Distance learning is like an orgasm: difficult to fully describe to somebody who’s never experienced it.
In my role as a college program manager I hear from students every day who want to register for distance learning courses but have loads of questions about whether they are likely to be successful. How many courses should I take at once? Do I have to be online at a certain time each week? If you want to, can you complete all the assignments in the first three weeks and then go on holidays for the rest of term? Sometimes people are skeptical about they’d fare in a course that never meets on campus. Mostly people are excited about a course that never meets on campus. Everybody cares about how their distance learning program will support them in their career goals.
Like prospective students, prospective instructors can see some of the immediate benefits of distance learning. Being highly educated people and experts in their fields, faculty are often reluctant to admit that they don’t know the basics about distance learning. Including how to go about getting a job.
Distance Learning: The Basics
Delivery
Most distance learning these days occurs online. There are still a few paper-based programs out there, however. So keep your eye open for keywords such as “correspondence” that would indicate you’ll be receiving and sending Purolator packages rather than logging into a teaching portal. That said, many of the “fully online” courses nonetheless incorporate a paper-based final exam. Students have to write their exam at a local college Test Center where they can be supervised and timed. Instructors are shipped these completed exams for evaluation.
Timing
There are two types of distance learning: synchronous and asynchronous. In synchronous courses, instructors and learners log on at a scheduled time (each week) and interact live. This could be formatted as a lecture, chat, roundtable, etc. using platforms such as Connect, Twitch, or You Tube Live. In asynchronous courses, by contrast, learners access materials online and proceed through them at their own pace. Although deadlines are involved, there is no scheduled time of the week when the instructor or learner has to be present online. In Ontario colleges, asynchronous courses are prevalent.
Platform
Depending in the course “shell” or platform used, there can be anywhere from very few images and little interactivity to a great deal of it. More recent kinds of eLearning software like Adobe Captivate incorporate characters, settings, drop-down definitions, quizzes and all sorts of bling to guide students through a learning module. However it’s important to remember that, no matter how interactive is the design, distance learning is essentially self-directed study. As an instructor, you will not be “leading class” so much as facilitating individuals to learn on their own.
How to Get a Gig as a SME
In distance learning circles, SME stands for Subject Matter Expert. It’s become a popular term lately in higher education more broadly, because it’s fun to say and reminiscent of the character Smeagol, a.k.a. Gollum, in Lord of the Rings. SME’s play different roles in distance learning. In course development or re-development, the SME is responsible for providing module content—i.e. the generally text-based instruction and explanation that students will be reading and interacting with in order to learn a given topic. SME’s are also the gatekeepers and providers of appropriate course readings and resources, essentially any content that will be included in the course. In this mode of being SME-ey, you are authoring.
Very often, the same SME’s who are hired to create or develop an online course go on to instruct it. (And vice versa: when colleges are interested in revamping course content, they naturally look to the current instructors for their subject matter expertise.) There can be spin-off gigs for SME’s in good standing. For example, your program manager or coordinator may someday need help in creating or evaluating a Prior Learning Assessment for a course or to help with a program review or other ad hoc projects. SME’s, like classroom instructors, are also natural candidates to be Program Leads, Program Specialists and Program Coordinators.
In Ontario at least, jobs as SME’s, or distance learning instructors, are not usually advertised. As you’ve probably already guessed, these positions are contract and part-time in nature; at colleges and universities, distance learning courses are managed within continuing education faculties and they are incorporated by more general searches for instructors within program areas. When responding to one of these more general adverts, specify in your cover letter that you are seeking opportunities in distance learning.
But don’t wait for an advert. A well-timed, brief cover letter and c.v. are sometimes all it takes to be noticed by program administrators. They may be looking for new hires for the upcoming term but have not had a chance to post an advert. Or not had to bother because of a steady flow of inquiries. To find the right person to send your application to you will need to do a little research. Since you would be facilitating at a distance, you’re not limited by which institutions are in commuting distance. Although my college is in the GTA, I have a SME in my team who lives in Nova Scotia.
To be pro-active first figure out what distance learning courses you’d be most qualified and interested in teaching. Next, determine which institution is hosting those courses. For diploma courses (and some degree courses as well) the OntarioLearn.com portal is a handy central website that lists all the distance learning courses available in the province. For each course you click on, the “host college” is listed, as well as the colleges that are picking up the course, or offering it in one of their programs. Only the host college has control over the academics of the course, including the hiring of faculty. The others college act like distributors of the product. Once you’ve determined the host college, you can seek the appropriate contact names and email address from their program pages and/or their centre for distance learning. Don’t bother inquiring at any of the “partner colleges” because nobody there is able to hire you, even if they wanted to.
Renumeration for facilitating a course can range from fairly lucrative to you’ve-gotta-be-kidding-me, depending on enrollment. SME authorship is perhaps better paid but it’s demanding and can be very time-consuming. As with most roles in higher education, don’t go into it for the money.
How to Keep a Gig as a SME
Having expertise in a given subject matter does not make you a good distance instructor or course facilitator. The following skills are ones that I consider key, drawn from my years of experience as a distance instructor and program manager.
Written communication skills
Most of your interaction with students will be via email and online chat/discussion. In asynchronous courses, all of it will. The better you are at expressing yourself in writing, the better a distance instructor you will be. Some folks who are charismatic in front of a classroom “audience” are not articulate, expressive or precise when it comes to their written expression. On the contrary, some folks who are uninspiring in a classroom setting make excellent online instructors precisely because they are skilled writers and effective readers. In some ways, online instructing is more closely akin to writing than teaching.
A note here on typing skills. If you type in the hunt ‘n peck style, that’s a real consideration for your efficiency and therefore your rate of pay. In distance learning, you have to communicate efficiently, frequently, perpetually with the students in your care.
Time management and organization skills
Don’t laugh. Just because you have a graduate degree and years of classroom teaching experience, that doesn’t mean you have good time management skills. You may be just like some students, who excel in a course where they are expected to show up, interact, and be accountable to others on a regular basis, yet when left to their own devices find themselves unable to multi-task or prioritize.
Frankly, it’s hard. If you dislike being interrupted by others, feel uncomfortable leaving multiple browser windows open or have trouble plotting your days three months in advance, be wary about your ability to excel as a distance educator.
Nothing will cause you to lose the next contract faster than failing to “show up” for the course you are teaching. You will be expected to be present and available online (e.g. checking your email) on a daily and sometimes hourly basis to the people who are working with you—both supervisors and students. It may sound simple, but your ability to stick to deadline, submit final grades on time, and return graded termwork rapidly is very important. Failure to deliver puts a wrench in the variously intertwined timeframes and systems that are in place to support programming across the post-secondary network.
Comfort with technology
This deserves a tertiary mention. The truth is, you don’t need to be a computer wizard or a social media maven to excel in distance learning. If you are hired as a SME for content creation, you are hired for your content expertise, not your software or graphic design expertise. If you are hired as a facilitator, that it is because of your SME too. So if you are interested in landing a gig as SME, put your efforts into professional development and publishing within your specialization, not Linux for Dummies.
That said, if you do have professional experience in tech development or user experience, it’s worth highlighting that in your application. And it’s certainly worth thinking twice about the gig entirely if you feel like you’re already spending too many hours in front of a screen.
But maybe you’ve already experienced distance learning. What did you find most rewarding, and most challenging? What advice can you offer to those who are considering a place for themselves as a SME for a distance learning course?
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