9.2 Expectations
Below are the minimum effort expected when teaching an online course in Khoury and those expectations are reflected in the per course stipend that is paid and that is significantly above that of most other universities. While these practices should be considered strongly recommended by all faculty, they are required of adjunct faculty.
A course is expected to be a commitment of 16.5 weeks: a short week to prepare prior to the start of the term, 14 weeks of instruction, one week of final exams, projects, and grading, and a short week to calculate and post grades. This estimate is based on the assumption that course materials have already been developed and deployed in the LMS.
9.2.1 Activity Summary
The tables below summarize the activities that are generally done daily, weekly, prior to the start of the term and to close out a term. The total weekly time commitment is about 13 to 17 hours on average for the 14 weeks when classes are in session, plus about 8 hours prior to the start of the term, five to ten hours for grading after the term, two to three hours for post-term wrap-up, and five to ten hours of miscellaneous work during the term. This works out to a time commitment of about 237 hours for the typical course. Some faculty might want to calculate the per-hour rate so they can see the required effort in context3.
Faculty who teach more than one course per term can economize by combining office hours and other weekly activities and thus the time spent on each course is less. The averages are likely higher when a course is taught for the first time and lower when it has been taught several times in a row. Some courses may requires slightly more work, while others may requires less.
Programming intensive courses, first year courses, and ALIGN courses generally require more work but are typically supported by an increased allocation of teaching assistants.
Some faculty may choose to spend additional time creating new material to support their teaching and with that increase their quality ratings, write recommendations for a few students, participate in professional development activities, or learn new technologies, tools, and material.
The time estimates are based on over five years of experience teaching online at Khoury and other institutions as well as for corporations. Activities are divided into those that are done weekly or bi-weekly (Intra-Term Weekly Activities), those that are meant to be done prior to the start of the term (Pre-Term Activities) and those that are done when classes end (Post-Term Activities).
9.2.1.1 Intra-Term Weekly Activities
The table below (in the form of a checklist) summarizes activities that are done weekly or bi-weekly during weeks when classes are in session. Some activities do not actually occur weekly, so time is divided over the term, e.g.,, creating and grading exams.
| Activity | Time | Frequency | Support |
|---|---|---|---|
| review upcoming week’s material4 | 0.75 | weekly | required |
| meet with TA staff | 0.5 | weekly | required |
| teach live recitation at fixed time once weekly | 1.25 | weekly | required |
| develop assignments | 1.5 | weekly | required |
| write exams | 1 | weekly | required |
| create grading rubrics and/or guidelines for TAs | 1 | weekly | required |
| grade exams | 1 | weekly | required |
| join bi-weekly faculty meeting | 0.25 | weekly | required |
| provide 1-on-1 student support | 2 | weekly | required |
| hold live drop-in office hours at fixed times 3 days per week5 | 3.75 | weekly | required |
| monitor Q&A forum 6 days per week | 2 | weekly | required |
| TOTAL AVERAGE TIME PER WEEK | 15 |
9.2.1.2 Pre-Term Activities
The table below summarizes activities that are done prior to the first week of classes.
| Activity | Time | Frequency | Support |
|---|---|---|---|
| review TRACE from prior term | 0.5 | pre-term | required |
| record welcome video and announcement | 1 | pre-term | required |
| review TA applications and select TA staff | 1 | pre-term | required |
| copy prior course in LMS | 0.5 | pre-term | required |
| configure LMS due dates & announcements | 2 | pre-term | required |
| contact students via e-mail (not LMS) and explain how to find course | 0.5 | pre-term | required |
| meet with TA staff and define responsibilities | 0.5 | pre-term | required |
| verify links to external resources | 1 | pre-term | required |
| add TAs and backup instructor(s) to LMS | 0.25 | pre-term | required |
| select and send pre-course work to students | 0.5 | pre-term | required |
| set Q&A forum monitoring schedule for TA staff | 0.5 | pre-term | required |
| TOTAL AVERAGE TIME PRIOR TO TERM | 8.25 |
9.2.1.3 Post-Term Activities
The table below summarizes activities that are done after classes end and generally prior to the end of the term. For example, mining the discussion board for common questions and patterns can also be done between terms or at the start of a new term.
