Practical Implications for Balancing Workload

 

 

Why do instructors need to be concerned with workload when teaching online? How can instructional designers assist instructors who teach online? What can administrators in institutions of higher education do to support instructors who teach online? These are key questions that concern leaders in the field of online education and point to implications for future directions.

 

The workload can substantially impact instructors’ work and quality of life. Online quality education depends on how the course is designed and delivered; however, it is impossible to function and succeed in online teaching without infrastructure and support. When instructors identify strategies for managing workload ahead of time, they can better plan courses during the preparation stages of their online courses and during course delivery. Also, depending on the course discipline, enrollment, and other academic workload, instructors can allot time before the beginning of the course and be more efficient during the delivery of their courses.

 

Instructors need more than identifying workload strategies to succeed in online teaching. Institutional support can be the foundation for instructors to embark on online instruction. Institutional leadership and management can make it happen through incentives, rewards, and infrastructure support.

 

Learning designers can be supportive in assisting instructors to succeed online. By understanding strategies that best work for them, learning designers can help instructors organize, prioritize, and anticipate the various aspects of the course design process.

Administrators play a critical role in establishing, maintaining, and sustaining online offerings in higher education institutions. They are the ones who are responsible for administrative services, infrastructure support, and can provide instructor incentives and rewards. By understanding instructors’ workload for online offerings, they can make better policy decisions and identify sound procedures for different disciplines and course enrollment.

 

Our book, Managing Online Instructor Workload: Strategies for Finding Balance and Success, can have practical implications for online instructors, learning designers, and administrators. In addition, this book can help policymakers interested in modifying the fields of distance education, learning design, and educational technology to develop guiding principles related to teaching improvement. Our book can influence leaders in higher education to make pragmatic changes in online teaching and adequately address market demands.

 

Reference

 

Conceição, S. C. O, Lehman, R. M. (2011). Managing Online Instructor Workload: Strategies for Finding Balance and Success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Widening Perspectives Invite Openness: Strategies for Prioritizing Time and Managing Workload

 

Image credit: Pexels/Antoni Shkraba

In this article, we provide four strategies for rethinking how to prioritize time and manage workload: (1) look at online teaching from an open perspective, (2) adapt course design, (3) modify workload strategies, and (4) rethink how to prioritize and manage workload.

 

Teaching From an Open Perspective

 

Instructors who are open to new perspectives and have ventured into online teaching have discovered differences between face-to-face and online teaching regarding workload. These differences can be looked at in terms of space (tangible versus elusive), time (clear sense versus flexible concept), boundaries (specific location versus no geographical limits), use of the senses (can see and hear learners and touch objects versus the need to adapt senses and create closeness), level of planning (spontaneously add and adapt teaching versus pre-planning), and mental and emotional efforts (predictable time to focus mind and emotion versus perception of always being connected).

 

There are many approaches instructors must use to embark on the online venture such as openness to these differences, organization, discipline, ability to distinguish between work and personal life, and flexibility.

 

Adapting the Course Design

 

It is commonly perceived that instructors can take their face-to-face course and move it to the online environment. However, this is a misperception. Adapting a course requires understanding the online teaching and learning environment, planning, and intentional design.

 

For a new online course, the tasks and time spent designing and delivering the course will take longer and be time-consuming. For a course converted from face-to-face to online, you must rethink how you can teach your course in the new environment. For revising existing online courses, you will need to revisit your tasks and time spent to become more efficient when teaching the course again.

 

Course design should be seen as an essential aspect of teaching online. While in a face-to-face course instructors tend to consider teaching from the first to the last day of class, in an online course the course duration spans from design to course delivery. Therefore, to adapt your course to the online environment, you need to envision the “big picture.” We suggest identifying course tasks and using an instructional design framework to systematically design your online course.

 

Modifying Workload Strategies

 

When instructors adapt their courses to the online environment and use a design framework to guide the course development, they become aware of the differences between face-to-face and online courses, tasks to be accomplished in the new environment, and the period for online courses, they realize that they have to modify their workload strategies.

