Month: February 2012

What makes a good to excellent online instructor? First of all, It may be as simple as having taken online courses and understanding the challenges and accomplishments from the perspective of the learner. One cannot design and teach an online class as effectively, if no online courses have been taken (my opinion only). The challenges of using online technology are often overwhelming when the learner takes their first online class.

Equally important is the ability of the online instructor to know how to use the Learning Management System (LMS) and other supporting technologies. Being able to trouble shot the problems that arise during the teaching of the course(s) is part of this ability. Having the right equipment and being able to spend 2-4 hours online everyday is a definite plus. Knowing the web is a dynamic system and ever-changing is essential. What may be new this year can be outdated by the next year.

Given the nature of online teaching, the instructor must be passionate about teaching online. If one is committed to the pedagogy of online teaching all the better. The teaching role shifts from instructor centered teaching to being a moderator and facilitator online. Knowing the material being taught in a class is not enough, the instructor must motivate the learners to want to learn the material and to go far beyond what is being offered in the class. This simply means, you move your learners toward the concept of self-directed learning. They need to take responsibility for what they are learning and what they want to learn on the subject. Your biggest task is to help them become experts in their field of study and surpass what the instructor or institution has presented to them at the introductory levels and beyond.

Another must have ability for the best online instructors is the desire to have one-on-one interactions with the learners. In order to give relevant feedback (formative assessment) establishing a good repertoire with the learners will aid in their ability to take your critiques seriously and apply the new knowledge they have to accomplish future assignments. Also this contact helps them feel comfortable enough to ask for help and makes their learning less stressful, when they hit roadblocks or when they experience technological problems.

Being able to lead a good discussion and monitor the activity is  critical. The group discussion area takes the place of lecture in online classes. The questions must motivate the student to seek out the answers for themselves. If they cheat when answering the questions, they will seriously erode their opportunities to become self-directed experts. Each question should be designed to illicit a response that is authentic and totally theirs. They must own their own work and take responsibility for it.

In the end, the best instructors keep updating their knowledge and take necessary courses or offerings at their college or university to learn the newest technologies and learning strategies. They will have personal learning environments or contact with other professionals in their field, as well. Being a learner and/or online instructor is a never-ending process of learning and updating information. Having mentors and other staff to learn with is a definite plus, whether they are online or at the college or university.

So how would this learner and potential instructor stack up against these requirements? Much thought has gone into this question over the course of two years, since I first started the training to teach online. I have a lot to learn not only about the subject matter in the field I want to teach in, but in the area of new technologies and online teaching aids. Since teaching online is fairly new, no one can be an expert the first few times they teach a course. Courses and instructors evolve over time. Often the learners become the teachers and the instructors become their students. It is a give and take process of which I believe I am capable of. But, only time and opportunity will tell if I am correct.

Adjunct teaching staff are second tier teaching staff. A new breed of online teaching staff is beginning to comprise this second tier. They are paid  considerably less than tenured instructors and often teach at more than one college, at the same time. Their numbers will continue to grow as the need for online instructors continues further into the 21st Century. Often they will lack the support and training that full-time tenured instructors receive. They may not have an office at the college they are teaching in and must know how to create a virtual office for their online learners.This is not the only new set of skills they must possess. However, it describes one of the many challenges and demands they will face in this new environment.

Maybe the first question you might ask is why do they want to teach under these conditions? My personal opinion is they (we) want to teach online and are passionate about teaching in a virtual environment.  They are driven to accept whatever conditions the college imposes on them to obtain the opportunity to do what they are dedicated to doing, facilitate online learners. One requirement that most probably drives these instructors is, they are passionate about teaching online; but more importantly need the teaching experience in order to fine tune the skill sets they bring to the table. Obviously pay is not the primary concern or driving factor. This new way of teaching and facilitating the learning of others is evolving and the challenges are never-ending as technology continues to grow and change in the online environment.

Having said this, there is a movement toward adjunct faculty unions at American University.  In an article in the Right Wing Blog , Josh Kaib states, “… I can’t imagine what it is like working part-time at the sweatshop that is American University.”  Josh goes on to say, “All of this [voting to unionize] because a few faculty members are stupid enough to think that you can live off of a part-time teaching job.  These union wonks ought to stop complaining and find another line of work.  They get no sympathy from me, even if the administrators at AU comply to their every demand.” Not being a fan of unions, it seems the operational words here are the idea that part-time adjunct faculty are trying to make a living by teaching as adjunct instructors. While joining a union may solve the problem of receiving better pay, it could open even a bigger can of worms, since it may raise the cost of getting an education for many students in the United States. WIth that in mind, maybe there would be no need to hire adjunct instructors. Most probably all it would do is change the pay scale and force colleges to increase costs. The final scenario might be, high cost adjunct instructors would not be rehired and lower paid instructors most probably would get most of the jobs teaching.