| Activity | Time | Frequency | Support |
|---|---|---|---|
| grade final exams and/or projects | 10 | post-term | required |
| post and then announce tentative grades in LMS | 0.5 | post-term | required |
| enter or transfer final grades to Banner | 0.5 | post-term | required |
| provide reviews of TAs and students | 0.5 | post-term | required |
| mine discussion board for course updates | 1 | post-term | suggested |
| TOTAL AVERAGE TIME POST TERM | 12.5 |
9.2.1.4 Evaluations & Adjustment Actions
There are two evaluations that take place: a post-course evaluation conducted by the University (TRACE) and a mid-term survey conducted by either the instructor or Khoury. The mid-term evaluation is purely formative while TRACE is both summative and formative. The results of TRACE are considered when making staffing decisions.
We strongly recommend conducting mid-term evaluations. For many courses, the University or the College will independently conduct mid-term evaluations and share those results with the instructors. In those instances, instructors are expected to review the feedback and make appropriate adjustments to the course delivery.
At the end of the course, we urge a review of the TRACE evaluation with the instructor’s faculty mentor or supervisor and determine what specific actions can be taken to improve the next iteration of the course, including changes to material, LMS organization of the course materials, changes in teaching style, adjustments to office hours or other support activities, coordination with teaching assistants, and overall communication with students.
9.2.1.5 Other Activities
There are some additional activities that some instructor may want to do, although many are not required. Many will undoubtedly make the experience better for students and provide additional value. They may also, in many cases, improve course and instructor ratings.
| Activity | Time | Frequency | Support |
|---|---|---|---|
| meet with student groups one or twice per term | 5 hrs | other | required |
| review mid-term evaluations | 1 hrs | other | required |
| identify and schedule guest speakers | 2 to 5 hrs | other | suggested |
| create new material | varies | other | suggested |
| record new lessons | varies | other | suggested |
| write recommendations and provide references | varies | other | suggested |
| attend professional development events | varies | other | suggested |
9.2.2 Activities
The sections below provides additional guidance and best practices on the activities summarized in the prior section. Be sure to state all policies in the syllabus and ensure that students are aware.
9.2.2.1 Welcome Message
At the outset of a course, during the first week or the week prior to the start, the instructor should welcome the students and familiarize them with the course. We strongly recommend that instructors record a personal welcome video, provide a brief course overview that summarizes what is and is not covered in the course, what expectations there are for the course, how to navigate LMS and where to find resources, how to ask questions, what needs to be done, where to find help, where to find syllabus, and roles of TAs, peer groups, and the instructor.
Be welcoming as for many students it may be their first course at Northeastern or in Khoury.
The welcome message should be in two phases: first contact all students via email and let them know in which LMS the course can be found. Provide a URL and instructions on how to log in as not all students may be familiar with the process – students may be new to the University and new online graduate students may not have had a chance to attend a virtual orientation. An announcement via the LMS should not be the first way to contact students as they may not be able to log on to the LMS. A second announcement should be made via the LMS and include more details on the course, how to navigate the course in the LMS, where to get help, the instructional mode for the course, where to find help, summary of learning objectives, prerequisites that are assumed and how to make them up if a student does not have them, and a welcome message in the form of a video.
9.2.2.2 Weekly Preparation
Instructors must be fully prepared each week and be familiar with all material assigned to students, including video lessons, curated content, required and optional readings, and assignments. Students must have confidence that instructors know and understand the material.
