Three Tips to prevent Online Educator Burnout
April 29, 2014
In
the online teaching environment, we often place undue stress on
ourselves because we want to do the best job possible for our students
and because we understand that since they may be online and in the
classroom 24/7, we should be logged in ourselves almost all day, every
day, responding to student inquiries within minutes or within just a few
hours. This is a common complaint among online educators. "I never have
time to myself anymore", or "I seem to work all the time", or "Teaching
online is much more time-consuming than I thought it would be" are
comments I have heard many times, and this topic is a frequent topic of
presentations at professional education conferences. One psychologist I
know has even coined the term "Online Educator Burnout", which he
believes is significant enough that it should be considered as a
diagnosable condition by the American Psychiatric Association
.Following are some simple tips that can make life a bit easier for you as an online educator.
1.
First, while you want to be responsive to your students, you should set
their expectations early in the class about when you will be online,
how quickly you will respond to their inquiries and provide feedback on
their assignments, and when you will be available for chats or telephone
calls (your virtual "office hours"). If you don't make these things
clear to your students at the beginning of class, they may well expect
you to be online all the time, whenever they are, and expect
instantaneous feedback on their questions or work. This can lead to
frustration and poor student critiques of your course. Remember: you are
in charge, not them!
2.
Second, try to be disciplined and stay organized. Set your own schedule
to login at specific times, accomplish specific things, and avoid
falling behind. Nothing is more stressful to me than having a ton of
grading to do on a Sunday evening, when I could have gotten some of it
done on Saturday or perhaps even Friday, but I got distracted doing
something else instead.
3.
Third, consider how you might use students themselves to help you get
work done in class. Assign students to be discussion forum leaders each
week, for example, and have them summarize the postings of other
students. That can take some of the burden off you. You might want to
create assignments that involve group work and group projects, so that
you have to grade fewer individual assignments.
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