 It's 4 p.m. Hawaii Standard Time on Tuesday, and that means it's time for working together on Think Tech Hawaii. On this show, we discuss the effects of change on Hawaii's workforce, workplace, and the economy. I'm your host, Cheryl Crozier-Garcia, inviting you to be part of the conversation. You can call in to area code 415-871-2474, or you can tweet us at at thinktechhi. Today we are talking with Dr. William Soderman, a management professor from Worcester, Massachusetts, and a new member of the gig economy. Bill's going to help us understand changes in higher education and how those changes affect faculty and students. Hi Bill, welcome to the show. Hi Cheryl, how are you doing? I'm doing fine. How about you? It's great. It's nine o'clock in the evening here, which means it's dark, rainy, and cold. Oh, lovely. Well, it's lovely and sunny and warm in Honolulu, so I'm one up on you. But I wanted to talk to you because you've got a very interesting story. Something that we often don't expect people with your level of educational attainment and in your profession would experience. So, if you could, tell us how it is that you entered the gig economy, and did you expect that you would ever be in this position? I've been reading about the gig economy for the last couple of years, but I never quite expected that I would enter it like this. When I was at White Pacific University, where I work with you, I was a department chair, so I would hire and recruit adjunct or that adjunct instructors or supplemental instructors that help the full-time faculty. They take on extra classes, and they basically bear some of the teaching load. And I also did that when I moved to the mainland and took a position. And for a number of reasons, we decided to move to Massachusetts, and that's when I joined the gig economy, and I'm now teaching as an online adjunct for three different business schools. So, what kinds of challenges do you find as an online professor with no full-time university affiliation versus what you were experiencing as full-time faculty? As a full-time faculty member, I had a pretty good idea of what I would be teaching from semester to semester and when I would be teaching it. As a member of the gig faculty, I have more opportunities for flexibility in terms of what I teach and where I teach it. It's helpful that I can work with several different learning management systems or LMSs, as we call them in the industry. These are systems that students and faculty know by such brand names as Blackboard and Moodle. So, one of the challenges is actually navigating from university to university during the day. Each university has its own procedures, policies, and expectations, and each university also has its own system. For a number of reasons, universities like faculty to communicate over the university's email system, for example. So, during the day, I've got three or four different browsers running three different email programs and three different LMSs. Was that one of your students emailing you? Possibly. I've put them on. Perfect. Now, I have to ask you because you say you've got, say, a number of browsers open from one time to another. You may be teaching, shall we say, the same content for different universities in a particular term. How do you stay clear in your own mind which students belong with which particular groups and what the communication requirements are if they differ between schools? One of my universities has very clear communications requirements. They ask instructors to check in at least four times a week on their learning management system. Other universities have less strict expectations. Personally, I try to check in at least once a day onto each system just so that I can keep track of what's going on. And one thing that is convenient is that each university will allow me to connect their learning management system to that university's email. So, if a student asks a question through Blackboard or Moodle or Canvas, I will get that on my email pretty quickly. And that is a great way to manage student expectations. Students don't necessarily know that I'm teaching from the Eastern time zone, but many students in an online environment feel that instructors are on call. And it's important to stay on top of communication. Yeah, I think online students no matter where you are, because I know mine here have the expectation that I never sleep and I'm always available to them. I imagine then that would be even perhaps an even greater challenge when you've got multiple online forums to manage. How much control do you have over the curriculum that you use, the degree to which you can pick and choose assignments, structure grading to reflect your perceived needs of the students, things like that? At each university, the policies and procedures help dictate how I work with the students. One of the universities has very strict control over the content and the readings, which for an adjunct instructor is something of a relief because it means I don't have to spend a great deal of time finding appropriate exercises or readings. They've already been created by subject matter experts. It's my job to facilitate the conversation. At another university I'm teaching at, I'm actually developing a course for graduate students and it's requiring a lot of prep work, but I'm actually enjoying it because it feeds into some of my interests. I did get to pick the book, but in every university we're expected to teach to specific course learning objectives for each course and sometimes to program learning objectives as well. This feeds into a conversation about how each university does assessment. It's very important to keep student work products. It's very important to stay on the schedule that I've established. This is definitely a good week for us to be talking about that because right now I'm building all my sections. Most of them will start next week and a couple will start the week after. Are they all traditional, say one semester type 15-week semesters or do they work according to differing schedules? One of my universities works on eight-week or shorter semesters. The other two universities I'm working with work on traditional 15-week semesters. There are some advantages to each with the eight-week semesters. There's more of a workload for the student and the instructor, but there's less slack. There's less room for error. If I get sick or a student gets sick on an eight-week semester it maybe take more effort to overcome that time off than it would in a 15-week semester. Which brings us to another topic. Teaching is not the only responsibility of people in the professoriate. We're also called upon to do research and things like that. How do you find time and get support for whatever research initiatives you're working on? That is more of a challenge. Part of the gig economy and being an adjunct faculty member is that there is less financial support for doing research. On the other hand, because I am looking for a full-time faculty position, I do write and I do try to stay current because it's important over the long term to show my level of engagement in the subjects that I teach. How