9.2.2.3 Announcements
Weekly announcements that are posted on the LMS at the beginning of the week (which is generally Mondays). These should be posted on Monday even when that day is a holiday in order to keep the weekly candence. In addition to work due for the week and associated due dates, a short summary of the topic plus a look ahead to the following week is helpful. In addition, reminding students of the overall course’s flow is helpful in putting the weekly topics in context.
9.2.2.4 Office Hours
Instructors are required to keep regular office hours at fixed times and location each week on at least three different days. The office hours should not be on the same day as the live recitation. Ideally, you should hold office hours Tuesday through Friday for an hour each day. The virtual office location (Zoom or Teams) in addition to the times must be posted on the LMS and announced in the weekly announcements. In addition, a message posted on the morning of the day of the office hours to remind students is helpful in establishing an online presence.
9.2.2.5 Student Support
A key component of teaching online is supporting the students in their (somewhat) independent learning endeveour. Remember that students should never feel alone, neglected, or unsure of what to do or where to turn for help. Supporting students, along with the other practices, helps establish an instructor’s online presence.
Among the key practices for student support are monitoring the discussion or Q&A board. Discussions should be in one place, e.g., a Microsoft Teams class with channels for each topic or week, the LMS discussions facility, or Piazza. Instructors should coordinate with TAs so that there’s a time each day that questions are answered and no questions remains unanswered for more than 12 hours. The quicker you or your staff answer (or at least respond indicating that you have seen the question and will get back at a later point in time or need to find the answer). We recommend that you create a schedule that shows who will visit the Q&A board at which time each day.
In addition to fixed office hours where students can drop in without an appointment, instructors must be available for one-on-one help via email, chat, and video. Teaching assistants must also keep weekly office hours (5 hours per week on different days and, whenever possible, on weekends and evenings), TAs must also support students one-on-one within reason. On occasion, some students may “abuse” the support system and expect instructors or teaching assistants to be personal tutors. In such cases, instructor should remind students – in a diplomatic way – of their responsibilities and that in a graduate course independent work is not only expected, it is a critical part of learning. Learning how to learn and learning how to find answers is a key skill they learn in a graduate course. Some students may take this as an indication that an instructor is skirting their responsibility to teach, so this must be done cautiously.
While assignments are generally graded by graders or teaching assistants, students may seek clarification on their grade. Explain that they should seek clarification first from the grader (ensure that all graders mark their feedback with their name or initials) before they see you if no adequate resolution can be found.
Assignments, exams, and other learning assessments must be returned to students in a timely fashion, generally within five to seven days.
Instructor and teaching assistants must respond to queries, questions, posts, voice mails, and emails in a timely fashion. This generally means that an instructor should respond to a message within an hour during the work day, otherwise by the next morning but never more than 12 hours during the week and no more than 24 hours during weekend. At the outset of the course and in the syllabus, instructors should state their response times. It is best if instructors remind students of their response times several times during the term. For example, when you get to your office or start your day, post a message of the discussions board; do the same when you leave the office and then set your status, if possible, to unavailable. Of course, some deviation from these response times is expected during holidays, illness, or when an instructor is teaching or in meetings. Instructors who work full-time and teach part-time should appropriate adjust their schedule and communicate it to students.
While we generally do not expect instructors to work on the weekend, instructors who teach part-time may find that additional support on weekend and during holidays is welcome by students who also may often take courses on a part-time basis.
9.2.2.6 Live Recitation or Lecture
Instructors are required to hold a weekly live session, generally a one to one-and-half hour recitation where the instructor reviews key aspects of the material, provides demonstrations or worked examples, addresses common mistakes in assignments, reviews assignment solutions, and provides practical examples and context for the materials based on their experience.
If a course does not have pre-recorded lessons, then there must be a lecture in addition to recitation that explains the materials.
All live sessions must be recorded and the recordings must be published in the weekly folder or the module folder on the LMS, followed by an announcement to the students of its availability.
