Several years ago I wrote about how I was preparing to start a Post-Master’s Certificate program in Curriculum Studies. I remember writing that entry and at the time the only phrase I kept hearing go through my head was Chris Rock on the Howard Stern Show saying, “You’re going back to Shawshank!?” after Stern announced he was getting married again. I had that same thought going through my head when I started the Post-Master’s Certificate a few years ago and, in some respects, I have the same thought now as I prepare for this doctoral program.

There is a slight difference between now and then, though. When I started the Post-Master’s Certificate I had that, “Here we go again,” feeling because I was putting myself back in the classroom setting as a student. This time around I don’t have that feeling because I’m going back to the classroom setting as a student, rather I have that feeling because I’m going back to using student loans to finance my education. If you haven’t read my student loan story, then you can get a full rundown of my life with student loans by clicking here. If you scroll through those posts, you’ll find the one where I announce that I’ve fully repaid my student loans.

Though I need to take out student loans to finance my doctoral education, I am in a much different personal and financial place than I was when I finished my Master’s Degree in 2006. For example, after I graduated in 2006 I began working at a company in an entry level-type position making an entry level-type salary. Now, almost 10 years later, I still work at the same company and I’ve obviously progressed in my career. Granted, I don’t have the regular financial capacity to make $2,500 per month payments like I was making at the end of the aggressive, self-imposed repayment plan for my previous student loans. However, I do have the capacity to make payments on my new student loans while I’m still enrolled as a student.

And that’s probably the biggest difference between me being a student in 2015 versus me being a college student from 1999 to 2003 or a graduate student from 2004 to 2006. Today, I can afford to pay down my student loans during the actual semesters when I take them out in the first place. Will I be able to pay down the entirety of each loan during the semester when I’m taking the classes that the loan paid for? Probably not, but I’m in a much better position to try to do that now than I was 10+ years ago.

There are two other differences that I think are worth mentioning outside of the student loan issue. First, this is the first time that I’ll be taking fully online classes. In the past, I’ve successfully completed hybrid courses that are partially online and partially in the classroom. And for the last several years I’ve actually instructed many fully online classes. However, this will be the first time that I am a student in such a class. Second, this is the first time since I completed my Master’s Degree in 2006 where I’ll be taking more than one class per semester. After I graduated with the Master’s Degree, I completed two additional graduate programs by taking one class each semester (outside of textbooks, I didn’t pay to take these classes or to earn these degrees as I was provided with tuition remission at the local college where I work as an Adjunct Professor). The last time I was enrolled in more than one class as a student was during the spring semester of 2006.

All of these comments aside, I’m really looking forward to being engaged in the classroom as a student again. I’m particularly interested in engaging with my new classmates in an all-online setting. And, of course, I’m excited at the prospects of completing the doctoral program and finishing up a lifetime of classroom activity.

Canadian students in a lecture hall - not my students, but students nonetheless

Some of you might recall a little over a year ago when I wrote about how I was getting a little suspicious of the online learning environment and its influence on student achievement. In short, that blog entry talked about how I was unimpressed at the amount of classes that the online college I work for allowed their students to take at a single time. Further, I’ve been continually unimpressed by the inability for my online students to write in an academically acceptable manner or conform to basic academic formatting standards. Frankly, my students are not great writers nor do they give a damn about the required academic formats (APA, MLA, etc) when submitting their papers.

And still – as aggravating as those issues may be to an educator, believe it or not the focus of this article is something different! Today, my unnecessary complication is the with the attitudes of my online learners. To put it succinctly, these students don’t understand the first thing about the teacher/student relationship! Actually, there is a second annoyance that I’ve been encountering with my students which has to do with their inability to comprehend the nature of the online learning environment, but let me bitch about the teacher/student relationship first!

I’ve been continually amazed at how poorly prepared for the advanced learning environment some of my online learners are when my classes start. Now granted, I’m not talking about the entire class of students nor am I referring to even half of the class. However, at least 10% to 15% of each class that I teach is comprised of students who do not understand their role in the teacher/student relationship. Let me define that a little bit more…

I do not expect my students to be rote learners like we’re all stuck in the 1950’s or something. Instead, I expect my students to understand that they are not my customers – they are my students. This is a big topic of discussion in the higher education circles: whether the people who sit in the classrooms are customers/consumers or students. And, to my great disappointment, the trend is pushing more towards students being viewed as customers instead of seekers of knowledge or impassioned learners.

