THRIVE: Balancing Needs of Students and Demands of Contract Instruction – October 30, 2018

Clear communication, online tools and progressive active learning ideas have the potential to positively impact student learning, reduce workload for instructors, and ensure a successful course.

Contract faculty members face a very real danger of burnout, due in part to the short-term and ever-changing nature of their employment contracts. Trying to keep the focus on the students and doing what’s best for them is difficult when we are faced with heavy workloads and the potential pressure of making a new course ‘work’ on very little notice. While it can often seem that the easiest route to course delivery is for the instructor to ‘deliver’ the content, while the students ‘perform’ on assessments, that strategy can also be the most labour intensive for the instructor, which adds to our challenge.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are strategies that can benefit students greatly, while also reducing our workloads. In this session we will consider the instructor workload as part of appropriate course planning, and ways that we can continue to support our students & their learning without putting our own health and wellness at risk.