Online vs. in-person teaching experience?

A reader writes in by email:

I am currently adjuncting at a number of institutions (I've attached my CV). Most of the teaching I am doing is online. I wanted to ask how a hiring committee may view online teaching experience as opposed to in person teaching experience. Do you think one is--generally--better than the other? Or does it just depend upon the expectations associated with the position in question?

Good questions, and I'm curious to hear readers' answers. My sense is that while online teaching experience is definitely advantageous, hiring committees for tenure-track jobs are probably likely to weight in-person teaching experience more heavily. This is for a couple of reasons. First, COVID pandemic aside, in-person teaching is likely to be your primary mode of instruction if you're hired into a TT job. Second, in-person teaching requires distinct skills, such as being able to manage a classroom, answer questions and guide discussion on the fly, and so on. My sense is that those hiring for TT jobs are likely to care about these skills.

But these are just my reactions, and maybe they're wrong. What do you all think?

Comments

[Anon UK Grad]

For whatever it is worth, I think several of the skills you mention are applicable in the synchronous online setting. For example, one must answer questions on the fly (sometimes in multiple modalities (e.g. via a chat function, or verbally) in a synchronous online class.

[Anonymous]

I think if anything that the COVID situation now means that some online teaching experience is probably highly advantageous. But more than enough to show you can do it probably won't help.

I wouldn't want to be applying for a position that includes any teaching now without having some online teaching experience. The possibility that we will all have to go back online for extended periods is now on everybody's minds.

But I also wouldn't want to be applying for in person teaching with no in person teaching experience. Especially if that experience is with remote students, rather than local students who have had to use online systems because of COVID.

[Daniel Brunson]

I would add that a key distinction involves course design, regardless of modality. That is, teaching a course you have made shows more potential as an instructor than running a course someone else has made. Without evidence of instructional design, people might assume that online courses are basically the same as being a TA, showing little more than basic competency as a teacher. However, if you can focus on pedagogical decisions who have made, whether in-person or online, them that's where you should be making your case anyway.