U of I Online
Breakout Session Reports
Report from the
Breakout Session on Faculty Compensation
University of Illinois Online Retreat
February 22, 2000
Annette Valenta (UIC) and Steve Schomberg (UIUC), facilitators
Overall
Set of Conclusions
1. Each department and each faculty member within the department
are different and want to be compensated for different things.
2. A set of guidelines is needed that are broad and flexible.
3. The current policy in The General Rules Concerning University
Organization and Procedure governing compensation is out of date.
4. We are in a transition phase regarding compensation models.
5.
Development of online teaching needs to somehow be recognized
not just as “extra” work but also as a form of scholarship.
Guidelines/Fundamental
Principles Related to Faculty Compensation for Online Teaching
1. The department head/chair should have the latitude to decide whether compensation is appropriate.
Academic units
should have autonomy with regard to budgetary resources (online
revenue) and personnel assignments.
A department head has the best view as to how compensation fits
with overall load and other demands in the department.
No one set of guidelines other than general principles can
really guide this process. Academic
units should have the latitude to use a variety of means to involve
and motivate faculty to participate in online instruction.
Every unit and every faculty member has unique needs and
motivators (intrinsic and extrinsic) and unit leaders should not be
bound by a rigid policy of compensation.
Units have separate
issues and circumstances that make a uniform policy on compensation
not possible or even appropriate.
2.
Separate “development” from “teaching” courses.
There are times it
is very appropriate to compensate faculty members with an
extra-month’s salary for the development of an online course when it
may not be appropriate to pay additional compensation for teaching the
course. Compensation that
is used to facilitate change, encourage transition, and develop
faculty should be viewed as temporary.
Compensation might be provided (a)
to allow the faculty member to gain new skills in order to deliver a
course via an online modality, (b) for the development phase and
effort for the course, or (c) for delivery of the class the first time
or two.
3. Consider parallels to the consulting guideline.
Policy
now permits a faculty member to consult one day per week and to be
compensated for it. Couldn’t
a similar policy be developed for teaching online courses as they take
time on the weekends and evenings responding to student queries and
other course management obligations?
It
was felt that to exceed the amount of time comparable to the
“allowed consulting” time would conflict with faculty
responsibility to the unit and the University.
One
model would allow the unit
leader to determine the faculty compensation but would limit this
extra compensation to 20% of time or 1/5 of their salary. Another possible
guideline would be to limit additional compensation to 1/9 of the
salary for the academic year plus up to an additional 2/9 of the
summer if teaching or developing courses.
4.
The campuses need to each develop a clear policy statement of
the purpose and goals for online teaching.
Currently, Chicago
and Urbana do not have specific written goal statements regarding the
goals of online instruction. For
example, do the campuses desire growth by the addition of off-campus
online students? Do the
campuses want to use online instruction for the purpose of teaching
campus students in a more efficient/effective manner?
How do departmental goals interface with campus goals? For example, some departments may want to grow, others many
not. Some
departments/college may need to create online programs to be
competitive with their peers. Is
our goal to “regularize” online instruction and integrate it into
the culture of academic units and into the roles of faculty?
5.
Perhaps additional compensation could be provided if there are
"net" new students.
Extra
compensation should apply to courses in certificate programs or
continuing education programs or special online degree programs.
However, this extra compensation perhaps should not be offered
for courses that are for “regularly enrolled” students.
If faculty are expected to increase teaching load with the
addition of online teaching then clearly support (through the
employment of TAs) should be included.
6.
Forms of compensation should not be limited by time.
Forms of compensation should be varied and allow to match with departmental and college goals. For example, in some cases, compensation may be in the form of additional graduate student, research, or professional support. In other cases it might be a percent of salary. In yet other cases, it might be on a per- student taught basis.
Compensation
does not always mean money in the paycheck.
Faculty might find other resources more desirable.
The hiring of an RA, expense reimbursement for travel to a
professional meeting, purchase of new equipment, payment for a short
course, reduced teaching load for a semester while faculty member is
“retooling”, etc.
7. The immediate concern for initiation and change should not result in actions that are detrimental to long term sustenance.
The long-term goal
should be to build the capacity of departments to the extent that the
instruction could be onload. In
the short term, policy may need to permit payment of overload.
8.
The compensation of adjunct faculty should also be addressed.
Modes of
Compensation
1. Provide increased levels of TA assistance to help compensate
for extra work.
2. Release from a course taught on-campus to teach online to
off-campus students.
3. Pay faculty members on the basis of per-student taught.
4. Pay summer salary for course development and to compensate
for extra teaching.
5. Use the revenues from new students taught to add new lines to department so more courses can be taught within the onload course loads.
6. Teach the courses onload and have the funds go to the
department/college to be used as discretionary funds.
7. Create a research/equipment/professional travel fund that the
faculty member can draw from.
8. Create state-of-the-art teaching facilities to support online
teaching.
9. Build-up of campus teaching support infrastructure so that it
is easier to teach online.
Topics of
Discussion
1. Sufficiency of faculty incentives to teach online?
2. Appropriateness of a University-wide policy?
3. What kinds of classes are onload, what kinds are overload?
4. Is there a difference between continuing education classes
and campus-degree related classes?
5.
What is the relationship between intellectual property and
compensation?
6. When is it appropriate to link compensation to enrolments?
7. What is the vision for the University of Illinois and for the
campuses in particular regarding the future of online instruction
-- do we want to be a leader in teaching with technology?
If so, what will it take to get there?
8. Teaching is teaching, why compensate for online teaching?
9. In compensation policy, how do we account for the 7X24 nature
of online teaching and students expecting help when they need it?
10. If departments can decide, why is a policy necessary?
11. Should the VPAA guideline on online teaching compensation be
changed?
12. Is starting-up a course different in effort from on-going
teaching and maintenance of the course?
13. Do we want to increase net new students?
If we want more students, how do we fight the inertia of most
departments not wanting to get bigger?
14. Do we want to be a Mega-University?
15. If faculty members are on 12-month contracts, how do we
compensate extra when the month of extra summer pay is not an
available option?
16. What is a working definition of overload?
17. Would different compensation models require different
policies?
18. Why would faculty members want to expand their workload?
19. How can incentives to teach online match the campus goals of
where we want to be in online teaching in ten years?
20. What is the role of the teaching assistant; who really does
the work in teaching?
21. How can the compensation model account for the competition
for faculty time?
22. How is teaching online different from teaching on campus?
Does it all change when travel is no longer necessary?
23. How do the campuses mesh the research culture with the
instructional culture?
24. If the U of I doesn’t compensate faculty members for online
teaching, will our faculty be enticed to teach for other institutions
online?