How to Teach Online College Courses

Hours upon hours in the classroom can leave college instructors, particularly adjuncts, feeling exhausted from long commutes and standing on one’s feet all day.

Teaching a few online classes is a great way to save yourself some gas money, time, and energy, which in turn will give you more time to teach other classes or enjoy some free time.

The benefit with online teaching is that you’ll get the same pay teaching online as you would teaching face-to-face courses, and it’s pretty satisfying to learn new methods of teaching. I’ve found that variety in the workplace can be very fulfilling.

Depending on the school you work for, you’ll communicate with your online classes using one of a variety of learning management systems (LMS). I’ve used Blackboard, Sakai, Canvas, and Moodle (I’m sure there are more, but those are the few I’m familiar with).

With the help of whichever LMS your particular college uses, your class becomes entirely paperless and your quizzes and exams are automatically graded and stored in the grade book.

It’s just as efficient as it sounds.

Not only that, but you can borrow online lecture slides and quiz/exam questions directly from the textbook publisher’s website to import into your course for student use.

I’m not as tech-savvy as I wish I was, but fortunately when I was certified to teach online, I was also directed to what I consider the ‘faculty technology center’ where the employees go above and beyond to help faculty members develop their online content for sometimes up to 2 hours, as often as you need (to find the helpful tech gurus at your school, your best bet is to talk with any online instructors you might know).

The front-end work is by far the most time-consuming and difficult part, but after all is said and done, when you do the math, teaching online adds up to more free time and a bigger bank account.

(The best way to find out about online teaching opportunities is to ask your colleagues, look on the school’s website, or ask the Dean or secretary of your department. You may be surprised at what you find; each school I work at has online or mixed-mode teaching opportunities that I’ve taken advantage of and told others about.)

If you’d like to learn more teaching tricks, check in with new posts weekly at happyprofessor.com or take a look at my book, Happy Professor on Amazon.com (if you can find a free copy, even better).