9.2.2.7 Instructor Perspective
While most courses have pre-developed learning assets in the form of videos, lecture notes, and readings, instructors are required to provide their own perspective. This can be done through the live recitation (see Live Recitation or Lecture) plus a weekly video recording of an instructor’s take on the material.
9.2.2.8 Worked Examples
Instructors should provide worked examples based on their experience and use the examples to explain concepts that are misunderstood by students. This can be done through recorded chalk-talks or code walks or during the live recitation (see Live Recitation or Lecture).
9.2.2.9 Assignments, Exams, and Rubrics
Instructors are expected to update all assignments and exams each term to avoid copying and submission by students of old assignments. Assume that all solutions are published on sharing sites such as CourseHero.
For each assignment, set due dates in the LMS and communicate the due in the weekly announcement. Assist students in managing deadlines by sending reminders before assignments, discussion posts, or other assessments are due.
Find ways to economize your time. For example, create mid-term and final exams that have an auto-graded component in addition to shorter manually graded components.
Create rubrics (in the LMS not external) for TAs to use during grading.
9.2.2.10 Peer Group Meetings
Encourage students to work in groups for assignments. In addition, build group breakouts into live sessions. For example, pose a question, ask for some research or a quick lookup, solve a problem, debug some code. The key is to do the work in small groups (breakouts). Students have reported in numerous focus groups that this keeps them engaged in the course, keeps them coming to the live sessions, and helps forms social bonds among their peers – which is particularly important to undergraduate and foreign graduate students. Breakouts must have a defined purpose though and a set time blocks (10-15 minutes) otherwise students might feel lost.
9.2.2.11 Curation of Content
There is a plethora of content available to students via subscription services such as LinkedIn Learning and O’Reilly Learning – both of which are available at no extra cost to Northeastern students. Incorporate them into your course or at least recommend them to students to acquire additional practical skills. Use them to prepare students for certain aspects of your course where some students might lack prerequisites.
9.2.2.12 New Content
Create new content in the form of readings, video tutorials, chalk-talks where necessary to support learning.
9.2.2.13 Syllabus
Every course must have a detailed and up-to-date syllabus. The syllabus is specific to a term and must carry the term dates. All policies must be stated in the syllabus and no changes should be make to the syllabus during a term. If changes or adjustments are necessary, instructors must use all communication channels to ensure that eveyr student is aware of the changes.
Instructor may find it helpful to create a syllabus quiz with a minimum passing grade (e.g., 90% or higher) before the course material is revealed. That way instructors can be certain that students have read the syllabus and are familiar with key provisions.
At the end of each term, be sure to update the syllabus and add additional guidelines, policies, and sections.
9.2.2.14 Online Presence
Establishing an online presence is more difficult in an online course than in an onground course where instructors meet with students weekly or bi-weekly. Online instructor must find new practices for creating an online presence, particularly if the course is taught asynchronously and with only a short weekly virtual but live recitation.
Aside from the live (virtual and recorded) recitation, one good practice is to meet once or twice per term, particularly early in the term, with groups of 4 to 6 students. During these informal meetings, ask them about their major or studies, their background, and prior coops or work experiences. During the meeting tell them more about yourself and elicit feedback on your teaching by asking what they like and dislike about the course. One way to get useful feedback is to ask each person for one specific change they would make if they could in the course and one things they really like and do not want to change. These meetings are helpful in establishing an online presence and creating a more personal relationship between your students and you.
Additional practices and suggestions can be found in the book Creating a sense of presence in online teaching: How to" be there" for distance learners by Lehman and Conceicao (Lehman and Conceição 2010).
9.2.2.15 Guest Speakers
Some instructors have found it useful to include external and practical perspectives in their courses. One way to do this is to schedule guest talks by former or current colleagues who can provide a “practical” perspective on topics you are teaching. This could also be a guest lecture or talk by a faculty member at another university, another department or college at Northeastern, or a collague withing Khoury. Again, this can help provide additional “value” to students.