This has uncovered the first challenge an online adjunct instructor faces, how to live on the amount of money the colleges offer for filling these teaching positions. I do not think you can, especially if you have just left the university with a vast amount of student loan debt. That was the number one problem I faced when moving to the state of Washington…how to stay afloat financially on what the colleges were paying in the late ’80s and early ’90s. I was unable to accept these types of positions and did not want to teach in a classroom. I was not yet aware of online learning and virtual classrooms. My plan was to wait until I was retirement age, had a small income from social security and medical coverage, which I knew I would not get if I taught in a college at that point in time. Also, I had the false hope that I would be able to complete my doctoral studies. Of course that was before my loans went into default; because I could not make the exorbitantly high payments to the banks, while struggling to keep from being homeless in Washington state.

At this point in time, I do not see how one could pay for classes to finish a doctorate online if one is working part-time as an adjunct instructor. Having taken the time to learn new skills and how one goes about teaching online, I believe it is important to continue one’s education while teaching at a local college or colleges in general. Everyone is beginning to realize (I hope) that teaching online is very different from classroom teaching. The learners will learn more from the internet and each other than the instructor. The instructor’s role is to help them learn by removing any obstacles they find while working in a virtual classroom. Herein lies the second challenge for online adjunct instructors…how to stay current. They must, it seems, establish a personal learning environment and continuing their education is most probably another good way to accomplish this goal. Meanwhile, they need to stay current on the subject matter they are teaching. As technology changes, so do the positions their students will be hired for.

Predicting the future of the job market is another challenge to be faced. As our world keeps moving toward electronic environments, there is the need to improve one’s knowledge and skills in this area, too. Working with the many online programs, e.g., WordPress, websites, elearning portfolios and You Tube video creation, just to mention a few, will take exploration and time to learn. If there is limited training for adjunct faculty, they will need to accomplish these tasks on their own and they must know what will work in their virtual classrooms. In the first course on ” Tools of the Trade,” at Bellevue College, some of the students were complaining about having to learn these unfamiliar applications and how much time it took to do so. For someone never working with these programs the task can be daunting. Nevertheless, this is another challenge online instructors must face and overcome.

Finally, working with department chairs who do not have the training and education to work in an online environments will most probably be a real challenge. Not everyone is familiar with the issues and challenges adjunct faculty face when designing online courses and applying the pedagogy online instruction requires. Having a good set of people skills, being a good team player and working to educate their peers who are tenured faculty could prove to be another interesting challenge. So far in my internship at Bellevue College, I have found my mentor and the department chair anxious to lean the new technology and pedagogy that online instruction requires. They seem to be on top of the issues this new form of teaching creates.  But they may be an exception to the rule. Therefore, it seems new adjunct instructors are in a good position to teach their craft to others in the college. This was one of my stated objectives when I applied for the internship. So far I have learned far more than I could have imagined and I hope those working with me have as well.

The final challenge resides in this video.  If  you can get past the history and music in the first minute or so, reaching the heart of the message it is worth the effort. It is about five minutes long.

It is that time of year again, Valentine’s Day. It is a day to celebrate the beauty of love. Maybe growing old together is a bit of a myth, in a violent society and the union of marriage.  Much is being said for and against the marriage of two people of the same gender.  There is equally as much being said about violence in marriages. Here in the Pacific Northwest we are hearing, everywhere, about the killing of two lovely boys by their father, with the strong possibility that Josh Powell killed their mother as well. So if marriage is the spiritual binding of two human beings in a union of love, one has to wonder how spiritual that marriage is between two people, male and female, when circa every 15 seconds a woman is battered in this country.

The statistics seem to show us that the family unit of one man and one woman is the most violent union in the United States. If two people can find love and enter a legal contract to cherish and care for each other, why are we trying to stop the behavior? We don’t seem as dedicated to stopping the abuse of women by men or the abuse of children.  If Christian people are so concerned about marriage and its’ Christian institution of marriage, why are they allowing women and children to not only be abused but to be homeless if they leave a battering spouse? Seldom are shelters able to meet the needs of these women when it comes to housing.  What I see are a lot of contradictions and self-righteousness, regarding these issues.

