional higher education institutions consider including online education in their offerings, they should address institutional and instructional issues and challenges, ensure that the same type of services provided for traditional face-to-face programs be adapted for the online environment (i.e. student services, technology support, instructor support, and so on), and look closely at the impact on instructor teaching and workload. Both institutional and instructional issues need to be considered and the challenges they present addressed.  

As instructors move their courses online, they will be rethinking their courses, using new technologies, adapting course design, and modifying teaching strategies. What will the impact be on their time and the management of their workload? If institutions are aware of these issues and appeal to instructors with understanding and extrinsic motivators (i.e. policy change, instructor support, incentives, and rewards), institutions can begin to meet the online challenges. Since higher education institutions benefit from the rewards of online courses, it is crucial that they also realize the impact on their instructors.