Dr. Portugal,

Thank you for an engaging study of and paper on hiring, training, and supporting online faculty. In your paper you address important issues in areas ripe for research. I was especially interested in the points you made about the need for online faculty to be adept at managing online learning systems (and the frequent changes and enhancements to them) and managing correspondence effectively. It goes without saying that is is often necessary for adjuncts to handle multiple online learning systems and email accounts, which no doubt contributes to the burnout you are exploring in your study.

I noticed that you quoted a few older sources. One specific example is early in the paper (page 6, I believe) in which you note that some online educators claim that they were forced to teach online or that they lack the knowledge or skills to teach successfully online. I wonder if you might be able to find a more recent source for this?

In any case, your paper was interesting and engaging, and will no doubt be of great interest to many educators and institutions. Good luck!

Stephanie Maher Palenque

I am involved in on line learning that involves the use of mathematical concepts such as statistics, advanced algebra, graphing, development of flow charts for assignments and discussion board for participation. I find most of my student take the courses on line due to the convenience it offers them in their personal schedules. Most of my courses are at the graduate level so most of my students work full time outside of the home.

I find the discussion forums to be the significant learning aspect of the course and the assignments to be application oriented. Since my courses do not use blackboard or any video imaging I make myself available to review assignments before submission when student who are concerned are interested enough to ask for help. One of the complaints I hear from students is many on line professors are not willing to take that step. I find those that fail the course or get low grades are generally the students who do not ask for help. 

Burnout is not an issue. Changing course routines while problematic at times must be done so one works their way through that aspect. What I find more problematic is the lack of a contract to teach x number of courses over x period of time. This results in one looking for other opportunities at other Universities.

On line learning in many aspects as you note is self learning. Students who have the ability to read and digest material as presented in the text do well. Students who need hands on help should involve themselves in ground courses where possible so they can get face to face attention.