In the past several years, I’ve noticed that our university has been bringing more and more instructors on board from out-of-state. They request instructional design support for the few times that these individuals come to campus to collaborate with colleagues. They also tend to request support from a distance—by phone and email and web conferencing, in order to make sure that their course materials are developed in an effective way.

There is also something about human connections over distances. People who graduate from particular programs have connections to their retired professors and want to bring some of that excellent teaching and learning to their students. They have maintained professional relationships and may be collaborating on publishing projects. Or a graduate student works in the professional realm and has plenty of professional experiences and ties and is recruited in to teach. There are many channels to tap that talent over distances. For administrators, they may have plumbed the local talent pool and found that those with graduate degrees and teaching experiences were few, and so they reach out well beyond the typical borders.

Online teaching and learning enable fairly easeful integration of professors from various locations to the teaching of courses. After all, most already have the skill set and the base knowledge, and they also have the experiences working with students from all over the world.

For many professors, they cobble together teaching assignments in order to have a fulfilling work life.

Quick Pass-Throughs in Town

It helps immensely when administrators set up meetings with the professors when they visit. It helps to put a face to the name, even if the meetings are often fleeting. One offers some demos of the technologies and some digital handouts to reinforce the learning about the technology. It helps, too, to point the faculty to various library and other resources for both themselves and their online learners.

A challenge after the initial meet-and-greet is the continuing contact sometimes needed to create strong connections and fine built work.

For many distance instructors, they inherit curriculum created by colleagues in the program, and so they don’t build totally from scratch. This makes their workloads somewhat easier to bear given their other professional lives. For many, their reputations and names are major selling points for learners, and that prestige counts for a lot.

Consulting from a Distance

Generally, the consultations here are pretty basic. One works through shared virtual spaces to support their web conferencing or their recording of lecture captures from their desktops. They will ask for consultations for the purchase of technologies.

Making requests from a distance, online faculty seem to ask for much less in terms of development work. There seems to be fewer requests for more heavy-duty investments of time. There have been no requests for pursuing grant funds. I think the psychological distance of teaching from a distance may be a kind of inhibitor for them to keep them from asking for more supports.