This is an excerpt from "Ten Things to Know About Teaching Online", which appeared in the November/December 2010 issue of BizEd. I cannot find the article online.
"7. Being available 24/7. Kretsch and LeBeau emphasize that there are no set office hours in online teaching. Students expect professors to respond to e-mails and posted questions in a timely manner. That means that instructors should answer e-mails and check course activity several times every day, including weekends and holidays."
Kretsch = Jamie Kretsch, an online instructor at Monmouth University
LeBeau = Sue LeBeau, a New Jersey-based online education consultant
I would argue that this expectation is not limited to online students. My colleagues and I seem to have plenty of examples of traditional classroom students expecting this type of availability.
How, oh how, can I train my body to go without breaks for sleeping and eating?
Just because "students expect" it, doesn't mean professors are obliged. I expect students to not chew gum with their mouths wide open and to not scratch their nuts if they're in the front row, but they don't always meet my expectations.
ReplyDelete"Timely" does not mean round-the-clock availability and weekends and holidays should be off limits.
I'm with Dr. Cranky. This simply isn't a reasonable expectation, unless a student is taking a class from one of the for-profit online universities with extremely standardized classes (which could, theoretically, offer 24-hour help without violating fair-labor standards by using a rotating cast of instructors to answer questions). And I don't think one can offer satisfactory upper-level classes in that format; it really only works for the intro level (and probably not particularly well for all intro-level classes; it's hard to teach critical thinking without assignments that will, and should, evoke idiosyncratic responses, which can't be dealt with in an assembly-line, hand-them-off-at-the-end-of-your-shift manner).
ReplyDeleteFor those of us teaching online versions of the individually-created mid-upper-level classes that we also teach in traditional classrooms at established brick-and-mortar universities, we have to combat this expectation by stating our own expectations that students will read assignments, think about them, and ask questions well in advance of deadlines. The welcome letter I just sent to my online students, designed in part to induce those with unreasonable expectations to drop, included the phrase "help will be available on a regular basis (but not instantaneously, and not generally in the late evening)," followed by a listing of office hours (face to face and a generous late-afternoon/early evening virtual "office hour" period once a week) and a promise that I will strive for a maximum 24-hour turnaround on email. There was also a good deal in the letter about the time students need to devote to the class, and the need to schedule several substantial work periods or a number of shorter ones throughout the week.
Whether any or all of the above will work, I don't know. I'm a relatively newbie to online teaching (I did one 5-week summer class, the compressed nature of which allowed me to really lay down the law in terms of setting aside sufficient time, but also had me pretty much glued to my computer the whole time). I'll be very much interested to see comments by those with more experience in the online medium.
Oops. "relatively" should be "relative."
ReplyDeleteI can't help but wonder if this could be cured by simply making random e-mail inquires of students, requiring immediate responses. Doing this at 7 AM will likely be ideal.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, that's how we all learned.
DrNathaniel's idea is excellent. I will deploy it this semester and study the results.
ReplyDeleteWe are in the process of redesigning the way we deliver and market distance ed, and this question came up. One colleague said her department's policy was a response within 48 hours. Our facilitator said students would think that was unreasonably long. I replied that our students sometimes think an hour is unreasonably long because they are used to the immediate gratification of texting. We ended up agreeing that 24 hours is a reasonable response time and that we must set boundaries for certain periods such as weekends. Some faculty also set up specific times when they will respond to email messages so students know to expect communication at those times.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I have not taught an online course as of this writing, I assign on-line homework as a component of a student's overall grade and I make myself available to the students online to ask questions related to HW problems.
ReplyDeleteWhat never fails to befuddle me is when a student asks a question and I respond to the student in a timely manner (within 8 hours on a weekend, for example) and as part of my response, I ask the student to bring the question up in class at the next meeting-the student almost NEVER DOES!
In conclusion, it seems we need to be on call 24 hours but students never seem to check their email on a timely basis-only their facebook pages.
I teach online classes and I have students who will email me on the hour if they do not recieve a response. When I do get around to answering their question I usually end up telling them that the answer can be found in the syllabus and remind them that I will do my best to respond in 24 hours, excluding holidays. If students cry that they had an important question about an assignment I remind them that they had 7 days to do the assignment and it is best not to wait until the last minute to complete it as this is what happens. I also have had students call me at 11 pm or 3 am with questions. I have told them "It's 3 am. Don't call me." and hung up on them. I then follow up the the next day with a sternly worded email that they are NOT to call me at 3 am and restate my office hours from the syllabus.