This is a big problem.

Defining a student as a consumer puts the student in a position to believe (incorrectly) that they can control the flow of work in the class (homework and weekly assignments) or the requirements for passing the class (grading metrics and evaluation rubrics). Why does this happen? Well, it happens for the same reason that, as a consumer, you can bitch and moan to your local auto mechanic and get your bill lowered. Namely… the customer is always right!

Exacerbating this problem is that this customer/teacher relationship just doesn’t work well in online learning (or higher education in general). In fact, it is the job of the college to tell these “customers” when they are dead wrong. At some point I hope to write a longer piece on this blog about how creating the customer vs. student scenario has led to the painful destruction of what should be a great American academic system. For now, though, my focus is on how some of my students believe that they can dictate my grading schedule. It’s outrageous! I had a student e-mail me two weeks before the class ended to tell me that he expected his final grade to be completed within 12 hours of his final paper being submitted (which was due the following weekend) because he needed to report his grade to the company that funds his education. After laughing out loud, I e-mailed the student back and explained that there is a ten day period between when the final student work is submitted and the final grades are due and that he should expect to see his final grade at some point towards the end of that ten day period.

He began e-mailing me every single day about his final grade. The student started contacting me one day prior to the class ending through the middle of the ten day period, which was when I had completed my final grading and submitted his grade for posting. Luckily, the online university was on my side in this debacle because – believe it or not – the student had been contacting the university daily, too!

For the last course that I taught, I had five or six of these unnecessary student complications. Again, all of this stems from the idea that the student is a customer and not a person being evaluated for his or her academic capabilities.

To finish up, the other item that annoys me about the online learning environment is the lack of online learners to understand how this arrangement is supposed to work. The best example that I can give is the students themselves – these are good people who, for one reason or another, could not attend college during the traditional time in one’s life where they would attend college (right after high school or a few years after high school ended). Maybe they started a family, maybe they took over the family business, maybe they had a job in the trades and are only now going back to get a degree – whatever the case, these folks are typically hard-working, already employed people on crazy schedules.

And I totally respect that fact. In fact, I encourage more people who are not of the traditional college age to seek out methods to procure college degrees.

What shocks me, though, is that these online learners don’t take a minute to do the least bit of research on the people who teach their classes because if they did – surprise, surprise – they’d find out that their professors are in the same boat! We’re typically teaching at two or three universities and, in my case, I’ve got a variety of jobs and volunteer positions that take up all of my time. In other words, when I have a “customer” student complaining that they want their grade to be submitted first and ten days earlier than the rest of the class, it makes me want to punch the wall. There’s an arrogance – an ignorance of reality – in that request. There’s a certain, “I’m in charge and I’m paying you for my degree so fork over what I want, when I want it – NOW!” in that type of request.

It’s unacceptable and I hope that my fellow online teachers are approaching these problems the same way that I do – with the knowledge that we have an obligation to uphold the academic standards of our institutions and thus we need to be sure that the teacher/student relationship as well as the teaching environment are both preserved and respected.

Couldn't find a good picture online, so this is a picture of my home office. Where the magic happens!

The first question that some folks might ask is, “Why? What happened?” Okay, I guess that’s two questions. The answer to these questions is actually pretty simple. First, the local college changed their general education requirements to require only one social science class instead of two. Personally, I think that this is a mistake on the college’s part because if there was ever a time in our history that we needed to promote greater understanding of political aspects of our society – it’s now! In any event, I teach introductory courses in the Political Science department. This change in the general education requirements led to less demand for introductory courses from the college’s incoming Freshmen (and all students) and, ultimately, led to the department assigning less teaching assignments to the adjuncts.

