Academics not engaging online teaching on a daily basis are making a professional mistake. Undoubtedly, the results of deep cuts to public education budgets make this idea plausible since there seems to no visible end to the teacher layoffs on the traditional campus. Obviously, any educator with an earned graduate degree or any teacher with a bachelor degree who is willing to enroll in graduate school and earn a master degree can actively address this situation by learning how to teach online for the thousands of post-secondary academic institutions that offer online college classes to their enrolled college and university students. The number of available online adjunct positions is growing each semester as academic administrators begin to appreciate the cost efficiency of online education when compared to what it costs to deliver the same post-secondary instruction in a physical classroom on a traditional campus. Additionally, new and returning college students are very enthusiastic about the convenience of being able to earn an academic degree from their personal computers at home or at work because a growing number of students enrolled in community colleges and four-year state universities are non-traditional students with family and employment obligations that make traveling to a remote physical campus at odd hours o the day or evening a problem. This means that educators concerned about the future of professional lives should take a hard look at the benefits of an online teaching schedule that can be coordinated from practically any spot on the globe that provides access to the online college degree programs located on the Internet.
Many educators have given little though to the benefits of being able to teach from any town, city, state or country they choose to be in any time of the day or night. This lack of awareness of the inherent mobility associated with teaching online for a variety of online bachelor degree programs and online master degree programs is hardly surprising since the traditional career path for an intellectual that leaves a graduate program with the academic credentials required to teach at the post-secondary level of the educational system leads to one state position at one state college or university. Of course, that one state teaching position is immovable and when the budget funds for faculty salaries are cut to the point that layoffs start the academic depending on the work from just one physical post-secondary academic institution is left in the proverbial dust to try and make a living in an economic landscape that does not lend itself to such an effort by individuals with educational credentials. The result of this absence of awareness of the mobility assigned to an online adjunct instructor coordinating an online teaching schedule filled with online college classes actually prevents a great number of academically qualified teachers from making the effort to begin applying for online university employment on a daily basis. The teacher that wants to successfully confront the growing number of teacher layoffs should take distance education technology seriously and begin visiting the websites of four-year state universities and colleges, technical schools, community colleges and for-profit colleges in order to locate the faculty application sections in the schools’ websites.
Every educator interested in continuing to earn a living from teaching should take concrete steps to learn how to teach online for post-secondary academic institutions. For example, every prospective online adjunct instructor should construct a rotational application schedule that produces as many as twenty applications each day. The reason it is vitally important to make so many inquires about available online adjunct positions in the beginning is that most community colleges, four-year state universities, state colleges and technical schools are still trying to catch up with the for-profit colleges that discovered the efficiency of online college courses a decade ago. Of course, now that the traditional schools are making strides to replace the physical classrooms with online bachelor degree programs and online master degree programs there are new online degree programs emerging in almost every imaginable academic discipline each academic year. The next concrete step to take after creating the application schedule is to learn how navigate the Internet quickly and smoothly from a personal computer so that it is possible to enter and exit the various post-secondary academic websites on a daily basis. The combination of a well-developed application strategy and sharp computer skills added to the technical savvy needed to move about the Internet without hesitation will help an online adjunct build a fulltime online teaching schedule. While it may be difficult to take these concrete steps after spending all day in the physical classroom, the effort will be worth it in the event the next round of teacher layoffs produces even more academic unemployment.
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