Faculty Compensation for Course Development

Very few of our colleges have staff that are dedicated to designing online courses. This means that most online courses in California Community Colleges are designed and developed by the faculty who teach the courses. Although it’s true that faculty also design and develop their face-to-face courses, many feel that developing an online course requires much more work. Some colleges will compensate faculty for the extra time they put in designing and developing an online course. Other colleges do not provide any compensation.

In addition to designing the course, many colleges require or recommend that instructors who teach online go through training before teaching an online class. Sometimes, this training is provided by the college. Other times, the training is provided by an outside group in which there may be a fee required. Again, there are colleges that will pay required fees for training while other colleges expect the instructor to pay the fee.

Intellectual Property Rights

Because of the time and expertise needed to develop online courses, many faculty wish to maintain their rights to the courses they design. Intellectual property rights are determined at an institutional or district level and they differ from college to college. Sometimes there is a trade-off with the compensation and property rights, in that colleges that compensate faculty for development often will retain all rights to the courses that are developed. Whereas, the colleges that do not compensate faculty for designing the course will let instructors retain all rights to the courses. In still other instances both the college and the course developer will retain copyright.

Class Size

The size of online classes has been a hotly debated topic from the very beginning of online instruction. Many people feel strongly that to maintain a quality online course class sizes need to be kept relatively small. The exact number for what is considered an upper limit varies from college to college and also from course to course. For instance, a number of colleges will set a lower limit on English composition courses than they set for other courses, due to the more time intensive load in grading assignments in these classes. There are a few people, however, who feel that online courses can still ensure quality even with large class sizes. These might be colleges that typically have student aides, or classes in which much of the work is automatically graded, freeing up more of the instructor’s time to work individually with students, provide substantive feedback, or give more in-depth instruction as needed.

Because policies can differ so much from college to college it is important for instructors to understand their rights and responsibilities before they get involved with online teaching for any institution. Conversely, faculty groups at institutions should involve knowledge experts in distance education, to help craft their local policies. Distance education coordinators as well as DE faculty are strongly encouraged to work closely with their institution’s Academic Senate and other bodies to ensure that the concerns of online instruction are addressed. Traditional faculty may not be aware of many of these and other issues that are specific to distance education classes, so staying involved with local policy development is important. Of course it probably goes without saying, but the best policies will encourage effort and reward excellence, and will always have the students' best interest in mind.