According to a recent survey initiated by the UALE Online Learning Working Group, both tenured and adjunct faculty in colleges and universities express dissatisfaction with routinization and loss of control of their work when their courses are delivered online. Poor pay is also an issue for the adjunct faculty who usually teach these courses.

This survey, prompted by concern that in all the excitement about the expansion of higher education into online delivery, no one was talking about the working conditions of online faculty, was a project of the OLWG and COCAL, the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor. Sent out by SurveyMonkey during October and November 2012, it drew 132 responses from 36 states and 107 different institutions, ranging from Research I universities to community colleges, private non-profits and for-profits. 

Interestingly, union-based online educators do not seem to share these concerns. Another survey of teaching in a union-based environment is planned.

Pay for online faculty working as adjuncts ranges from $4,500 down to $2,000 or even less than $1,000. The worst-paid are at the for-profits and small private non-profits. The best-paid adjuncts are at state universities where there is a union.  Courses tend to be "written" by full-time faculty as part of load but then taught, or facilitated by adjuncts. An adjunct teaching 4, 5 or 6 courses (often "compressed" 5 to 7-week semesters) may make $14 an hour and have no expectation of continuity of employment, benefits or technology support.  However, both adjuncts and full-time faculty reported spending about 2 hours per day or 14 hours per week on a class. 

Faculty across the board is concerned about "loss of control of the work," as the curriculum becomes routinized when transformed for online delivery.  Full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty who are accustomed to having control over the day-to-day shaping and design of their courses and responding promptly to needs of students are wary about letting their courses become routinized. Adjuncts, especially those who teach deeply routinized classes, express frustration at the limits placed on their ability to practice their profession by both the design of the courses they are responsible for and their lack of access to the resources of their institution. 

When this report was presented to the Online Learning Working Group, the union-based educators said that neither this description of working conditions nor the concern about control of the work was typical of their experience. Another survey of teaching in a union-based environment is planned. 

It appears that for-credit academic online and union-based online education share three aspects in common but differ on three others. They share content, best practices and technology, but they different in purpose, culture and working conditions. Clarifying this comparison will help for-credit academic faculty and union-based labor educators understand each other's work.

For the full report of the academic online survey results, see "Working Conditions of Online Teaching", by Helena Worthen, on the Papers and Presentations page