I don’t feel down about this, though (and you shouldn’t either!). I’m cool with the arrangement. Look, I want the local college (to which I am a donor) to run and operate as efficiently as possible. If that means that the college has to put a few of us adjuncts on the academic equivalent of the “reserve list,” then so be it. That’s the way the process in these institutions is supposed to work – when there is more demand, then they need more hands on deck; when there is less demand, then less instructors are needed. I’m cool with it.

Plus, my teaching obligations at the all-online college have been steadily picking up since I started with them last year. For an example of how these teaching assignments have been increasing – I started at the all-online college teaching one class with 4 or 5 students in it. Over the last year, I’ve been asked to teach a variety of courses from nonprofit management to foundations of leadership and I now routinely get assigned 20+ student classes each “semester” (I put “semester” in quotes because at this college, each month begins a new semester and thus I can be assigned a new class with new students each month).

The online teaching assignments take up a great deal of my free time, but I’m fine with putting in the time because all of the income I earn from this teaching will go directly towards my tax obligation remaining student loan debt.

So there’s a brief update on where I’m at with two of my side gigs. Don’t despair – I’m cool with all of it!

After spending a few vacations in a row doing this type of stuff, it begins to completely wear a person out.

But I’m not complaining. Nope. Instead, I’m glad because – just like with my student loans – I can now begin to see some light at the end of this tunnel of constantly working around the clock. What does that mean? Well, let me explain!

I’ve chronicled on this blog many times in the past few months that I’ve been getting rid of some website clients for a variety of reasons. The primary reason that I’m spinning clients off is due to the misunderstanding that many of my [former] clients had about what my duties were as a webmaster (i.e. I’m not the guy to call when your computer has a virus) as well as my rates being so low that I wasn’t turning a large enough profit to keep these clients in my portfolio. Was I turning a profit with these clients? More or less. But it certainly wasn’t akin to what my time is worth in the market. So by clearing out some of these clients, I’m going to open up some more free time in my schedule.

On top of that, I began this public relations certificate program at the local college last year. Why did I start the program, you ask? Well, I hate loose ends and I attended this college as a graduate student for one semester before leaving to go to Rutgers University to pursue a different Masters Degree. In the mean time, during that one semester at the local college I completed one course for three credits. Technically, I’ve had those three credits outstanding and just hanging around at the local college for seven years – and that has always annoyed me. To remedy that annoyance, I started a certificate program during the fall semester of 2009. The program calls for 12 credits in order to receive the certificate and I now have (including those three credits from 2003) nine credits completed in the program. I’m currently taking an independent study (in an awesome topic, by the way) that will be completed by December 15th of this year. Once the independent study is completed and [successfully] graded, I will be a certified public relations specialist. And I won’t have those three credits hanging around or have to worry about studying and researching like a graduate student any more, either. More free time and a free public relations specialist certificate? Works for me!

My other big commitment that will be alleviated before Christmas is my face-to-face teaching obligations at the local college. Currently, I’m teaching one face-to-face course twice each week in the morning. This is the first time that I’m teaching in the morning and it definitely has been challenging on my personal and professional schedules. Once this class ends, though, I’m not scheduled to teach another face-to-face class until next September. In other words, my time commitment at a college campus that is about 15 – 20 minutes from my home will dramatically decrease until next fall. Not bad!

As for the online teaching gig, all of the courses that I’m currently mentoring will be over in the middle of December. To date, I haven’t been scheduled to teach any new classes in December or January, but that’s okay. There is an ebb and a flow to the demand for the niche courses that I teach for this online university and I expect that the demand will pick up again in the early spring. Although you never know with this online college – sometimes they assign a course out of the blue. However, right now it looks like that obligation on my time will be easing up in the middle of December.

Thinking a little bit longer term, some of you may know that while I serve as the Treasurer of the fraternity Foundation, I am also leading our strategic planning process. We are scheduled to complete that process by the first weekend of February 2011. Once that process is complete, a great deal of my time that I spend in my mini-home office will be opened up again for me to spend on my personal interests or… nothing at all!

So when you read entries like this on JerseySmarts.com, don’t think that I’m bitching. In fact, I lay out these types of entries because this is still a personal blog and it helps me to organize my thoughts a little bit. So thanks for reading through my thought organization process!

