Managing Virtual Adjunct Faculty: Applying the Seven Principles of Good Practice

Since the publication of the Seven Principles of Good Practice in 1987 by Chickering and Gamson, distance education has become a major delivery method for higher education. Virtual adjunct faculty have largely carried higher education into the cyber classroom. Adjunct faculty have always been broadly used in higher education, especially in the community college setting. Nationally, adjuncts teach 30-50% of all credit courses. At community colleges, adjuncts compose about 60% of all faculty (Gappa and Leslie, 1993). Florida Community College at Jacksonville (FCCJ) has one of the largest distance learning programs in the state of Florida with yearly enrollments of more than 35,000. About 80% of all online course offerings are taught by virtual adjuncts. About 70% of the active 250 adjuncts teaching in the program reside in the state of Florida , and the other half in assorted states. This paper offers best practices for the support and management of online adjunct faculty within the framework of the Seven Principles for Best Practice. Background The growth of online learning seems to continue steadily. According to the 2003 Sloan Survey of Online Learning, the number of students taking at least one online course is projected to increase by 19.8 percent over the one-year period from Fall 2002 to Fall 2003, to include a total of 1.9 million students (Allen, 2003). For public institutions, the National Center for Education Statistics reports that in 2000–2001, 90 percent of public 2-year and 89 percent of public 4-year institutions offered distance education courses (NCES, 2003). The Sloan Survey also cites that convincing faculty of the benefits of online teaching and learning remains a challenge, and concludes that some, but not all, faculty have welcomed online education. As colleges and universities work steadily to get full-time faculty onboard with distance learning, virtual adjuncts have eagerly stepped up to fill the void, thereby enabling institutions to respond promptly to market demand. Online job boards are replete with postings for virtual adjunct positions, and it appears as if a new and lucrative career path is emerging. John Sexton, President of NYU, refers to this new workforce as “cyber-faculty,” and states that: “Cyber faculty will have quadruple-powered capacity: first, a level of technological