Post 48: How many days do online faculty have to work?

Post 48: How many days per week do online faculty have to work?

"Faculty often ask how often friends and for how long should I be on my course site each week? Although there are no hard and fast rules, the best practice is the time is to start being present every weekday and one of the weekend days Being there every day is most important In the first week or two of the course. In those first days in particular, learners tend to panic if no one answers the questions in what to them is a timely manner. Be sure to let your students know when you can be reached in real time if needed. Convey the message that you were interested in how they're doing with their assignments, meetings, and general progress. Your presence, as conveyed by messages and responses to postings and questions, encourages conversation among the students to think aloud so they can process information and link ideas and concepts. For faculty accustomed to teaching a face-to-face class and meeting students 12 or three days a week for a fix time, the demands of teaching online course can be shocking. Students often expect faculty to be available all the time. This is why setting policies and expectations for feedback and presence is essential to student satisfaction. This is also why you should tell students when you're going to be available and when you have office hours. "(Conrad, 139)

When I was teaching online, I would teach six days a week and take one day off ,but they were many weeks where I worked seven days out of seven days just to keep up with the work. It was very common for me to work over what my contract said. My contract said that I only had to work six days out of the week but I often worked seven days out of the week in order to grade faster , answer email, and get to students forums faster because I cared more about the students then I did protocol for the contract. So, if you're thinking of going into online teaching,you have to be prepared to commit yourself to working on weekends, working at night, and working six out of seven days of the week. Some online schools allow you to have a weekend, but not all online schools allow you to do that. Some online schools require you  to have synchronous meetings with your students while others only have asynchronous meetings with students, so it all depends on the school. I remember there was this one school that required that I have a synchronous meeting late at night with students in order to accommodate students who work late at night. Basically, when you teach online, the goal is to work to accommodate the student's schedule. So, you work Monday through Friday for the students who like to do class work during the week, and you work Saturday and Sunday for the students would like to class work on weekends. This is why if you go into the online teaching, you have to be ready to be on call all the time just like a policeman, firemen or an emergency doctor.

So since online teaching is so time-consuming, then you should tell students when you are available and when you are not available so that you can have a work life/ balance and so you can have some time off with your family. I once had a boss who told me not to call her after 5 PM because that was her family time. So if your school is asynchronous then you can tell your students that you're only available from 9 to 5 and not to call you after 5 PM your time zone. So it all depends on your school and if they require you to have synchronous meeting at certain times of the day or certain schools require you to have  one synchronous meetings in Week 1, Week 4 and Week 8 just like a blended class requires faculty and students to meet in an actual classroom once in a while.

To me,  one of the upsides of online teaching is that I didn't have to commute to work. I didn't have to dress up for work, and I could dress casual every day. In other words, every day was casual Friday. I saved a lot of money on not having to buy business clothes and not having to buy gas for the car. So if you like a job where you can work from home and not have to commute and save money on gas then, online teaching is for you.