But the point of this entry is that I’m beginning to grow suspicious of this all-online university setting and I’ll tell you why…

A few months ago I popped into an online discussion board populated by professors from this all-online university. Among the many interesting and engaging discussions was the poor writing quality of the student population, in general. This was a problem that I noticed in my classes, but I wasn’t sure what to make of it because of the demographic composition of my students. They’re mostly older students that ended their education during or immediately after high school and then entered the working world. Then ten, twenty, thirty, and even forty and fifty years later they decide that they want to get a Bachelor’s Degree and enroll in the all-online university where I teach some classes. With that type of background, the class instructor (me) needs to be able to process and ultimately comprehend a different writing style.

I’m fine with that – believe me.

But reading through these discussions (and the one cited above, particularly) led me to start thinking about what type of student was actually enrolling in this school. However, as with most “deep thoughts” that I’ve had recently, I put it aside and worried about the work at hand that I needed to complete before whatever deadline hit. Most of you know how it is with deadlines.

But then I began teaching another section of my course and within two weeks of the class starting, half of the students were not responding to e-mails or participating in the online discussions. When you’re enrolled in an all-online university, you must participate in the online discussions – it’s how you’re graded for goodness sake! Like any educator would be, this lack of engagement made me pretty concerned. I tried contacting each of the students that chose not to participate in any of the assignments and I received three responses. Two of the students said that they planned on completing all of the work, but they were a little busy at the moment and to stay tuned because they would submit all of their work on-time. I didn’t hear from them again until, well, read on. The third student, however, was a real eye-opener for me. The third student told me that she was enrolled in 54 credits through December.

Repeat: FIFTY-FOUR CREDITS THROUGH DECEMBER!

Folks, that is absolutely obscene. For this all-online university to allow a student to register for 18 classes in a five month period is disgusting. For comparison’s sake, in a bricks-and-mortar college semester (which is about three and a half months) the typical student takes between 4 and 6 classes. And those students who opt to take 6 classes during the semester know that they are getting themselves ready for an extremely busy three and a half months! Yet, the all-online university where I teach some classes allowed a student to take three times the amount of classes that a traditional university would allow.

That’s ridiculous and the all-online university should be ashamed of itself.

I advised the student to drop my class since it was not feasible for her to submit the required information in an appropriate timeframe. She agreed and dropped the class and actually thanked me for giving her such good, sound advice. Look, I should probably be advising students to stay in my classes because then I get paid more, but I couldn’t do that to the student. It’s just not right.

That was about six weeks ago when the class was just getting started. Now let’s fast-forward to last week when the class ended. Guess who I heard from all of a sudden? That’s right – I heard from those two students who told me that they would have everything submitted on time. Since they didn’t complete all of the required work during the required timeframes (or even the grace periods), they scored a “0” on each item which led them both to fail the class miserably. However, two days before the class was scheduled to end (I’m not exaggerating, it was two days prior to the class ending) they contacted me, separately, and asked if they could submit all of the past due material.

My mind when I read those e-mails: “Really? Really? You didn’t have time to do the required work during the two months that the class was in session, but now you’re going to do two months worth of work in two days? Really? Do I really have a sign on my virtual forehead that says, ‘Moron!’? Really? You’d have been kicked out of the course already in a bricks-and-mortar university.”

However, one of the tenets of this all-online university is that we cater to our students’ professional lives and personal needs. So I had no choice but to tell these students that I would accept their late work and grade it, replacing their “0” grades with whatever they earned. But I have to tell you this – the work they submitted was rushed and really poorly done. They didn’t score well at all and, in truth, they should have been removed from the course as soon as they didn’t submit the required work on time (or a day or two late).

So this latest experience mixed with the generally mediocre-at-best writing skills of my students has me growing more suspicious of this all-online university stuff. I’m not sure where this is going to put me at this particular institute of higher education as I continue to build and expand my professional teaching resume, but at this point – I’m very concerned about my students and whether or not they are capable of the type of quality that the job market expects from a Bachelor’s Degree holder.