My maternal grandfather was married four times. From what I have heard from his children, he was from “the old school” (turn of the century thinking in Austria and Germany) and probably some form of abuse may have happened in his nuclear family. He had several children from his wives and he was remembered as a man with a temper. During the time he lived women did not divorce their spouses and if they did there was a stigma attached to her. Neverthelss,  my family accepts divorce as a solution to an impossible situation, whether the church is against it or not. Why? Because being battered is not love and scars children when they are caught in this web of violence. There is a higher value to uphold than the Christian condemnation of divorce (e.g. the Catholic Church). Love is not about hurting and beating and killing. This is not a marriage, a spiritual union or a family. What it seems to be to me is the antithesis of marriage, spiritual union and family! Incidentally, Grandpa was Catholic and never divorced, although his children did or a least a few of them. My point is this, if you are being abused and your children are being harmed, you must make the decision no matter how painful to leave and to divorce the abuser. Intervention seldom works.

Most women seem to have a difficult time making that decision. Many of them will be homeless and live in poverty if they leave, often for quite a while. They may even be killed in the early phases of this move; because when the spouse or intimate other realizes their mate is leaving, they are mostly likely to try to stop them even it it means killing them. Their children will be exposed to the harsh realities of bitter divorces. Even worse they may see their mother being murdered. The Powell boys were beginning to open up and talk about the things that were buried or suppressed in their minds, possibly due to the threats Josh Powell may have made. By uncovering these memories, Josh may have felt trapped, and like many before him, when his mask of normality was torn off to save face, he killed everyone involved including himself. Incidentally, the social worker must not have had an emotional connection to Josh or she may have been murdered too.

My last thoughts on this Valentines Day and what it signifies is this, no one has a perfect relationship or marriage. When the people involved are healthy and respect each other, their love is not expressed through acts of violence. It would seem to me that same-sex marriage is a way to find happiness in a union that has been vilified by Christians. Maybe Christians need to put as much effort into supporting shelters and finding housing for unions that are not spiritual and healthy, before they can judge the behavior of others in these unions. This is not to say that gay marriages do not end in physical violence.

Author Joanna Bunker Rohrbaugh has written in her article,” Domestic Violence in Same-Gender Relationships,”

It is important to note that the overwhelming majority of gay and lesbian families function well, in a manner similar to that of healthy heterosexual families (Kurdek, 1994; Rohrbaugh, 1992).

She concludes by saying “domestic violence is an abuse of power that can happen in any intimate relationship regardless of gender or sexual orientation (pg, 297). The Christian community may want to look into the reasons any couple uses violence in their intimate relationships and vilify this behavior and not the make-up of the union. That being said, I do find it uncomfortable to watch television sitcoms, (e.g., Modern Family) that feature gay couples with children; but, in the end I realize that we have been given the right to decide who we will form a relationship with. Society has disapproved of divorce, certain sexual acts, skin color and the list goes on. New thinking will always make us a bit nervous and uncomfortable. It comes with the territory. In the end the question to be asked is, why all the violence? Also, what is the connection between bullies and violent acts?

Anyway, moving from Valentine’s Day, and the issues, I am working on the last re-writes of the criminal justice modules. Charlene cleans up their content by proof reading them. Robin cleans up the grammar and spelling Microsoft doesn’t clean up.  Robin is an english instructor or has done this in the past. Everything is progressing nicely. I should be close to finishing the modules and placing them in BbVista, when the Irish holiday, St. Patrick’s Day comes along.

Speaking of St. Patrick’s Day, I think that saint did not drive out the snakes from Ireland after watching  the video on this blog. When I was a child, I was hoping I could capture that intriguing little man (we all learn about in school when we’re young) and covet the pot of gold! Alas, even this fairy tale has changed a bit as the last video shows, due in part to violence. The snakes are still there and the leprechaun’s operate quite differently. The rainbow is gone and the pot of gold seems to come from the reselling of weapons by underworld crime figures in Dublin. I am very happy not to be living in the Emerald Isle. So far not too many of our criminals want to strap bombs to themselves…now on the other hand…I have yet to read about an Irish father chopping up his boys with an axe and blowing himself up with them, by pouring gasoline in the house and igniting it, while they’re in it.

The last video is a sobering video about catching the leprechaun or killing him and capturing the pot of gold, as it truly is today, in Dublin, Ireland. I have included this video because it reveals a bit about the history and nature of violence. After years of political violence and behavior, there appears to be new twists and turn in the uses of violence. Maybe history is the starting point, we as a society, need to ponder when trying to understand violence between individuals.