 

Our book, Managing Online Instructor Workload: Strategies for Finding Balance and Success, describes four strategies for managing workload: design, support, teaching, and time allocation. These strategies are influenced by various institutional factors, including the type of institution, policies and procedures that guide the institutional practices, number of courses taught, enrollment, level of instruction, position ranking of the instructor, and infrastructure support. Depending on how these factors are combined, instructor workload is affected.

 

Rethinking How to Prioritize Time and Manage Workload

 

Teaching online can be time-consuming. It involves a combination of institutional factors and requires different instructional preparation. It can increase instructors' workload if they don’t know what designing and delivering online instruction entails. Instructors who have not used a systematic approach to adapting their materials for the online environment tend to use workload strategies that they are familiar with but that may not necessarily be effective or efficient in their work and personal life. To find balance and success in online teaching, instructors must widen their perspectives, rethink their teaching practices, and be open to new ideas.

 

Rethinking means considering and reconsidering your current teaching practices in a new light. When going through this mental process, the tendency is to reinforce old assumptions and ways of doing things. What needs to happen is a change in mindset – abandoning old assumptions about teaching and discovering and accepting new ones. We suggest a four-step rethinking process.

 

The process of rethinking starts with looking at your current teaching practices by identifying your course tasks (design, administrative, facilitative, and evaluative). Then, use an instructional design framework as a systematic approach to guide you in developing a new course or revisiting an existing one. The next step is determining what tasks you are accomplishing when designing and delivering the course and estimating how much time you might spend on the course.

 

Once you can review your process and identify strategies that best fit your situation, consider alternatives, then decide on the workload strategies that will balance your work and personal life. This process of rethinking your teaching practices is a dynamic one. Your work and personal life situation are in constant motion. You need to revisit the process regularly to find balance and success but remember that you are the person who knows what works best for you. Check the table below to see which chapters on our book provide the action steps.

 

Rethinking Process for Prioritizing Time and Managing Workload

Action Steps	Chapter(s) in Book
1. Look at current teaching practices by identifying course tasks	Chapter 3
2. Use an instructional design framework to guide the design of a new course or revisit an existing one	Chapters 3 and 4
3. Determine the tasks for course design and delivery and time estimation	Chapter 3 and 4
4. Consider alternatives and decide on strategies that provide balance between work and personal life	Chapter 5

 

Reference

 

Conceição, S. C. O, Lehman, R. M. (2011). Managing Online Instructor Workload: Strategies for Finding Balance and Success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Sandy Manages Workload When Current Information Drives Content

Sandy is an academic staff for an international organization within a four-year higher education institution. Her primary position within this organization involves administrative work; however, she is responsible for teaching one four-credit undergraduate online course. Sandy’s online course has an average enrollment of 20 participants and is offered during the regular academic semester from 8 to 16 weeks in duration. The course content focuses on current global issues. This means that her course must be updated each time she teaches it. Sandy uses design, support, teaching, and time allocation strategies to manage her workload.

 