Recording these guest talks is strongly encouraged for those students who cannot attend. In addition, opening them to students in other courses is suggested.
9.2.2.16 TA Management
All courses over a certain enrollment threshold receive teaching assistant support. Generally, courses are assigned one “full TA”" for every 25 students, although programming intensive courses may receive additional help. A “full TA” can work up to 15 hours per week.
Instructors are expected to review TA applications, conduct hiring interviews, and to make hiring suggestions. Upon hiring, instructors must conduct training sessions for the TAs, add them to all platforms (discussion board, LMS, Teams, Zoom, etc.), introduce them to the students, and post contact information and office hours on the LMS.
Each week, the College will send a summary of hours each TA spends in support of a course. Instructors must review the hours for accuracy and let the administrators know when there are discrepencies. Note that practices such as “overtime” or “pushing hours into the following” week are not allowed and can cause visa-eligibility problems for international students.
It is recommended that instructors meet weekly for 15-30 minutes to review issues, make TAs aware of assignments or grading expectations, and to address issues. TAs should be encouraged to track who contacts them, what issues they find students are struggling with, and updates to materials or assignments.
At the end of a course, instructors are expected to provide short reviews or their TAs as well as provide recommendations for students who would make good TAs in future courses. This is done in the Khoury Admin Tool and is very quick.
9.2.2.17 Recommendations
On occasion, students may ask for letters of recommendation or references for employment. While we generally do not expect part-time instructors to write of letters of recommendations, we do encourage providing references to the extent possible. A reasonable number is two to four references per term).
Instructors may state in the syllabus that references or recommendations are only for students that the instructor knows, so students who expect to ask for a recommendation or reference should frequently come to office hours, introduce themselves in person, and ensure that the instructor knows their capabilities.
9.2.2.18 Mine Discussions
At the end of a term, the discussion board posts can be useful in knowing where students may have faced difficulty or have had misunderstandings. Mining the posts can be beneficial when preparing new supporting learning assets, update assignments, and adjust teaching practices.
9.2.2.19 Post-Term Grade Changes
Sometimes grades were calculated incorrectly or an items was overlooked during the term. In such cases, a grade change must be filed by the instructor using either a paper form or sending an email to the registrar’s office.
Instructors should generally refrain from “upgrading” a student’s grade because of personal pleas or because a student might lose a scholarship or coop privilege. Remind students that as an instructor you report their grade and not “give a grade” and that their grade is a reflection of their cumulative work during a term.
9.2.2.20 Professional Development
Part-time, like full-time, instructors are eligible to participate in professional development events conducted by CATLR – the Northeastern Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning Through Research. In addition to live onground and virtual events, CATLR has numerous asynchronous resources that can help improve teaching. Furthermore, CATLR, in conjuction with ITS (Information Technology Services) and ATS (Academic Technology Services) can provide assistance with learning design, academic tools, and pedagogy.
Assistance with the LMS and other general academic platforms, including Microsoft Teams, Panopto, Canvas, etc. should be directed to ITS via help@northeastern.edu.
Instructors are expected to improve their craft, understand new pedagogical methods, and develop professionally. That includes learning new tools and attending relevant CATLR or other professional development events that improve pedagogy and teaching.
References & Bibliography
Lehman, Rosemary M, and Simone Conceição. 2010. Creating a Sense of Presence in Online Teaching: How to" Be There" for Distance Learners. Vol. 18. John Wiley & Sons.
\(HourlyRate \approx \frac{CourseStipend}{(p + (14 \times w) + o}\), where \(p\) is pre-course preparation time, \(w\) is average weekly time, \(o\) is post-course time, and \(m\) is miscellaneous time.↩︎
It is assumed that course materials exist and that they do not have to be created.↩︎
during the week only; not expected to be done when university is on recess or closed; on days where there is no live recitation or other live session where students can ask questions↩︎