ReplyDeleteIt also depends on the culture of your school. At my alma mater (a SLAC), it was generally ok to show up unannounced at a proffie's house at 9:00am on a Saturday to turn in a paper that had been due the previous afternoon. If the proffie wasn't in the mood to talk, then they didn't invite you in. But as long as the student was polite, then nobody got angry. Of course, I was a good student, so they gave me some slack.
ReplyDeleteThey call you at 4AM, you pipe bomb their house.
ReplyDeleteThat's the Chicago way.
In exchange for never ever giving them my home number (I had one student abuse this privilege early on and out of "safety" for me they allow me to forgo posting my personal number), I check my email extra times. And, really, not a big deal.
ReplyDeleteI spend most of my day online anyway, researching and poking around my blogs. I grade for 2 hours each day, checking email as I grade, and then I check it a few times later in the day.
I find students don't care if you don't respond at 2am. Just as long as you respond sometime the next day.
I don't even give them my office phone number anymore. They can find it on the department website if they need it. But I'm usually in class or the library or working at home, and rarely check my messages. Email seems to work. I don't answer email in the evening.
ReplyDeleteI got complaints last year that I didn't respond to emails, which is bullshit. What they were pissy about was that they'd email me on a Sunday about the assignment due Monday and expect me to respond that day, preferably IMMEDIATELY. As if I sit at my computer all weekend breathlessly awaiting an email from Danny Dumbass who hasn't attended class in two weeks and is now panicking about the assignment that's worth 40% of his grade.
ReplyDeleteSo this year I put a statement in my syllabi that goes something like this:
"I am here to help you, but I am not a 7/11 [available 24/7]. I have 6 office hours per week, and I'm willing to schedule appointments outside those times if you've got a conflict. I check email M-F 8:30-4:00pm. If you email me after 4:00 pm on a Friday, don't expect to get a response until Monday. Also, do not email me and expect to hear back 30 seconds later; response time can take up to 24 hours or more. I may also answer your question in class if it's one I get frequently. If you're not there to get the answer, that's not my problem."
Yes, it's a bit snarky, but I'm so sick of the 24/7 CONSUMER mentality that so many schools are catering to that I could just scream. This syllabus statement is my puny way of pushing back...
Some people give students their home phone numbers? Dear god.
ReplyDelete@Kari: Yes, my online university requires that I give students my home phone number. I had one 2am phone call a while back, but mostly they don't abuse it. You just have to state really clearly in the syllabus and everywhere else that the phone number is for time-sensitive emergencies only. There are very few instances where a phone call is warranted, so I get maybe one or two phone calls per term.
ReplyDeleteMy policy is that I respond to every student e-mail within 24 hours. It's really not much of a burden, and I get very good feedback on my evals about my "availability." I have about 50 students each term, and their course usage patterns are pretty predictable. The e-mails cluster around Sunday night and Monday morning (that is, right before and right after the weekly assignment due dates).
If I'm going backpacking someplace remote for the weekend, I just tell 'em that I won't respond until Sunday night. I've been doing this for 10 years, and I've never had a complaint about not responding in a timely manner to student e-mails. You just have to set your parameters and communicate them clearly.
I just so happens that our (online) evaluations for fall hybrid classes showed up today, and they seem to bear out what Surly and others say above: students *don't* necessarily expect 24-hour availability, as long as you set the parameters clearly. I got very high marks -- both numerical and in the written comments -- for availability, despite the fact that I often do take the full 24 hours, and sometimes a bit more, to respond to email (and don't give out my home number -- I had a bad experience with a father enraged that I'd turned in his daughter for plagiarism once, and stopped -- and, like Merely, discourage use of my office phone except during office hours).
ReplyDeleteMaybe (with a few notable snowflakey exceptions of the kind Chrome cites) the real problem is with the "online education consultants," rather than with the students? There are an awful lot of people out there making a living (probably a better one that I do) claiming to know what particular "markets" "demand," often without much in the way of evidence, empirical or otherwise. Just sayin'.
Now if somebody could just explain to me why the ratings for each individual component of my courses invariably seem to be higher than the ratings for the course as a whole (or the teaching) (and of course it's those cumulative scores that the administrative types look at).
ReplyDelete@Surly: That's totally disgusting. I can not believe they make you do that. I would call the dean at 2 AM on a weekly basis, and once a month I'd make sexual comments to his wife. Because the few times students have gotten my number, they've drunk called me in the middle of the night to tell me their sex fantasies and no boss will ever make me give out my home number. I don't care if the course load is 1/1 with 5 TAs a dog walker and a personal chef, the only number I'd give out would be to a prepaid (by the college) cell. Furthermore, it would be a new device each semester so that when the little Einsteins thought they could just wait a semester before pranking me and no one would know, I'd be able to say "It was Shithead Schneider, he was the only one in Spring '09 with a lisp, and oh yeah, it was someone from Spring '09 because they dialed the Spring '09 phone."