Design	Bases the design of her course on the textbook and the most current new. The textbook provides a framework for identifying global issues, which she then enriches with more current events occurring in the world at the time of the course delivery. Invites speakers on a podcast and links to other podcasts and news events. Uses discussion forums, team projects, and a mandatory orientation. Does advanced planning and organization because of timely content. The first time she designed the online course, she started planning two months ahead. However, once she designed the first online course, she followed a model for the next offerings. Using the model, she was able to reduce her time for course design and have the course ready to be released for the learners two weeks before the beginning of the semester. Advanced organization is essential when coordinating course speakers who are identified based on expertise in current issues. These speakers may participate either synchronously or asynchronously. For synchronous participation of invited guests, Sandy has to schedule time and equipment in advance. For asynchronous speaker participation, she has to pre-record and post the guest lecture in the learning management system before the course begins.
Support	Uses the textbook, guest speakers, podcasts, and web links as external support. The textbook as a dynamic resource tool, a springboard to identify and search for new content information. Incorporates podcasts from the Internet and web links related to global issues. Models her online teaching on other colleagues who have used effective strategies such as understanding learner expectations and creating rubrics to grade assignments.
Teaching	Uses one-way content presentation of global issues in her course. Participates in interactive activities with learners as content expert, observer, and facilitator. Uses a team project as a teaching strategy to bring content together at the end of her online course. Makes the orientation a mandatory activity because she believes that in this way learners will be more comfortable online and feel a sense of community.
Time-Allocation	Teaches one online course at a time along with her administrative responsibilities. Streamlines her time allocation for the design stage of her online course by pre-planning and organizing her course materials, reusing existing resources, and using a dynamic textbook. Spends 15 to 20 hours each week updating the current news for the online course, checking on the discussion forum, and grading learner assignments. Blocks out specific time for grading on Monday morning and periodically checks the discussion board to avoid intense work at one time. Limits the number of discussion board postings per week to reduce her workload. Checks the course on weekends, but this is not accomplished at a regularly scheduled time.

 

Managing the workload when the course content must be kept current can be challenging. Sandy discovered efficient strategies to reduce workload before the beginning of the course. She plans and organizes course materials based on external resources and prioritizes her time. Planning helps Sandy focus on the teaching rather than the design during the course delivery. Using external resources as a support strategy can enhance learner experience, reduce instructor workload during course delivery, and provide flexibility when reusing the resources in future courses. During the online course, prioritizing time and setting boundaries can be a time saver for instructors whose teaching is one piece of their work responsibility.

 

Reference

Conceição, S. C. O, Lehman, R. M. (2011). Managing Online Instructor Workload: Strategies for Finding Balance and Success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Rosalina Teaches a Recurring Mixed-Mode Online Course

 

Image credit: Pexels/Jordan Benton

Rosalina is an academic staff for an outreach institution. Her experience with online education involves co-teaching a grant-funded one-credit graduate-level course in the discipline of education. This online course has an enrollment of 15 participants and is offered for six semesters on a recurring basis for a total of three years. This online course involved considerable preparation in the beginning because it is offered as a mixed-mode approach using synchronous videoconferencing and asynchronous online interactions. Her role in the outreach institution involves instructional design, teaching, training, and instructor support. Teaching counts for 15% of her workload. Rosalina uses design, teaching, and time allocation strategies to manage her time.

 

Design	Puts herself in the role of the learner. Develops the syllabus and course units, gathers electronic resources, creates protocols for videoconferencing, develops videos on DVD, practices videoconferencing before the beginning of the course, and places the course materials in the learning management system. Shares the course design with two other instructional designers. One designer assists with developing content and activities, while the other one incorporates the content and activities into the learning management system.
Teaching	Provides an orientation on videoconferencing and online activities. Uses project-based activities (group and individual) and the discussion forum. Conducts formative evaluation during the online course with the purpose of refining and reshaping the course. Learners work independently and co-instructors serve as content experts, facilitators, and resources during the online course.
Time-Allocation	Co-teaching is a way to manage her workload. Each course instructor is responsible for specific duties related to the online course. Has strict guidelines for the discussion forum including the maximum number of meaningful postings per week, limited number of words per posting, and learner-shared leadership roles. Takes on the role of resource specialist allowing learners to work more independently.

 

Online courses that are offered on a recurring basis can provide time-saving benefits. In Rosalina’s situation, the team knew the mixed-mode online course was going to be taught for the duration of the grant project. Knowing this, the team invested a sizeable amount of time in the design phase of the online course. They also knew that once the course design was completed, there would be less time spent on revisions in future course offerings. The team approach is also a way to balance the workload because each team member can be assigned specific tasks before and during the course. Courses that include synchronous and asynchronous technologies can increase instructor workload. However, with the use of protocols, guidelines, and sufficient practice, workload can be reduced.

