Strategies to Manage Faculty Workload

One of the most time-consuming aspects of teaching an online course is providing various types of support to students who do not have the benefit from being in person on a campus, where such structures are in place to provide those supports simply by walking from office to office. Faculty should try to mimic this easy pathway to support in order to ensure that their students go directly to the departments which will provide them with the needed answers. Below are some strategies you can use to provide support to students before, during, and after the online course has ended.

Create and share a list of resources with students before the semester starts

• Encourage students to direct their technical questions to the university’s help desk or technical support team.
• Provide contact information to academic support such as the registrar’s office, financial aid, and the writing center so that students are empowered to help themselves (this will cut down on the number of questions faculty receive as well). 
• Have a plan for redirecting students to the proper channels in the event that faculty do get questions beyond the scope of their teaching.
• Gather names, email addresses, and phone numbers for people in support positions.
• Ensure all of this information is in one central location for students to easily find and access (i.e., syllabus, a "Getting Help" module of the course, etc.).

Create support materials such as a video orientation and tutorials Links to an external site. and include them within the online course to reduce the number of questions you receive

• Provide an orientation video to answer questions about where to find things within the structure of the course. It can also lay out the broader expectations and reinforce the policies listed in the syllabus.
• Create tutorials and technology tip sheets to assist students with their technical issues and questions.
• Use screencasts to create orientation or tutorial videos and locate them in one area of the course. The benefit of creating these types of videos is that faculty can easily reuse them in each online course they teach. That way, they do not have to answer the same technical questions over and over again, but instead can refer students to the videos.
• Have faculty create FAQs, or Frequently Asked Questions prior to teaching a course, and/or add to it while they are teaching, creating a robust resource for students.
• Provide sample assignments to help reduce the number of logistical questions received from students.
• Use rubrics to provide consistent feedback and clear expectations of students' assignments.

Establish a Help Forum in the discussion board space or main area of the online course

• Direct students to the help forum where students can post their questions and faculty can respond in a way that is visible to everyone. Faculty should encourage students to use this forum for any questions that would apply broadly to other students in the course. They can also encourage students to respond to one another if they know the answer, thereby reducing faculty workload.
• Define faculty expectations for interactions with students at the very beginning to inform them of the frequency and expected response time for all communications.