competitive is it for online adjunct faculty? Are there lots and lots of people that are looking for this kind of work or not so many? It's actually very competitive in the fields of business management and information systems, which are the fields that I teach in. I've seen forums where folks claim that they may need to do 50 or 100 interviews to get a teaching position. Now some of that may be due to the degrees they have. I'm fortunate that I have a PhD and an MBA from two very good business schools and I've got a fairly recent track record of teaching and research. But I think it is becoming more competitive as more people jump into this gig economy. I've talked with several people who have full-time jobs and they're teaching on top of that, either to supplement their income or to help themselves stay current. So is it fair to say that for those who are gigging in the academic environment, or knowledge workers in general, that it is difficult to secure a livelihood that is comfortable and commensurate with your educational attainment? It can be challenging. Adjuncts generally don't qualify for employer response with health insurance, which is one consideration. I'm fortunate because my wife working full-time at a local university, so I'm covered under her health insurance plan. But for someone who needs to purchase their health insurance on the open market or through other means, it can be something of a challenge. And so did you ever foresee that you would be in this position at the time where you are in your career, that you'd have to be looking for new employment and having to accept this kind of employment as part of your career path? It was a surprise, but it's turned out to be a good surprise because I've become a more versatile instructor and I've been exposed to how several different universities do their recruiting, training, and manage their online teaching. So it's actually worked out to be a good thing for me, and I'm hopeful that when I'm a full-time faculty member again, I can take everything I've learned and apply it. That's good. Well, Bill, we need to take a break for a minute and show our viewers some of the other excellent programming that we have available on Think Tech Hawaii. So can you hang around for a minute because when we come back, I want to talk more about online education. So we'll be back in just a minute. This is working together on Think Tech Hawaii. Hi, I'm Chris Letham with Think Tech Hawaii and I'd like to ask you to come watch my show, The Economy and You, each Wednesday at 3 p.m. Aloha and Happy New Year. It's 2017. Please keep up with me on Power Up Hawaii, where Hawaii comes together to talk about a clean and just energy future. Please join me on Tuesdays at 1 o'clock. Mahalo. I'm Ethan Allen, host of likeable science here on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m., you'll have a chance to come and listen and learn from scientists around the world, scientists who talk about their work in meaningful, easy to understand ways. And you'll come to appreciate science as a wonderful way of thinking, way of knowing about the world. You'll learn interesting facts, interesting ideas. You'll be stimulated to think more. Please come join us every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii for likeable science. With me, your host, Ethan Allen. Hi, welcome back to Working Together on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Cheryl Proger Garcia, and I'm joined today by Dr. William Soderman, live from Worcester, Massachusetts. We are talking about online education. Bill, you teach online and so you have many opportunities to work with students for whom online education is a preference. And we see on television and through other media lots and lots of advertising for online universities. And generally, they tend to take the tone that a degree is a degree and it doesn't matter which university you get it from. Do you think that that is true? And if not, what kinds of branding should students who are interested in online education be looking for? A student's choice of university comes down to a lot of different factors. Brand is very important. The kinds of programs that are offered can be important. The kinds of faculty who are teaching the programs can be important, as well as the administrative and staff support that the student receives. And it can be a very difficult decision because searching for an online university is a less transparent marketplace than other kinds of online purchases. When I go on to Amazon or another online retailer, there are plenty of reviews I can see for products. But if I go to a specific university, there's not that level of transparency or information available to the student. So brand is important. What kinds of support should students that are interested in online education be looking for from their universities? It really depends on the student's situation. My wife works with military veterans and their spouses and families. So if somebody is looking to fund their tuition through the VA or the GI bill, it's important to ask questions about what sort of financial aid and other support they have available to work with those kinds of students because they have very specific needs. Other students may need very specific help with ADA, which can be done in an online environment, but it's important to ask those questions up front. Another thing that students should be asking about are how the program they want to go in is accredited. All online universities are accredited through a regional accrediting agency. In New England, we have the New England Association of Colleges out in Hawaii. It's the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. And then there are a couple of national accreditors that have focused on online learning. In addition, in specific fields like HR, there's SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management does accreditation in business. There's the AACSB and the ACVSP. So it's helpful for students to do their own research about their degree program and not just take what the university has posted online as a full description of the accreditation. Okay. And about faculty, what sorts of questions should prospective students learn, ask about the faculty that will be working with them on the degree process? It's important to ask how the faculty stay current in their fields. One advantage of schools that employ a lot of adjuncts is typically these adjuncts are working part-time or full-time or have retired from their field. So they're actually teaching something that they've done in real industry or in organizations. On the other hand, for students in a graduate or even a doctoral online program, they may want a full-time faculty member who has experience in specific facets of the field that student wants to go into. If a student is looking for a doctorate in education, they should ask what full-time faculty are available and what their credentials are in education. Now you mentioned the online PhD programs and this, while it has made doctoral education available to a wider audience of prospective students, there have also been some