 

Reference

 

Conceição, S. C. O, Lehman, R. M. (2011). Managing Online Instructor Workload: Strategies for Finding Balance and Success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Natalie Manages Her Tasks in Chunks When Designing for Multiple Courses

Natalie is an ad hoc instructor at a four-year institution. She also works as a graduate assistant for a public university and a consultant for a private university. These jobs are part-time while she is working on her doctoral studies. She teaches a three-credit undergraduate-level course with an enrollment of 26 participants during a six-week summer semester. Natalie considers herself a multi-tasker because she works in three different positions, carrying out similar tasks, in different capacities. For her, dealing with all these responsibilities, tasks of each position must have its own space. Workload management for her is not just for the course she teaches; it is also for her personal life. Natalie uses design, teaching, and time allocation strategies to manage her workload.

 

Design	Designs her course for each position in its own online space, time, and physical location. Designs the entire course in the LMS in advance because it includes incorporating voiceover, video, authored video resources, and scripts. This requires sophisticated technology, intensive blocks of time, and focused attention. Completes tasks in small chunks.
Teaching	Uses a scavenger hunt activity to orient learners to the online environment, group discussions to engage learners in conversations about the topic, and team projects in which learners share their work. Uses essays as an assessment tool and provides individual feedback on learner writing. During the semester, she provides quick responses to learners based on her expectations.
Time-Allocation	Accomplishes her work from task to task. Schedules specific time for her online course work. Completes her most important tasks, like grading, when she is most alert such as late mornings or early evenings. Provides feedback in the beginning of the week (on Monday evenings) for about three hours. Creates a schedule for her learners for when to post responses to the discussion. Spends an average of 10 hours a week on the online course. Checks her online course at least once in the morning and twice in the evening. Has virtual office hours for learners to meet with her for questions or concerns about the online course.

             

For online instructors, who work in different positions doing similar tasks, like Natalie does, managing the workload can be complicated. Because instructors in this situation must distinguish between the various tasks, they need to allocate specific online space, time, and physical location to adequately accomplish these tasks. In an era when the Internet is ever-present from job to job and during our personal life schedule, setting boundaries and holding to them, is the solution.

 

Reference

Conceição, S. C. O, Lehman, R. M. (2011). Managing Online Instructor Workload: Strategies for Finding Balance and Success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Rihanna Considers the Cohort Program a Time Saver

 

Rhianna is a healthcare professor and also holds an administrative position at a four-year research-based institution. She teaches cohort courses at the doctoral level, both online and face-to-face. Her online course is offered every other year to meet the cohort requirement. Enrollment ranges from 15 to 33 participants. As a full professor with an administrative role, Rhianna is also involved in service activities and does a fair amount of traveling. Her online course for the cohort-based program is process-based. She uses design, support, teaching, and time allocation strategies to help balance her workload.

 

Design	Uses a consistent design framework for all courses. Lays out the content, based on modules, and breaks information into topic areas. Develops PowerPoint files with voiceovers. Creates questions for the discussion forums. Identifies appropriate assignments that capture the content. Determines the course pace. Refines the course as she progresses with her teaching. Gives access to the online course material to students prior to the beginning of the semester. Communicates to learners that the entire online course is available ahead of time.
Support	Has support staff to assist in uploading materials (PowerPoint files and voiceovers) to the learning management system. Reuses materials from semester to semester saving her time for other academic responsibilities.
Teaching	With the cohort-based program, student orientation is provided at the beginning of the program when learners get to know each other. Divides learners into groups of five or six participants. Each participant posts comments individually and interacts with others and the instructor in the discussion forum. During the discussions, she avoids answering immediately; rather she reflects on her response and waits to post it until the next day. Uses cooperative strategies in which learners work in groups, but develop individual research questions, participate in discussions to learn from each other, and determine how they will implement their individual study.
Time-Allocation	Allocates a considerable amount of time for her online course during the initial design phase. Blocks out times in her calendar for her work on the course during the semester. Her time commitment becomes lighter as the cohort group begins to take on more responsibilities. When there are more learners enrolled in her online course, there will be more time intensity on her part. Spends 8-10 hours per week checking her course daily, sometimes in the evening, but mostly in the morning. Adjustd her schedule to meet her course participants’ needs.

