In last week’s email, we reminded members of the AdjunctWorld community to highlight any online learning experiences on their resumes, as many schools are listing “online learning experience” as preferred or required in their job descriptions. This is good news for online job-seeking adjuncts who may not have taught online before but who have taken online classes themselves.

In the ensuing conversation, an AW member asked me, “How do I list my online learning experience in my CV?” Good question! I do not know if there is a specific “accepted” method for documenting one’s online learning experiences in a resume, but it seems to me that it would go quite nicely in the “Education” section, which as luck may have it, is usually at the top of one’s CV after contact information. One’s educational background is read even before one’s teaching experiences are – that’s more good news for the online job-seeking adjunct who has online learning experience but may not have much online teaching experience!

Here are some examples of ways to highlight one’s online learning experience in a CV. Notice that emphasizing the LMS used is important as well, as some schools require “LMS experience” although they may not require online teaching experience, per se.

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

 

2012 – 2016           State University International College

Modality: Online

LMS Used: Blackboard

Degree earned:  PhD in Leadership Studies

 

2010-2012             University of the Colleges- Online

Modality: Online

LMS Used: Moodle

Degree earned: MS in Organizational Behavior

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

 

2009 – 2011           University of Academic Excellence

Number of fully online courses taken:  5

LMS used: Canvas

Degree earned: MA in Criminal Justice

 

2007 – 2008           University of Achievement and Academics

Number of fully online courses taken:  3

LMS used: Blackboard

Degree earned: BA in Criminal Justice Studies

If a school is specifically asking for LMS experience, I don’t see where it would be strange or inappropriate to include an “LMS Experience” section somewhere at the top of your resume/CV. You can also allude to your online learning experience in your personal statement. Something like “As a seasoned distance learner myself, the idea of using technology to teach students from across the globe in an online setting is most appealing to me.”

Also, if you have taught in the traditional college environment, but heavily used LMS technology to keep track of grades or have class discussions, you can highlight those in your “Teaching Experience” Section by drawing attention to the LMS used in the list.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

 

2012-2015             Eastgate Community College

Modality: On-Ground

LMS used: Blackboard

Classes taught:  Introduction to Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, and Forensic Psychology

I wouldn’t worry too much about how “properly” a CV or resume is formatted. Read what the school is looking for and requires/prefers and make sure that information jumps off of your resume. You typically have a chance to describe your experiences in a cover letter as well, so use that as an additional opportunity to tout your online learning and LMS experiences.

Any comments? Suggestions? Questions? Please feel free to comment below!

This week, Matt and I received an email from a European adjunct inquiring about the outlook for international adjuncts teaching for US online programs or universities. This particular adjunct had several graduate degrees in popular academic disciplines and many years of college teaching experience.

We seek input from our community in helping answer this adjunct’s question. Our first instinct is that she will meet with the same challenges US-based adjuncts meet in finding steady online teaching work – the unbalanced ratio of online jobs available to willing and capable adjuncts looking for those positions. As we’ve seen, some US-based schools even have geographical restrictions within the US (see: For South Florida Residents Online – Geograpically-Bound Online Positions).

I do believe a lot of US schools are open to the idea of non-citizens teaching in the US. When writing the 500-character job descriptions for the jobs we post, I often see the phrase “eligible to work in the United States” as opposed to “US citizen.” I take this to mean as long as the international adjunct can satisfy all the documentation requirements, that the job would be open to him or her.

All of this is interesting, as one would think that the mission of an online program would be to open up education and teaching opportunities to anyone across the globe – making the world smaller, isn’t that one of the goals/perks of the internet? Alas, there are rules, procedures, and administrative things that I’m unaware of that make this a more complex matter than what it seems to be.

There are, however, schools across the globe that welcome, encourage, and specifically hire a multi-national faculty and recruit the same diversity of students. I’m thinking particularly here of the University of Roehampton – London Online. I recently went through some online faculty training with them their mission was repeated to us ad nauseam:  To create a multinational community of online instructors and students and to capitalize on the diversity of thought afforded by that openness. Great mission and encouraging to the adjunct who wrote this email to us.

So, my advice is to look into what it would take to become “eligible to work in the US” and research schools who have a particular mission toward recruiting a multinational faculty.

What have been your alls experiences?  Can you help us answer this adjunct’s question by commenting below? We’d all very much appreciate it!

One of the most common questions we are asked here at AdjunctWorld (indeed, I received two emails with this question this week) is “I would like to gain online teaching experience, any suggestions?”

We have two blog articles that provide some answers to this question. In Getting LMS Experience – Where to Start? we list the following strategies:

• Take online classes yourself that use various LMS technology.
• Find online trainings for specific LMSs (there are a lot of these available. Moodle, an open-source platform, even offers a lot of free online trainings!).
• Make a connection (via LinkedIn or our AdjunctWorld community) with an instructor who uses the LMS you are interested in learning more about and pick his/her brain about the software and how to learn more about it.

In Need Online Experience to Get Experience? we echo these ideas and add the following: Seek SME work for online programs and add it to your resume. When you have been a subject matter expert, you not only demonstrate your expertise in your discipline, but you have gained  some experience in instructional design and have done research on what online classroom “lectures” should look like. In short, you have a form of online teaching experience.

Since publishing these articles I’ve come up with an additional answer to this question that I’ll discuss here: Go to the LMS training department at the school you are already adjunct teaching for.

A lot of you are seeking online teaching jobs, but are already adjunct teaching in the traditional brick-and-mortar classroom. Since many traditional schools offer a distance education component, there is usually some kind of training center located on campus or at least an LMS guru of some kind to whom everyone on campus asks their LMS-related questions.

For example, I am going to be adjunct teaching an online class for a local university in the Fall Semester and I was referred to their Blackboard specialist for any questions I may have about setting up and teaching a class on Blackboard. This person works in a department on campus specifically tasked with supporting faculty in their teaching endeavors, online or off. I can’t believe the school I’m teaching for is the only school that has such a person/department.

Even if you are not teaching online for that university or maybe even if you are not currently adjuncting for a school you have adjunct taught with before, you likely still have access to this potential source of online training. Does this person/department have a training or sample classroom module you can access? Would they be willing to meet with you to show you how an online classroom works? Does the department offer faculty online trainings you might be eligible for?

Ask all of those questions, maybe one will yield a “yes”, and then you have a source for getting some LMS exposure that you can list on your resume, even if you can’t claim to have taught a class. In other words, if I sit down with the Blackboard guru at the school I’ll be teaching for and she shows me the ins and outs of a Blackboard classroom and how to manage it, refers me to a training website/module, or enrolls me in an LMS training class and if I follow through with those suggestions then I can legitimately say I’ve gotten some professional development in online instruction (at least with a particular LMS).

Worth a shot! Continued luck, everyone! Please feel free to comment below with any comments or suggestions for your fellow adjuncts!