ReplyDeleteThat is so disgusting. I would probably call my old voice mail and make the dean's wife listen to the last message a student ever left me on my personal phone. It involved three different kinds of crime. If she didn't faint, I'd make the prepaid cell compromise, and if she fainted or went into cardiac arrest (as I did when it came in) I'd tell them to fuck themselves.
Ok, sorry about that tangent, I just can't believe it's legal to force professors to give their home numbers out to students.
I agree that you MUST let students know what your "virtual availability" is or you'll get slammed on evals.
ReplyDeleteThere doesn't seem to be a problem if you're just clear.
I used to respond on my off days, but it created a real sense of urgency in ANY email they sent. They began to expect a 4 am reply.
And that sucked.
Wombat, I totally get your disgust. I was seriously unhappy when I first had to give out my number. I should explain, though, that I'm an adjunct and don't have an office phone, and my students are all over the country and also in Iraq and Afghanistan and aboard naval ships. My cell phone is the only way for them to reach me if they can't e-mail me and it's urgent. I don't consider the cell phone thing to be completely beyond the pale for someone in my particular situation.
ReplyDeleteIn practice, the only reason students ever have to call me is if they're taking their final exam and there's some kind of mixup with the password or some other problem accessing the exam. So really, it's usually the exam proctor that calls me, not the student.
The 2am kid apologized and said that she thought she was leaving a message on my office voicemail. Stupid, yes, but not harassment. I've never had a problem with inappropriate phone contact with a student.
Your mileage may vary, but so far I'm ok with the e-mail and phone arrangements I have with my online campus. The university has been very supportive of faculty rights in general, and I have always been fully supported in cases involving disgruntled students. I fully understand that the potential for inappropriate student behavior is there if they have your phone number, but so far I haven't experienced it, and the income I earn from the adjunct work makes it well worth the couple of calls I get per term.
I keep weird hours, so sometimes reply to student emails very late at night. So when they send stuff at midnight they expect to hear back right away.
ReplyDeleteI need to add a line to the syllabus like Chrome's above. Thanks for the tip.
I don't know anything, and even I know not to give a home phone number!
ReplyDeleteReminds me of this professor I knew years ago in community college who coffesed to me that when he had gone to one of the area's Christian high schools he and some friends had found out the name of a math teacher they didn't like, and they would crank call him all the time. Mostly they would just whisper his name and hang up. They were no little Brad Carters*.
ReplyDelete______________________________________________
* Creator of phonelosers.org, master phone pranker and phreak.
Should be "confessed"....God Damn You laptop!
ReplyDeleteAs much as I like to complain about my job - a very similar situation to Surly - I must agree with Surly. I have been doing the online adjunct thing for years now with a global student body. I get about one phone call per year. Really. One such call was at 0300 (that's AM), but it was a misunderstanding about time zones and no big deal. The student was very apologetic.
ReplyDeleteAlso a veteran online instructor who is expected to provide *a* phone number, by default, as I have no separate office, it is a direct contact to me.
ReplyDeleteSort of ...
I was fortunate to happen upon the early iteration of Grand Central, now Google Voice.
(There are now many other call forwarding services.)
Totally for free, I have a second number which has become my "office" number. It allows me to have calls forwarded to any number of true numbers (e.g. home, cell, [when I had one] office).
It also provides either ring-through caller ID or posts my Google voice number as the ID.
It also has the ability to send a voicemail transcription to my EMail (currently not too accurate, but they're working on it!)
But as Surly and AdjSlave report, over the years, I have received only a handful of calls.
Of course there was the flurry of calls I got the time when ANGEL inexplicably changed the opening time for an campus class' final, but you certainly could understand THEIR sense of urgency!
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ReplyDeleteNow you know why I allowed my land-line phone at home to lapse. If anyone ever demands the number, I give them the number, for all the good it will do them.
ReplyDeleteIf anyone demands I give them the number to the cell phone in my pocket, I give them the number for the land-line phone in my office, which belongs to my university anyway. I've done this dozens of times over the years, and never once has anyone realized what I'm doing and demanded my real cell-phone number.
I check my land-line office phone for messages and make calls on it only during my office hours, time during which I'd otherwise almost always be sitting idle anyway. I use this time to catch up on e-mail, too.
I also have this statement in my syllabus:
Dr. Frankenstien often uses e-mail to communicate with students, and please feel free to send e-mail to Dr. Frankenstien. Please allow Dr. Frankenstien at least 24 hours to respond to e-mail, particularly if it requires careful thought, and longer during weekends, although Dr. Frankenstien almost always answers e-mail within 48 hours.
My syllabus is now 16 pages long, and counting.