Research Article Critique: The Professional Adjunct The Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration

Mr. Rose presents many descriptive vignettes of teaching professionals in his life who have influenced him both positively and negatively and whom he has retained for emulation or distinction. These characters in his life include teachers from grammar school throughout his college experience. All have in one way or another left a considerable imprint on his recollection of school and learning.

Adam Savage once said “I think one of the defining moments of adulthood is the realization that nobody 's going to take care of you. That you have to do the heavy lifting while you 're here. And when you don 't, well, you suffer the consequences.” Now, what if we replaced “adulthood” with the term “higher education”, or more specifically, “distance education”? The words become almost synonymous when you define what it takes to succeed in either field. In the article, College Distance Education Courses: Evaluating Benefits and Costs from Institutional, Faculty and Students’ Perspectives written by Simon A. Lei and Rajeev K. Gupta, distance education is defined as “technology-based instruction in which students are at a location physically separated from their instructor during the entire course of study” (Lei and Gupta 616). In Lei and Gupta’s article, there are many drawbacks of distance education defined, but distance education remains an amazing opportunity because the benefits and the platform to develop useful life skills far outweigh said drawbacks.

Many advocates of distance education are ardent about their venue and very critical of traditional education. These online education devotees view traditional classes as being unchangeable, inflexible, teacher-centered, and static (Angiello, 2010). However, proponents argue that many simply would not be able to get a degree without distance education—the full-time police officer, the mother of four, or the individual living in a rural area approximately 100-200 miles away from any educational institution. Many individuals desperately need distance education courses because they "have jobs, families, civic responsibilities. They are thirsting. But some want us to say, 'Sorry you don’t want to drink the water there, but we can’t bottle our fresh spring water, so you’ll have to come here or drink nothing" (Baker, 1986). Proponents contend that distance education is "as good as" traditional education. In other words, learning occurs as much in distance education as it does in traditional education. However, is this really so? Does distance education work better for some students

A study was conducted on the campus of a major university, in which there were approximately nine hundred participants who were full-time faculty members. Questionnaires were hand-delivered to the head secretary of each department on campus, with the request to put one in the mailbox of each full-time faculty member. A total of 263 faculty members responded to the survey. The demographic breakdown for the sample was compared with that reported for the university (Ghorpade & Lackritz, 2011).

February 25, 2015 was the national adjunct walkout day. Like the previous year, adjunct faculties performed a rally around their administration, a shout out for their rights for a couple of hours and returned to their homes. Adjunct faculty members are, in fact, the professors, instructors, and other employees who work part-time and are non-tenured in the universities and colleges. Although the national adjunct walkout day educates about the problem that adjunct faculties are facing and it is negatively affecting education in schools, it is not causing the educational system to increase their pay nor is it giving them rights to be treated equitably to tenured faculty.

2b. The title of the book is The Distance Education Evolution: Issues and Case Studies.

From this interview, Dr. Whetstone stated that the Online Learning Department’s infrastructure at Winthrop had been recently strengthened to include two additional staff members, one Instructional Designer and one intern. Both of these staff members work with faculty to design online and hybrid courses and make recommendations for adding interactive elements to traditional courses.

American colleges and universities employ an impressive number of people in a wide-range of occupations. While universities have a number of goals and interests, the general assumption among most individuals is that universities have the sole purpose of teaching students and preparing them for success in the world. Given this line of thinking, one would be led to believe that professors and other academic instructors hold the majority of positions within an institution, but this would be incorrect. While the faculty do serve a critical function, their service to the students would not be possible without the various support services that exist throughout a college campus. To ensure these services are set up and provide the resources necessary to ensure the university is successful in its mission, colleges require a large number of employees, all working under unique job titles and classifications, to take on the responsibilities that come with working in an industry that generated more than $124 billion in 2001 alone (Lowenstein, 2001).

