Faculty training is a monumental undertaking when a university’s payroll includes 21,500 online instructors who are spread out across the country. Not to mention the fact that many have other, full-time day jobs—and are stepping in front of a virtual classroom for the first time.
So the University of Phoenix, the nation’s largest for-profit university, leaves little to chance.
The four-week online “faculty certification” program that Jason R. See, a would-be accounting instructor, follows is the same one Fount Hankle used to prepare to teach ethics in criminal justice. And it’s identical to the one the university compressed into a two-hour overview for a Chronicle reporter using Web-conferencing software.
The university’s Web site spells out the expectations for its instructors: They must have a master’s or doctoral degree, and most are expected to have at least five years of work experience in their fields. Once they have been screened and accepted into the faculty-certification program, would-be instructors spend the next four weeks learning what teaching for the University of Phoenix is like, from a student’s perspective.
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“Since our faculty are primarily practitioners, rather than teachers, it’s very important for them to participate in an environment as much like a class as possible,” says Barbara Taylor, associate vice president for academic operations and training. “That way, there are few surprises.”
Faculty candidates, who come from different disciplines and geographic regions, are taught by experienced instructors in online classes of 12 to 15. That’s slightly smaller than the average class they will teach if they make it through the training, according to the university.
For many of the assignments, faculty candidates divide into groups of three or four peers who have gotten to know one another via their online biographies.
Each week the faculty candidates write 200 to 300 words on a discussion topic. Then they comment on their classmates’ contributions, so a dozen online conversations may be taking place at once. The instructor gives them credit for “substantive contributions,” which are marked by an “S” in a green circle. They have to make such contributions five days a week.
Faculty candidates are assessed at the end of each of the four weeks, and if they receive failing grades, they can be dropped from the program. Typically, only about one in 10 candidates fails or drops out, Phoenix administrators say.
Once they pass the four-week certification phase, faculty candidates meet online with their assigned mentors, who are experienced instructors, to discuss such topics as grading and class preparation. The candidates then teach a class, with the mentors shadowing and providing guidance.
If they successfully complete that process, they are invited to join the Phoenix faculty.
Three university administrators walked a Chronicle reporter through a compressed online version of that training, which was accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation replete with flow charts and a step-by-step agenda for the four-week session. A faculty-assessment sheet shared with The Chronicle rated an instructor’s performance, week to week, in about nine categories, including introducing complex concepts and weaving professional experience into classroom discussions.
One of the newest faculty recruits who went through this process, Mr. See, has been working as an accountant for the past five years, since receiving a master’s degree in accounting from Eastern Michigan University.
After a telephone interview, he was accepted into the faculty-training program. “We had to be actively involved at least five days out of the week, but personally, it was more like six or seven days a week for me,” says Mr. See. He estimates he spent about 25 hours a week on the certification class. Mr. See, whose wife is pregnant, says he appreciates being able to work from home. Like many Phoenix instructors, he has continued his full-time job during the day, teaching classes part time, mostly during nights and weekends.
During the training period, which ended in August, he typically woke up around 5:30 a.m., posted comments for class discussions for an hour, worked at his accounting job until early evening, and then spent another hour studying.
After the instructor poses discussion questions, conversations branch out on up to a dozen different threads, with students from different time zones posting throughout the day and night.
“I would post something, and a classmate would respond,” Mr. See says. “Before I could post again, there were two or three threads.” In a discussion about student privacy, for instance, faculty candidates talked about what to do when a student working as part of a team inquires about a teammate who is absent for medical reasons—information the instructor isn’t allowed to divulge.
The university’s standardized training approach gets mixed reviews from some industry experts.
Jeff Seaman, co-director of the Babson Survey Research Group, has surveyed online education programs for the Sloan Consortium, a nonprofit group that promotes greater use of such technology. He describes the University of Phoenix faculty-training program as one of the most comprehensive among for-profit universities.
The curriculum is exactly the same for all instructor candidates, regardless of their backgrounds or subject areas. The certification goals listed on the university’s Web site state that “each faculty candidate should have a consistent experience.” Courses are developed in a similar manner: A team of course developers creates detailed objectives and notes that ensure consistency in the way the courses are taught.
“I don’t mean this in a derogatory sense, but the university uses a franchise model, making sure each branch gets the same quality, the way a fast-food restaurant might ensure consistency among all of its restaurants,” says Mr. Seaman. “You won’t get a bad meal in any of them, but you probably won’t get a truly memorable one, either.”
While it may not encourage experimentation, the training gives new instructors a solid introduction to online teaching, says Mr. Hankle, the new criminal-justice instructor. “At the same time you’re learning how to navigate through the online system, you’re also learning the school’s policies and procedures and how to communicate online,” says Mr. Hankle, who works full time as a special agent with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General.
“It’s pretty demanding, especially when you’re juggling jobs and family,” he says.
Mr. Hankle, who has a master’s degree in public administration from Governors State University, a public university whose bricks-and-mortar campus he attended, says his daytime job sometimes involves training new employees. But aside from a brief teaching stint while serving in the U.S. Army in the mid-1980s, this is his first real teaching job.
He says the training session, which he completed in the spring, covered everything from the nuts and bolts of choosing the correct font for materials posted online to devising strategies to enliven online discussions.
After working from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Mr. Hankle would spend two to three hours studying in the evenings, and also tried to squeeze in time with his wife and two teenage children. To get a head start on his studies and avoid rush-hour traffic, he sometimes stayed late at his office working on assignments.
One of the lessons was on tone and presentation—"like when you type in all caps, that might indicate that you were angry or upset,” he says.
When he taught his first course over the summer, his mentor critiqued his performance and quizzed him about grading and other issues.
“I’ll deduct points if a student has more than five grammatical errors or misspelled words,” Mr. Hankle says. “My mentor asked me about the policy and wanted to make sure I was being consistent.”
He welcomed her suggestions. “I wanted to ensure I was as accurate and fair as possible when evaluating my students’ performance because they spend a lot of time and effort completing the assignments.”
