Staffing Online Courses: Best Practices

With the proliferation of online courses and/or degrees, mistrust and misunderstanding can arise in faculty communities around the issues how academic units hire, integrate into the faculty community, and evaluate the individuals who teach an institutions online courses. At Penn State University, some online courses are taught by residential, full time Penn State faculty, while others are taught by instructors who are hired to teach only in the online environment. When the latter occurs, there have been several areas for concern raised by members of the faculty community. For example, they want to know more about the process that the lead faculty member or department chair follow when it comes to hiring non-Penn State instructors to teach in online courses and/or programs. Furthermore, when online instructors are hired from outside Penn State, they are concerned about the steps, if any, that are taken to acclimate the new instructor to the institutional environment and to evaluate the quality of their teaching? These are questions that we sought to answer with a 2009 research study that combined a quantitative survey of lead faculty and department chairs who work with online courses and programs at Penn State, coupled with qualitative field interviews of a selected subset of this population who have the responsibility for managing the online teaching and learning environment within their programs. An analysis of the survey and interview data revealed an informative collection of best practices that were shared with University faculty at a meeting of the University Faculty Senate in April 2010. In this presentation, we will share our findings with ALN participants and will encourage participants to share their own best practices, as well. We will also engage in a discussion of further efforts that need to be taken to increase the recognition by institutions that our faculty is becoming more diversified so that hiring practices, professional development resources and experiences, and evaluation efforts can be adapted to that diversity. About the presenters: Ann Taylor is the assistant director of the Dutton e-Education Institute at The Pennsylvania State University. She has been an instructional designer in the field of distance education since 1991. Taylor works with faculty members and Institute staff to design, create, maintain, and evaluate online certificate and degree programs. Barbara Sims is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice in the Penn State Harrisburg's School of Public Affairs. She also serves as Chair of the Criminal Justice Program at Penn State Harrisburg. In 2006, Dr. Sims was awarded the Penn State Harrisburg's Teaching Award and in 2007 was awarded The Pennsylvania State University's Outreach Award.