Dawn sat on the window seat in her bedroom. She had a glass of wine in one hand and a bottle of high-powered pain relievers in the other. As she looked out the window at the grey murky weather, she tried to recall where it all started, inside the pressure cooker. She had a comfortable home, a good husband and was happy with both. She enjoyed her life and had a few good friends to support her when things were either good or bad. Nevertheless she sat in disgrace. Inside she could feel the press building and wished she could just get a good night’s sleep. Her eyes were swollen from crying and her hand shook as she tipped the glass for a swallow of wine.

Dawn had college degrees and had learned in five years, what her colleagues had learned in ten. She hardly ever took a day off and was seldom, if ever, late to work. She handled most of her clients with professionalism and loved her job, even though it was very stressful. Her evaluations were usually graded as above average and/or “meet or exceed expectations.” Still her supervisor treated her like she was incompetent. Her teammates treated her much like her supervisor did. No matter what she said or how kind she treated them, they isolated her. She was never accepted by the clique. All her friends worked in other departments, so at social events for her department, she sat alone.

As she looked out her window, she began to see that standing up for her rights and for the rights of a friend at work were the first wrong steps she had taken. Her friend had filed a sexual harrassment compliant against a male employee. Every day her friend had to walked past the man to get to her desk, because the company refused to discipline the perpetrator. The next wrong move was alienating her lead. The lead that had trained Dawn had brought a friend into the company. But what had she done? She got the woman fired for having hard-core pornography of a racial nature on her computer. Her lead had asked her why she couldn’t take a joke and stated women their age need some comic relief, when she first reported it to the lead. Obviously, she could not; because she had reported the incident to her supervisor and the department chair. Twenty two people had seen the pornography; but she was the only one that had reported it in her customer service department.

A few months after the incident, on Valentine’s Day, every cubicle was decorated with balloons and a small packet of candy…except hers. So much for doing the right thing! Her heart sank as she saw what they had done. When she reported the incident to her supervisor, she was watched silently by her fellow workers. She could see and hear their whispers when she came near their cubicles. But the final incident occurred when a new department chair was hired, a few months later.

She was called into the company’s conference room. Her supervisor was there with the new department chair and the new head of the human resource department. They told her, she obviously was having mental health problems. They felt her marriage was probably part of the problem. Finally, they told her she must seek counseling through their program and sign a document ending her rights to privacy, so they could monitor her progress. She had twenty-four hours to make an appointment or she could be fired. She was lead back to her cubicle and had to grab the few things she could reach and carry, as she was escorted out of the building in front of her peers.

From the parking lot, Dawn called her husband to come pick her up. She told him what had happened. Her car-pool buddy was still at work and she hated having to call him. By this time, she was crying and on the verge of sobbing. Her mind could not grasp what had just happened to her. She had nothing negative in her workplace file and had never given anyone cause to give her a bad report on performance and/or behavior. Dawn rode in silence beside her husband. She was broken and afraid of what they might do next. She was told she could not contact or speak to anyone in the company…ever!

After that incident, Dawn could not get good paying jobs or other customer service jobs without references from her supervisor or key work peers. She went through a series of meaningless temporary jobs. She was far to paranoid to accept full-time work with any of the companies she worked for. Her self-confidence had been seriously eroded. Actually it had been shattered. She felt like temporary work was the only safe environment because she did not have to get involved in the office politics of these workplaces.No matter how hard she tried, she could not bring herself to accept full-time permanent work and finally just stopped trying.

Although it had been some time since she left the company, she had a hard time sleeping at night. She was unable to connect with the people she worked with on her temporary jobs. Her relationship with her husband was still supportive; but Dawn had problems communicating her feelings with him. She would avoid intimacy with her husband and preferred her own company much of the time. Her friends could not understand why she did not call them or do girl things with them. Eventually, they stopped calling her. All of this brought Dawn to the window seat in her bedroom…

Silently crying Dawn took the handful of pills and popped them into her mouth. Washing them down with the wine, she continued to sit on the window seat, until her husband found her lifeless body when he came home from work. He held her in his arms and gently rocked her, as he dialed 911. He could not understand why all of this had happened without anyone coming to her aid. He could hear the sirens coming in the distance.

Dawn had been the victim of workplace bullying. It had begun five years earlier. The subtle problems continued to build until the day Dawn decided to stop the pain. If you are asking why she did not call an attorney and fight the action against her, it was most probably because no attorney would handle the case. In the week before she had made her decision, she had tried to hire one for the third time. Her first attempts were made in the first month following the decision she made to quit her job rather than sign the waiver. No one wanted to touch the case and told Dawn to just let it go. It would have been a long fight and Dawn was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and was not psychologically ready for a long protracted fight in court. Dawn’s case is an example of the cost of workplace bullying and retaliation. There are more potential Dawns in the workforce, world-wide.