The University of Florida’s (UoF) realization that brick and mortar schools no longer serve as the only means to attaining a higher education established an institutional paradigm shift (Kuhn, 2012) on education delivery. The university’s evolution of an online education developed alongside the growth of technology (Blocher, DeMontes, Willis, & Tucker, 2002) and the needs of the community (University of Florida, Distance Learning, 2016). For the UoF, online programs began transforming as early as 1947 when challenged to adapt during world events such as the need to deliver GED home study courses to nearly 6,000 immigrants (University of Florida, History, 2016). In years that followed, an increasingly competitive environment (Volery & Lord, 2000) led to the video taping of lectures in 1991 and to the online courses and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) that initiated in 2013. In its early development MOOCs were housed under the Coursera website since it provided an opportunity to test online courses (Coursera.com, 2016; College Factual, 2016). Today, the UoF houses both MOOCs and online programs within the Division of Continuing Education (DCE), which the university established in 2009 and dedicated full-time faculty to it due to the steady growth of online education (University of Florida, Distance and Continuing Education, 2016).

For example, student enrollment increases postsecondary institutions will hire several part-time faculty to accommodate increased enrolment. Research surrounding motivating factors that attract educators to seek online teaching positions provides important information for administrators to better hire and maintain quality faculty (Nordin & Anthony, 2014). This information allows for the building of a quality pool of adjunct faculty who bring their first-hand knowledge acquired from their full-time professions and real world experience. The increased popularity of distance learning has helped more people earn an education, and increase their standing in the workplace. Many have a desire to teach, but there are a limited amount of full-time positions available, as a result many are open to the idea of working part-time hoping to eventually gain full-time employment. This also contributes to the increased use of online adjunct faculty (Nordin & Anthony,

The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study is to identify the barriers that online adjunct faculty members perceive disconnect them from the main campus and that limit their professional growth opportunities. The focus of the literature review is to present information from scholarly journals on how institutions of higher learning face barriers that cause online adjunct faculty to feel disconnected from the main campus and limited professional growth opportunities that may hurt the quality of the online learning environment and an institution’s reputation. Removing barriers are important for the quality of the learning environment since online adjunct faculty members are the fastest growing population in the field of academia and will

Distance learning (education) has become an integral part of the education process over the past few decades and is growing in popularity as technology advances.(Willis 1992) describes distance education (as) "the organizational framework andprocess of providing instruction at a distance. Distance education takes place when ateacher and student(s) are physically separated, and technology…(is) used to bridge theinstruction gap." (Coutts 1996). Furthermore, "distance learning activities are designedto fit the specific context for learning, the nature of the subject matter; intended learningoutcomes, needs and goals of the learner, the learner's environment and the instructional echnologies and methods." (American

Non-traditional students are finding it easier and easier to maintain a job, a family, and pursuing a college career at the same time. This is possible because more and more non-traditional students are receiving an education using distance learning, as opposed to traditional, in-the-classroom teaching. Distance learning is basically taking college level, credit-bearing courses via the Internet. One of the most obvious advantages of distance learning is that it puts the classroom in your home, office, or wherever you can find a computer and log on to the Internet. However, there is much controversy regarding the quality of the courses being offered on the Internet versus the quality of

Education is an important part of people’s lives; it will either make them or break them in the future depending on the careers they choose. Education is greatly diverse today in comparison to the 1950s because of advancements in teaching and other great inventions that provide easier techniques of teaching. One major issue that has been raised is distant learning courses and online education.

Despite these benefits, there are also some serious detriments to use of online teaching. There is possible dehumanisation from continued use of online teaching meaning that the repetitive nature of connecting to the Internet to do work can lead to people being seen more as automatons than people. The lack of face-to-face contact that occurs with the increase in users of online teaching can be seen as leading to a deficiency of in-group experiences (Demirdjian 2002). Other drawbacks of online teaching relate directly to the technological aspects and lack of contact. Teachers cannot rely on classroom theatrics to get ideas across to students, sometimes the curriculum needed cannot be found or used online and computer crashes can prevent students from accessing