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Ready to Teach Online?

Online teaching has arrived!

Do you enjoy teaching? Are you looking for more income? How about a way to keep increasing your income over time? Do you want to make better use of your degrees and your professional expertise?

Online teaching could be your ticket!

Today over 5.6 million students in the U.S. are learning online. There are cost savings for schools, student demand is growing, and e-learning technology keeps advancing.

I am Jean Sibley, a successful online educator at several online universities and programs. I formerly worked as a technical writer, trainer, and as a corporate manager in software publications.

My focus today is helping both students and educators gain the skills needed for online education. By reading this practical book, you will learn how to acquire the right skills and knowledge for online teaching.

Obtaining my first online teaching job was exciting, but there were many steps for each school, and I needed to do each phase correctly, as well as keep up the momentum to increase my possibilities. My process worked, and I wrote this book to share it with you.

This book gives you the easy way to find out:

 what online teaching requires

 how to locate many current job postings

 decide your strategy

 gather the records you need

 create a professional teaching application packet

 apply online to jobs,

 succeed in your first interview and

 pass your first teaching evaluation

You won’t have to do this alone – I am with you throughout, including advanced tips on how to succeed, showing you how to network in this dynamic arena, and providing extra coaching when you need it.

Do it the step-by-step, successful way, not the hard and less successful way, and get started today. I am confident you will land your first online teaching job following the guidance in this eBook.

Here’s to your upcoming success in online teaching!

Where are the opportunities?

In this book I focus on professional, systematically-structured distance learning organized and hosted by an educational institution or program over the internet. Many of these schools are degree-granting and have a ‘brick-and-mortar’ campus, while some are exclusively online.

According to the Sloan Consortium’s 2009 report on over 2500 U.S. colleges and universities, online education has grown almost 20% each year since 2002, a pace which did not slow down during the recession. The 2010 Sloan Survey of Online Learning reported that enrollment rose by almost one million students from 2009.

This report mentioned that higher education has 80% of the online education opportunities. This includes private universities, public universities, community colleges, and for-profit universities. However, we are seeing rapid evolution in 6-12 distance learning. Some qualified teachers teach online in both higher education and 6-12.

Many teachers who want to find opportunities ask me how they can find jobs. I have noticed that not everyone uses a search engine effectively. Once you do, you will see hundreds of job listings pop up. For example, if your field is History, go to a search engine such as yahoo or google. Enter a search like ”adjunct teaching jobs history” or ”online teaching jobs history.” Watch what happens!

There are numerous job boards and university and college website job listings, as well as online high school websites that you can explore.

Middle and high schools

I Q Academy home page

The growth in 6-12 distance learning shows us that students in middle school and high school are increasingly demanding the same benefits that students in higher education want. Students who do not reside in a good school district now have great options. Some students may be in a good school district, but want the flexibility that an online school provides.

There are schools that deliver high-quality education to middle school and high school students across the U.S., in both online and correspondence delivery formats.

Online middle and high school teachers need to be certified in the state where they teach. Many schools offer substitute and part time positions with the possibility of moving to full time.

Here are a few examples:

1 iQ Academies is a virtual charter school management company that provides distance learning opportunities for a growing number of students around the country.

2 Aventa Learning is a leading provider of 6-12 education technology offering online middle school, high school courses, curriculum, exam review, Advanced Placement courses, classroom resources, credit recovery and educational technology for schools.

3 The California Virtual Academies has 11,000+ high school students across California, and a reported recent annual growth of 30%. This school is fully accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Schools (ACS) of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) for grades K-12.

4 North Carolina Virtual Public School. North Carolina is taking off with online education at all levels. See http://www.ncvps.org/.

Post-secondary schools and programs

Don’t fall for the myth that online post-secondary schools are ‘diploma mills.’ While there definitely are diploma mills on the internet, and you should be wary of these, there are thousands of completely legitimate, accredited, degree-granting online post-secondary institutions and programs in the U.S and Canada.

Online post-secondary schools in the U.S. are approved by one of the six regional accrediting agencies - the same agencies that are responsible for approving brick-and-mortar schools. In Canada all post-secondary schools are approved by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (A.U.C.C.).

Look for the accreditation agency on the campus home page. In the U.S. these agencies are:

1 Middle States

2 New England

3 North Central

4 Northwest

5 Southern

6 Western

Some online post-secondary schools are accredited by the Distance Education Training Council (DETC) and this is national accreditation rather than regional. This council is also recognized by the U.S. Department of Education, and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, but there are still some regionally accredited schools that do not accept course credits from DETC accredited schools.

Read on to find out about the all-important job boards, and see the Resources section for more links to U.S. and Canadian online universities and colleges, as well as sites that rank them.