Pros
English department has a chair who is revising all the curriculum to make it more relevant in a technological age. Curriculum and rubrics are provided. The course is ready to teach the day you arrive. Once you've taught a while, and systemize your grading practices, it becomes simple. Nice colleagues, great students.
Cons
Only department chairs are full-time. Adjuncts comprise the entire faculty, and the district limits us to half time. They seem to spread the classes around to keep everyone available without filling anyone's dance card. Because online curriculum is provided, there is no revising or personalizing. You can send in corrections and suggestions, which often turn out to be impossible, and you have to be tactful about helping students understand a confusing assignment. The technology systems are often unreliable, and the scoring tool is the worst of any I've ever worked with. Pay is based on enrollment, so by the end, when a few student crises have set in, and the lazier online students have dropped, your paycheck shrinks dramatically. Part of that is that In core classes like English, where the classes are expected to fill, they begin with full pay, and then take the difference off the end. They try to explain that it is possible, but the first time I taught, that was a shock. I wanted to let you know the exact pay per course, but I'm not sure; pay is confusing to figure out. When they said the quarter was eight weeks long, and named the pay per quarter, it sounded like a livable wage. It turns out that was for the rotating start dates every eight weeks. The classes themselves are either 8 or 14 weeks long (students choose) and the pay is spread over 16 weeks. So it was half the expected pay. My paycheck reached $800 (bi-weekly) when I once had four classes. That's only possible for overlapping quarters. Three is the limit and that means teaching for any Maricopa Community College District institution. I had friends who once made a great living by teaching ten classes at four schools, but they can't get away with that anymore. Online pay is the same as in-person courses. So that's a Pro for online, a Con for adding prep, transportation, instruction time, in-person consultations, making handouts, and everything else we do for that. Enrollment is dropping. We used to be the the only MCCD school accredited for online, but now we compete with all our sister schools for that, and the economy seems to be picking up again. I'm in demand because of my high student evaluations and my specialty, but even my number of classes has dropped. If you're looking for a hobby or great volunteer service this is it. If you need to make a living, keep looking. I won't be here long myself.
