How to Keep Growing and Learning When Teaching Online

The transition from teaching predominantly in the classroom to teaching almost exclusively at home comes with a lot of adjustment, and if you’re not careful, it can become a slippery slope to barely teaching at all and/or losing a good chunk of your income.

Here are 5 easy things I’ve done during the past four years to stay in the game, stay educated, and keep growing as an online instructor- even without the structure of a strict face-to-face class schedule or campus to go to regularly.

• Teach one face-to-face class a semester (or at least one a year). I don’t like to overdo it in the classroom because it can become physically and mentally exhausting, but I find that if I teach one evening class each week during most semesters, I enjoy it as much as I did when I was a new teacher and I bring my best self to the classroom.
• Keep learning through faculty development classes. Lately I feel like the years have been slipping by so fast, which means that it feels like each school I work at is constantly changing textbooks, learning management systems, and procedures for how they’d like things done (in reality it’s every 2 or 3 years, but for some reason it feels so much more frequent). I find that if I enroll in 2 or so faculty development classes a year (either online or face-to-face, and these can be through any school you work at), I learn way more than I expected about new programs to use with students (like Flipgrid and EDPuzzle), and new features that Canvas might be offering that year, and it generally helps me be better at my job, stay current with trends in higher education, and to feel more invested.
• Read articles about teaching online. Facultyfocus.com is a great site for staying connected and informed when working online from home, or you can even just do a Google search or YouTube search for a topic you want to learn more about, that way you keep making appropriate changes to your teaching style and online courses.
• Stay connected with colleagues you can chat with over quarterly lunches. Over the years my little lunch crew has gone through quite a few changes, but it’s always stayed at about 4 or 5 people, and we all work at different schools these days (as full-time, part-time, face-to-face, hybrid, and online instructors), which generates quality conversation and incredibly helpful insights. Not to mention, we’re constantly helping each other get new teacher positions (full-time and part-time) due to our wide range of experience and connections.
• Keep applying for new jobs at new schools (at least one or two each year). A few years back, when I was working for 5 schools online, I thought I was done. I wondered what it would feel like to take a break from applying for new online adjunct positions for the rest of my life. I very quickly realized (and had a discussion about this with online instructor friends) that that’s not really how this world of ‘teaching online part-time for full-time pay’ works. After having my first baby, I took a year off from applying for new positions and quickly found that I needed to put myself out there at least once or twice a year to keep my pay from plummeting, and to keep my tough but reasonable course-load from dwindling. You win some and you lose some when you work as an online adjunct, and within 2 years my course-load was cut in half by 2 of the schools I worked at (due to low enrollment and new full-time faculty interest in teaching online, both things I should have anticipated), another very small school I’d been at for 7 years didn’t need me anymore (due to a change in campus location, leadership, and low enrollment), and two very promising positions that I had applied and interviewed for didn’t pan out (I still have one great job in the works, though, and that should bring me back up to where I need to be- in terms of pay and number of hours I’d like to work each week).

So there it is. If you’ve been teaching online for a while or have just started, keep these 5 key things in mind and you’ll not only maintain a stable income and stay informed, but you’ll probably also just enjoy your job more. Many people might read this and think it sounds awful to be in my position, but honestly, it keeps things different, interesting, and keeps me from getting bored. I enjoy having to get a little uncomfortable once in a while to appreciate the job I’ve created here.

Happy teaching and learning!