 

Teaching online in a cohort program is a design approach that can be a time saver. Instructors can follow a standard design established by the program and yet can shape their online courses based on their personality. Cohort learners tend to get to know each other as a learning community from the beginning of the program through a general orientation. This prevents having to create an orientation for each online course and facilitates relationship and trust-building early on. Because learners are part of a cohort, the instructor can better predict learner behavior and anticipate course activities. For online instructors, this means having a better sense of time allocation.

 

Reference

 

Conceição, S. C. O, Lehman, R. M. (2011). Managing Online Instructor Workload: Strategies for Finding Balance and Success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Angelo Teaches Online for a Variety of Institutions

Angelo is an adjunct professor for three online universities, as well as a full-time public school counselor for children with special needs. He teaches content-focused courses in sociology at the undergraduate level. Angelo teaches three online nine-week courses per semester year-round and one face-to-face course outside of his regular full-time job. His course enrollment averages 20 non-traditional learners with a wide age range. To balance his workload, he uses design, support, teaching, and time allocation strategies.

 

Design	Spent 25 hours per week for eight weeks to redesign one face-to-face course for the online environment during training. This redesign served as a guide for subsequent online course design. Keeps track of course redesign in a notebook and reflects on how he can use that in future courses.
Support	Participated in an intensive training program.
Teaching	Teaches similar courses on a regular basis. This can be confusing when the instructor has learners from multiple courses and institutions. To prevent this confusion, he developed an online form to get to know, monitor, and respond to learners during his online courses. Keeps student information in a notebook to easily identify individual learners, respond to them, or comment on their writing. Sets blocks of focused time aside for writing and responding to his learners. Saves responses from learner feedback and reuses those responses for future courses.
Time-Allocation	Preparation time, including his training, was about 250 hours. Time spent on subsequent online courses was cut back significantly to about 25 hours for each course. Spends an average of 15 hours per week per online course, which can be an overload for someone who has another full-time position. His rationale for working on overload is that he plans eventually to give up his full-time job and teach exclusively online.

 

Teaching online for multiple institutions, in addition to holding down a full-time job, can be a challenge for at least three reasons: preparation time, learner monitoring, and allocating time for teaching. Angelo realizes that time spent on online course preparation, though time-consuming, can be a time saver later because once a course design model has been created, he can reset his online courses more efficiently. He also recognizes that it can be difficult to monitor learners from different institutions during a given semester. He resolves this issue by using a form to easily identify his virtual learners and keep track of their progress. By blocking his time during hours when he is most productive, he can work more efficiently.

 

Reference

Conceição, S. C. O, Lehman, R. M. (2011). Managing Online Instructor Workload: Strategies for Finding Balance and Success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

 

Simon Manages His Workload Based on Years of Experience

 

Simon is an associate professor in the field of education at a four-year institution and teaches three graduate-level online courses. He is also the coordinator for his graduate program. His three-credit courses are offered during 16-week and summer semesters. They are all content-based. Each of his courses averages 20 enrolled participants. Simon has taught online for over 10 years and has been able to draw from this extensive experience and apply it to his online courses. In addition to his teaching, Simon’s other responsibilities include administration, research, and service. He uses design, teaching, and time allocation strategies to manage his workload based on his years of experience.

 

Design	Prepares and organizes content and activities prior to the beginning of his online courses. Places himself in the role of the learner to better select course content, activities, and the pace of his courses. Prepares technology-based activities prior to the course, saving valuable time during the course delivery. This gives him more time during the online course to create a sense of personal presence. Following the completion of each online course, he reviews student feedback regarding the course design and uses these ideas and reflections to help him revise subsequent courses.
Teaching	Creates a detailed syllabus which includes regular office hours. Provides rapid response to course participant emails, rather than letting them accumulate. Uses a grading software program on his notebook computer to write electronic comments on learners’ papers rather than typing them. Posts weekly announcements on audio podcasts and video on YouTube. These announcements engage his learners, help his learners stay on task, and give his learners the sense of ongoing instructor presence.
Time-Allocation	Limits his online teaching time allocation to 10 to15 hours a week per online course. Designates specific times for electronic office hours.

