It is time for academics to start taking distance education technology seriously and learning how to teach online for a variety of online bachelor degree programs and online master degree programs. While the resistance to the idea of teaching college and university students from a laptop computer is still quite great in the education community, the realization that there is little economic value in continuing to teach in a physical college, community college or university classroom is unavoidable these days as budget cuts decimate opportunities for educators with earned graduate degrees, a Ph.D. or masters degree. Frankly, it is becoming a exercise in futility to try and earn what could be considered a real living from delivering academic instruction inside of a physical classroom. Without going into too much detail about why the physical classroom is now an artifact of history, a quick glance at the daily news will confirm that many, far too many, academically qualified teachers are losing their positions on the traditional campus. In order to reverse the circumstances it is necessary for an academic to knowledge that the vast majority of teaching, especially post-secondary teaching, is being moved to the Internet. So, it is relevant to point out that teaching for accredited online universities and accredited online colleges is one way for a technically proficient academic to acquire personal and professional mobility. It would be a mistake for any intellectual with an earned graduate degree to ignore the usefulness of mobility given today’s economic landscape. For example, it would be of great value for an online college adjunct with seven to ten online college classes in the online teaching schedule to have the liberty to simply pick up and move to another geographic location far distant from the original. The reason this could come in handy is that the cost of living in the original location could suddenly spike for reasons beyond the academic’s control and the ability to simply pop on an airplane and fly to another state, another city or even another country is something not to be ignored or dismissed out of hand.
One excellent strategy for locating online faculty positions with online college degree programs is to learn how to use a computer to navigate the Internet to thousands of websites representing community colleges, for-profit colleges and technical schools. Every post-secondary academic institution now has multiple online college courses in place that must be taught by academically qualified online adjunct instructors. The accreditation boards for the schools insist that the instructors of the online college classes possess at least a master’s degree, and there are many more online courses to be taught than there are qualified academics to teach them. Since it is possible to populate an online degree program with large numbers of online courses very quickly and student populations are literally exploding as more and more new and returning college students attempt to fortify their lives with a college degree in the hopes that the educational achievements can assist them when the economy recovers, the reality is that there is a great need for technically adroit and academically qualified online adjunct instructors to teach for the accredited online universities that are deploying more online degree programs every day. To put it bluntly, it is necessary to make vast amounts of applications every day in order to populate an online teaching portfolio with multiple online college classes, but the net effect will be that the online adjunct instructor will win mobility in the end and that is a significant victory.