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

 

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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.