Working Conditions for Online Professors – A Survey Study

With the growth in online adjunct instruction, there is a shortage of information regarding current working conditions of online faculty applicants and how these working conditions are perceived. The authors distributed a survey via SurveyMonkey which consisted of 58 fixed-response and open-ended questions. The question categories included demographics (e.g., age; education; region of country, primary source of income, 2014 total income further subdivided into teaching, course development and mentoring), schools worked for (e.g., full-time vs. part-time; online vs. brick and mortar; profit vs. non-profit); insurance and benefits status, attitudes towards non-compete agreements; and intent to secure more teaching opportunities. A total of 173 subjects responded to the survey. Survey response data were exported from SurveyMonkey and formatted as a data file in IBM SPSS 21 for data analysis. We generated contingency tables and analyzed them descriptively to uncover patterns and trends in working conditions and associated demographics of online faculty. Preliminary findings include patterns of perceptions regarding non-compete agreements and wait times regarding initial course assignment. Given the increasingly competitive market for online faculty positions, the results will be useful both to employers in designing instructional offerings and to online faculty job-seekers in knowing what to expect with regard to working conditions for their online course teaching assignment.