challenges created. In a way, we have, by advocating for online programs for PhDs, we've kind of devalued our own diplomas. Can you say a little bit about the folks that are coming out of online programs and what their level of scholastic ability is? There are some very good folks coming from online doctoral programs and in some ways, I admire their work ethic and their drive. I went through my PhD program at the University of Georgia in a traditional face-to-face manner and I think that now I would be hard-pressed to actually make it through an online doctoral program because I needed that sense of face-to-face community and support as I worked through my studies. Now online doctoral programs and many institutions have networks and communities that students can join so it's possible to work on a doctorate virtually and be very successful. This is not unlike what we're seeing in other facets of the gig economy where drivers and people who work from home have their own networks to reach out to for support and for advice. Yeah, I went to an online university for my degree and you're right. I often felt like I was the lone wolf apart from not having access to my classmates often. Being in Hawaii meant that I was five hours or six hours behind the rest of my cohort and it was really really difficult to stay in touch and to stay current and to not only build relationships but then sustain those relationships with the folks that I was working with. So I would say looking at that if someone is interested in a PhD and please say something to this as soon as I finish you have got to be sufficiently self-motivated so that you can really be prepared to work on your own for the most part. That's very true. That also applies to master's programs but there as you and I both know there is a lot less hand holding in a doctoral program. As doctoral students we were expected to move up to higher levels of learning in education and to be fairly self-driven if not self-directed. That's true not to mention being able to be a sound consumer of knowledge and academic research. Let's talk a little about the undergraduate community for people that are perhaps looking at an online degree. You know we hear a lot about if you're working and you've got a family and you've got multiple responsibilities online education is a good option because you can pick and choose when you attend school. The implication is that the classes are asynchronous and so you can really make a schedule that works for you. How realistic is that in your opinion? It can be realistic for some students. There are students who have issues with online education and many times it's because they don't stick to the schedule that's been laid out for the class. I use a weekly format in my classes but other classes require deliverables and engagement several times a week. In an online environment it can be difficult to catch up if one has been missing class or missing class activities like discussion forums or assignments or drafts or exams. This is very true in an undergraduate environment where there's a larger volume of students and that's the same in a face-to-face classroom environment. Universities are always going to put more students in an undergraduate classroom but in an online environment that can be even more of a challenge. I think another challenge that I'd like to talk to you about is the challenge of tone when communicating online and what comes to mind immediately is and I'm sure you know it Bill Cosby's Noah's Ark sketch it's hilarious when you listen to it but if you were to read the transcript of that particular skit it doesn't sound funny at all it doesn't read amusing so how do people structure their written communication in an online environment in a way that communicates what they really intend to communicate so how do they communicate humor or empathy or respectful disagreement? That is an interesting challenge. One of the schools I'm working with has several layers of training to help faculty acquire skills to communicate in an empathetic manner. Sometimes we're told to avoid humor or to be very obvious with our humor because text is a very low-touch environment. I often supplement my courses with short videos or at least audio narrations so that the students know that there's a person on the other side of the screen and that can help but in one-to-one conversations it's typically going to happen over email or text. That makes the communication somewhat interesting. Do you ever use phone calls? I mean do you ever have a need to say counsel via telephone via Skype via other technology and how does that work? I do give my students a phone number. There is an app that I use that provides a second phone number on my phone so it's not actually my primary cell phone number it's what I call the burner number and I've actually told my students this is my burner line and they understand that you know there's that bail of anonymity there and some students really do need the phone call. There have been cases where I've called the student there have been cases where the students call me but there are students who really need that synchronous voice communication to help them. Yeah that's true you know Zuri our production engineer in the booth has a question she wants to know if you have to change your burner line often. With the app that I use as long as I text or use that phone number at least once during a 30-day period I get to keep the number they also have a plan where if I paid three dollars a month I could keep the number as long as I wanted to. No I think I think what she meant was do you have to change your number because so many people are calling you? No that hasn't happened yet. Okay good good that's good to know. What advice would you give say people in Hawaii we're looking at online universities they're either returning to school after say having finished some number of undergraduate credits and they're just looking to finish up what would you tell them that they should do in our last couple of minutes here to ensure that they find the right program for them the right degree for them and and choose a school that will really support them because we've heard stories about universities that have extremely high failure rates and end up saddling students with enormous loan debts etc. How do you how do we protect ourselves from those kinds of scenarios? Time to completion is an important thing to consider and it is something that students should ask admissions officers and program directors when they're evaluating a school. This can be especially sensitive for students in Hawaii because of the time zone differences it's it may be more difficult to reach out during the day to university employees and faculty to get help. Well Bill our time is up according to Zuri in the booth but thank you so much for joining us we're sending you buckets of sunshine hopefully that will melt some of the snow and some of the rain that's on top of your snow and let's be in touch soon okay so thank you all for joining us on working together. I'm your host Cheryl Crozier Garcia and we will see you in two weeks. Thanks for joining us and happy.