Nabil Hijazi says:

I would have liked to give this little book five stars, but as I got into it, it started losing stars pretty rapidly.

First, the good things about it: it is short and sweet and to the point, true to its publisher’s name. The author knows her stuff. The book has a lot of nuggets of insight about this field. The most valuable, I found, was “The System is Everything”. The online teacher can make money, when the pay rates are so very low, by focusing on teaching, and by having a system that takes care of the mechanics of delivery.

Going by these positive points, I started by giving the book five stars. It lost a star because of the lack of an index. An index is a must, if the book is to have any reference value.

The book lost another star because it is carelessly edited. One example is where the author recommends, as part of “The System”, the use of the many online tools available. She references “The Discovery Website”. A Google search yields many possibilities. A URL would have been the simplest thing to provide. Another example is where the author directs the reader to go to the TeacherTalk forum on http://www.HowToTeachOnline.com – a nonexistent forum, on a non-existent website. There are many other examples, but I don’t have the space here to list them all. Amazon’s review guidelines stipulate a 1000 word maximum.

The book lost 2 more stars, down to the lowest rating, and almost all credibility, when it stated that the author “has taught more than 3000 courses online”. When I first saw 3000, I thought surely this must be a typo. Considering that at the time the author wrote the book, she has been teaching online barely over four years.

How can any mere mortal teach 3000 courses in four years? Let’s do some basic math, or basic dimensional analysis. Please review articles on dimensional analysis, if you are not familiar with the term. One good article is at http://www.alysion.org/dimensional/fun.htm. Or Google the term and review many others. Wikipedia has a good one.

Fundamentally, dimensional analysis allows us to answer questions like, How many hours are in a year? As the above referenced article explains, we proceed as follows:

Do the math:

24 hours per day X 365 days per years = 8760 hours per year.

The day dimension cancels out, leaving hours and years. That is the essence of dimensional analysis.

Now to understand how the author can teach 3000 courses in 4 years we would need to do similar dimensional analysis:

* 15 courses per semester X 10 semesters per year = 150 courses per year

* 10 semesters per year comes from an average course length of 5 weeks (a practice mainly of University of Phoenix).

* 150 courses per year X 4 years = 600 courses in 4 years = 600 courses in 4 years X 5 weeks per course = 3000 course-weeks in 4 years, back to the 3000 figure were we started.

* Note that we must say “course-week”, and not “course”, simply because dimensional analysis requires it so that the dimensions remain balanced. The dimensional analysis equation does not permit the week dimension to drop out. The result would be dimensionally unbalanced, i.e. nonsensical.

This is the only way the 3000 “courses” can be understood. There is simply no other way. This does not permit the author to state that she taught 3000 courses. That is simply false, alarming, and sloppy reasoning.

I attempted to obtain a clarification from the author via email. She violated her own rules about “tone”, and responded in a condescending and dismissive manner to my attempt at getting an explanation.

I make a big deal of this point because it is simply terrifying to know that one must teach 3000 courses over the span of 4 years, or 750 courses per year. It is actually quite alarming to learn that one has to teach the real number (600 courses in 4 years – or 150 courses per year). But to insist that the workload is actually 3000 strains credibility and is freakish!

I have tried to slice and dice this number in many ways – using dimensional analysis – all of them dampened my enthusiasm for this field.

Now to the important metric of hours per course per week – the real workload. Lets do the math.

3000 course-weeks over 4 years. 750 course-weeks per year.

To get hours per course per week we need: 2080 work hours per year, less 5 weeks PTO time (Personal Time Off: vacation/holiday/sick leave) leaves 1880 work hours per year, on average. Some people may choose to work more, but that is not the norm for someone that wants to have a life outside of work.

Average hours per course per week: 1880 work hours per year / 750 course-weeks per year = 2.5 hours per course-week (per course per week). Being careful with dimensions keeps us clear, and honest.

This is a minuscule amount of work to allot for a course you’re going to deliver online. What quality of instruction is provided? Is any instruction provided? Or are we zipping through at high speed reviewing, grading, and participating? What time is allotted for preparation, and course readings? Is this a realistic number? If it is, then this field has a much more serious problem than just an error of dimensional analysis. The economics of the field is creating online teachers who only care about speed. Superhuman speed and the automated, scripted, management of the processing of a vast number of courses to maximize their income.

This book fails where it needed to succeed most: motivating potential online teachers. The implication of a workload of 3000 courses over 4 years, is a life of rushed continuous hustle. I don’t see how any time will be left for an enjoyable career of interacting with learners, when the treadmill is running so fast!

Rating: 1 / 5

Mark Twain says:

This book doesn’t waste pages (or your time) with filler. Becky gets right to the meat, explaining how to find schools that are hiring, how to get an interview, how to wow them with a teaching statement, and land that first job.

She also explains the economics of running your own online teaching consultancy: from building your teaching portfolio, to maximizing your income, figuring out which schools are more profitable and getting more classes from them. That’s the fast track to a six figure income!

Plus, she gives great tips about how to keep track of all the work week by week, focus on the teaching and not the busywork, connect with students, keep administration happy, and still have time for the family. And she does it all with wry humor and wit.

This is the online teaching book your colleagues are already reading, a necessity for anyone trying to break into the business or already immersed in the online teaching life.
Rating: 5 / 5