New Data About Online Adjunct Faculty Released

This week, Learning House and WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET) are releasing the “Recruiting, Orienting, and Supporting Online Adjunct Faculty: A Survey of Practices” report, which shares the results of a survey of approximately 200 deans, directors and provosts at two- and four-year higher education institutions about the hiring, expectations, policies and support of adjunct and part-time faculty members for online courses. I want to thank Russ Poulin and the entire WCET team for their collaboration on this effort, and for inviting us to speak at their annual conference.

One of the things I am so proud of at Learning House (and there’s a lot I’m proud of!) is our primary research reports. Of course, we have our annual Online College Students report, but we also do singular reports about various areas of interest in online higher education. This report is just our latest effort, and is an attempt to understand who is teaching online.

The Impetus Behind the Report

According to a report from the Coalition on the Academic Workforce, roughly half of all instructors in higher education in 2012 were adjuncts or part-time faculty members. As online learning continues to expand, adjunct faculty are an increasingly important part of the online education puzzle. Institutions rely on these faculty members to develop and grow their online programs, but little information specifically about adjunct faculty who teach primarily online is available. We decided the time had come to fill that gap.

Key Findings

While not a comprehensive summary, here are a few of the findings I think are most intriguing from the survey.

• Policies are vague, or non-existent. Despite the growing importance of online education, and the reliance on adjunct faculty to teach these courses, most policies do not delineate between online and on-ground courses for faculty members. That’s when policies even exist. Surprisingly few have written policies in place for how often faculty members are expected to interact with students (74%), nor do they have written policies for when they must respond to student inquiries (42%), or have policies on how often they are to hold office hours (76%).
• Despite the lack of institutional policies, or perhaps because of, adjunct faculty have independence and flexibility. Online adjunct faculty are often given responsibility for course design (31%), and there is a large percentage of customization permitted in the courses they are instructing (21% allow total customization).
• And yet, there is inconsistency in how institutions approach the issue of customization. Two schools of thought exist around the development of online education: the “master course” philosophy, in which the institution develops the course, and the “customization” philosophy, in which faculty members develop the course.
• Recruiting is the same for online and on-ground adjunct faculty. Much like the policies around office hours, response times and metrics for success, recruiting policies also do not distinguish between online and on-ground adjunct faculty. It appears that administratively, online adjunct faculty are treated the same as on-ground faculty, with differences appearing in how much autonomy online adjunct faculty are permitted in the development of courses.

So, What Do the Findings Mean?

According to our survey, in the past year, the use of online adjunct faculty has grown at institutions by 56%. Online adjunct faculty now make up more than half of all online faculty, and that number is expected to grow. But also according to our report, few policies specific to online adjunct faculty exist. Instead, colleges and universities are simply using their on-ground policies for online.

I’ve been working in online higher education for more than a decade, so this story is not new to me. When I first started in online higher education, the classic way for colleges to “go online” was to take their on-ground courses and simply put them in an LMS, then teach the course in exactly the same way they would on-ground. This, of course, led to poorer quality courses and dissatisfied students. Those universities that embraced the new medium and developed courses designed to exploit the capabilities inherent online were the institutions that succeeded.

I see a similar trend here. Teaching online is not the same as teaching on-ground; in many ways, I would argue, it is more difficult. Courses are typically faster (eight weeks instead of 12 to 16) and they require more deliberate and thoughtful engagement. In addition, students’ expectations of accessibility are higher — students are used to immediate online responses, whether via chat, email or discussion boards. So if online teaching is not the same as on-ground, why would we think policies designed for one modality can successfully be applied to another?

Of course, one of the challenges is understanding what policies work best for online adjunct faculty. I don’t pretend to have all the answers here, but I do think that there are a few considerations that should be incorporated when developing these policies:

• How much autonomy do online adjunct faculty have?
• What are expectations around communication and availability?
• How will outcomes be measured, for both students and faculty?
• How will student satisfaction be measured, if at all?
• How much turnover is manageable among online adjunct faculty?
• How much distinction is there between teaching online and on-ground at the institution? Are faculty members expected to do both, or are they expected to specialize?

As with everything else, careful planning and thoughtful consideration about what success looks like will help colleges and universities develop effective policies that maintain their standards of academic quality and faculty engagement.

I encourage you to download the full report, and register for our webinar on December 3 at 2 p.m. EST.

How do you think the role of online adjunct faculty is changing? What policies do you think are necessary?