This fall (and for the first time since I’ve been teaching) I was scheduled to teach Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights for about an hour and fifteen minutes each night. Typically, I teach only Monday and Wednesday or Tuesday and Thursday so this arrangement was new for me and definitely more of a challenge. However, at the last minute (late last week) my classes were rearranged and it turns out that instead of teaching each night of the week I’ll probably only wind up teaching on Tuesday and Friday mornings. This, of course, is a big change for me.

In order for me to be even able to teach the morning class I had to get approval from my job (which both my direct supervisor and the President of the company approved enthusiastically – they love that I teach). So once that was taken care of, I had to think about my schedule for the coming semester and I think that this could work out very well. You see, to date the university has only canceled my Monday / Wednesday class which means that there’s still a chance that I’ll be teaching on Tuesday / Thursday nights. I’m fine with that since the Tuesday / Thursday night class starts at 6:00pm and I’ll be home by 7:45pm each night (if not slightly earlier). That’s fine with me! Plus, I was thinking that what I might do is schedule myself to have meetings with clients for my day job on Tuesdays in the late morning and early afternoon. That way I can avoid traveling from West Long Branch to Trenton and then back to West Long Branch at night, you know? At least if I have meetings during the day, I can schedule them within a reasonable distance of Monmouth County and not drive myself crazy driving all over God’s Creation.

Anyway, that’s what the face-to-face teaching schedule is looking like for the coming semester. In addition to that, I might be teaching another few sections of online courses for the state’s online college. One way or another, I’ll certainly be pretty busy in the coming months…

Usable Web Solutions, LLC. In terms of what I accomplished over the break, I would have to say that the most progress was made on updating and upgrading certain aspects of my website company. Of these upgrades the most important include revising portions of my standard client contract for services and integrating a few important dates into my local copy of Outlook’s calendar system. Now I’ll be warned a few weeks ahead of time of contracts that are ready to expire and I’ll be able to offer my clients a new contract using the upgraded copy that I completed over the break.

I was also able to complete at least one new website over the staycation, but I cannot announce that website yet since it is not yet “live” on the servers. Maybe more important than completing that website, though, was the time that I spent pouring over the records of my website company to single out those deadbeat clients and marking those business relationships for termination in 2010. As a small business owner, I understand that I am going to run into some people who are just not good at creating lasting business relationships. I get it – it’s part of the game. However, I purposely keep my small business small because I have a day job as well as two other jobs (teaching) and I don’t need the aggravation of deadbeat customers. By the end of 2010, I should be rid of these deadbeat customers once and for all (in fact, I’ve already severed my relationship with one of those companies earmarked for removal).

Teaching/Learning. Since I am teaching two courses in the spring, there are a number of materials that I needed to prepare to be ready for the new semester. These two courses are new to me and one of them is new to the college where I am teaching it. I teach at two colleges – one is an all-online college and the other is a bricks and mortar institution. I accomplished the feat (and it was a feat, believe me) of learning the online teaching system for the all-online college. Through learning this system, I prepared myself for teaching the all-online class which actually begins today.

However, for the new course that I designed and created, I accomplished very little. That’s okay, though, since I have another three weeks before the course even begins. In the next three weeks, I’ll get all of the necessary course material prepare for this class so I have no worries about being ready to go in the spring semester.

And finally, I wanted to pick up the textbooks necessary for the course that I am taking at the local college, but the syllabus has not been released yet and thus I didn’t know what to buy! Nothing I can do about that one, I guess!

Relaxation. The most important thing that one needs to accomplish during a staycation is reaching a level of relaxation that makes the break worth the paid time off. I think that I accomplished that level of relaxation, though I have to admit that I’m not sure. Last year during this Christmas holidays I took off the same amount of time from the office as I did this year. Yet last year I distinctly remember feeling relaxed and completely refreshed by Thursday/Friday of the staycation. This year, I don’t know if I achieved that feeling of relaxation, though I do know that by Thursday/Friday of the break I was getting slightly stir crazy from being in my apartment so much!

All in all, I’m glad to be back in the office today just so I have something different to do with my time. However, I wouldn’t mind taking a few more days off so I can kick back and relax without having to worry about preparing for teaching two classes or dealing with deadbeat website clients. Maybe I’ll take some time to do that this summer…

I’m on vacation from work this week (actually, my vacation started after work this past Tuesday night, but who’s keeping track anyway?). I don’t have to be back in the office until next Monday, January 4th, 2010. Including today, that leaves me with seven more days of vacation before going back to the office and I plan on doing as little as possible during the next seven days!