The instructors’ experience can be a deciding factor in determining effective workload strategies, as is evident in Simon’s case. For Simon, his own experience and the experience of others served as valuable resources. The major design strategies he uses are planning ahead of time, establishing detailed course materials, and reflecting on and revising course materials. Keep in mind that new instructors can learn as they gain experience, but should be open to the ideas of their peers and also their learners.

 

Reference

 

Conceição, S. C. O, Lehman, R. M. (2011). Managing Online Instructor Workload: Strategies for Finding Balance and Success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Brenda Teaches Online Exclusively From Home

 

Brenda is an assistant professor, teaching for a community college with a focus on instruction. Because of her community college affiliation, she does not have research requirements and has few service commitments. Brenda travels periodically to the community college campus for faculty meetings but teaches online exclusively from home. Her discipline is science, and her course duration varies from eight weeks to a full 15 or 16-week semester. Enrollment averages 20 learners per course. Her courses are primarily content-based. Brenda teaches six online four-credit courses each semester, for a total of 24 credits. In addition, she mentors new online instructors for two to three hours a week. Brenda has had experience teaching online and through this experience has developed specific strategies for design, support, teaching, and time allocation.

 

 

Design	Plans and organizes all courses ahead of time, so that she can focus her teaching effort on monitoring learner participation and responding to their needs.For any new course she develops, she spends about 100 hours. For a course that is already developed, she spends about 20 hours before her online course begins to update and revise her materials. Once the online course has begun, she spends another two hours to revise and update as the course progresses.
Support	When Brenda moved her courses from face-to-face to online teaching, she received in-depth course design assistance from her institution to develop her curriculum units. Receives the institution’s instructional designer support for copyright clearance, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance, and feedback on her courses.
Teaching	Carefully selects textbooks and uses an asynchronous discussion board with prompts, along with lecture concept maps in which she highlights important parts of the assigned textbook readings for the learners. Incorporates quizzes and an extensive webliography of web links for additional resources. Offer two types of labs – a virtual kitchen lab where materials can be gathered at home and a “wet” lab that requires a more traditional lab kit. Learners, through engagement, create a sense of presence with each other while she can serve more as a guide. Students are involved in two large field projects during the semester. Prepares prior to the beginning of the course are quizzes, a mid-term, and a final exam. These are integrated into the online course and she keeps track of them through an online gradebook.
Time-Allocation	Allocates about one and a half hours a day, seven days a week for working on the online courses. Is available 16 hours a day asynchronously to respond to learner questions and needs, and works her time around her family’s schedule (while her children’s nap time is a dedicated time during the day that she can use to focus on her online courses).  Tells her learners know when she will be unavailable. Occasionally uses synchronous technology for feedback, but only when requested.

 

While teaching online exclusively from home can be a benefit, it can also be a deception because it can easily take over your personal life. Brenda discovered early on that she needed to set boundaries to distinguish between her work life and her personal life. Though she is constantly connected to her online courses, she tries to communicate with her learners when she is not accessible. Telling learners that she is unavailable is a way to establish course expectations and have a sense of control over her personal life. In addition, Brenda perceives that her time spent on online teaching can be misleading to skeptical classroom instructors. However, as an online instructor, you do not need to feel a sense of guilt and prove your workload to others. Instead, you need to focus on how to manage your workload to fit your needs and anticipate the needs of your learners. Everything else is irrelevant.

 

 

Reference

 

Conceição, S. C. O, Lehman, R. M. (2011). Managing Online Instructor Workload: Strategies for Finding Balance and Success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.