Last year during this same time frame I went on a “staycation” and it was the only time during the entire year that I actually relaxed and unwound from the office. While I have some preparatory work to do for the new class that I created and am now teaching at the local college this spring, I hope to achieve the same level of rest and relaxation that I achieved last year at this time. Between teaching the new class at the local college, accepting an online teaching position at a statewide online college, running my website company, serving as a Trustee on the national board of my fraternity’s foundation, and my day job – I’ve got a big spring season ahead of me. When factoring that I might have to pickup and move to a new place at the end of my current lease, everything becomes all the more complicated.

But hey, if you’re not busy, then you’re not living – right?

I have a bunch of backlogged entries to upload to the blog (last I counted there were some 20 entries waiting to be uploaded). So be sure that you stick around this week and see what’s going on at JerseySmarts.com!

Whenever this comes up in a conversation, it’s usually a pretty depressing point in the discussion because it shows a severe lack of understanding as to what a college degree actually does for a person. Obtaining a piece of paper that says “Bachelors of the Arts” or “Bachelor of Science” in any particular discipline does not make you a know-it-all genius on that topic. Yeah, you may know more facts and figures than the average person, but that would be expected, right?

The real benefit of getting that piece of paper is gaining access to an opportunity. That’s right – access to opportunities is what that college degree gets you in the real world. How many times have you looked at job descriptions and they say, “Bachelor’s Degree required?” Even if you’ve seen that requirement just once, you’ve seen how that piece of paper can grant you access to an opportunity that non college graduates cannot access. It’s just the way the business world is these days.

That’s not to say that there aren’t a multitude of excellent, high-paying jobs that don’t require a college degree. And many people from older generations would argue that the best way to gain better access to opportunities is to enter the military. I would probably agree with that for certain segments of the population today, too. But that doesn’t negate the fact that a college degree is a tremendous help in obtaining access to certain opportunities.

What many college graduates will tell you is that there are other benefits to going to college. In particular, they’d probably cite maturing socially and beginning to build a broad professional network as the top two non-academic benefits. These two benefits can be achieved in any number of ways including joining certain on-campus clubs, fraternities, sororities, student government, honor societies, etc. Those students that choose to engage in a meaningful dialogue with their professors outside of the classroom are probably the smartest students on campus. Why? Well, if you’re a young person starting out, why wouldn’t you want to connect with a professor who might have come from the business world and thus has a large network of seasoned professional contacts? Talk about an easy way to get an internship or a job out of college!

That aspect of the college experience has worked for me. I received my adjunct professor job through the recommendation of two former professors who I got to know outside of the classroom. One of them has also gotten me an online teaching position at a different university. I would have never been able to get these teaching gigs without the network that I built while in college.

There are a lot of aspects of college life that are beneficial to the eventual graduate (and even more benefits to the eventual masters degree graduate or doctoral graduate).

Well, I’m experiencing some version of crunch time this week and really since the beginning of this month. Not only do I have to revise the presentation that I’m giving to my students tomorrow night, but I also have to prepare a second presentation for the class that I’m taking at the college. In addition to all of that, I have to check this online message board associated with one of the classes that I teach at another college as well as finish two different websites which happen to be on two different production schedules. It’s a bit frustrating – especially when I consider how much productivity time is lost in my weekly 8 hours of commuting time.

The feeling, though, is somewhat different than I’ve grown accustomed to since I graduated with my graduate degree more than three years ago now. I’m not used to having a deadline for a course that I’m being graded in, though I am used to setting deadlines for my students! Sort of an interesting juxtaposition for me, but anyway…

What strikes me the most when I’m crunched for time is how much time is wasted in my week when I’m sitting in the car. Unfortunately, the presentations and the projects that I have to do for my job are not something that I can do during a car ride so I don’t have much use for those hours each week. It’s a shame – a big waste of time.

So there’s my mini-rant for the day. None of this stuff is overwhelming, but it is definitely an interesting feeling.