Abstract
Faculty teaching during COVID-19 have been asked to adapt to a wide range of instructional modalities that have often increased the labor they experience without commensurate compensation. Hybrid courses, which were already popular pre-pandemic, have become even more common as schools and universities have rushed to adapt instruction to students’ needs. This article reports on interviews with faculty teaching hybrid courses to investigate their perceptions of the labor involved in teaching in this instructional modality, drawing connections to the labor many faculty are experiencing as they adapt to hybrid or other, similar instructional modalities. It then argues that targeted professional development activities are needed to support faculty teaching hybrid courses in particular, but that offering such opportunities are complicated by the amount of labor faculty teaching hybrid courses often already perform.
Recommended Citation
Wooten, Courtney Adams; Fitzpatrick, Brian; Fernandez, Lourdes; Goldenthal, Ariel M.; and Matthews, Jessica
(2022)
"“Drown[ing] A Little Bit All the Time: The Intersections of Labor Constraints and Professional Development in Hybrid Contingent Faculty Experiences,"
Academic Labor: Research and Artistry: Vol. 6, Article 3.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/alra/vol6/iss1/3
Included in
Online and Distance Education Commons, Other Rhetoric and Composition Commons, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Commons
Publication-Ready Author Bio
Courtney Adams Wooten is Director of Composition at George Mason University. She is a member of the Council of Writing Program Administrators Executive Board and book review editor for the journal WPA: Writing Program Administration. She is a co-editor of WPAs in Transition and The Things We Carry: Strategies for Recognizing and Negotiating Emotional Labor in Writing Program Administration, and her work has been published in Composition Studies, WPA, Peitho, and Harlot as well as in several edited collections.
Brian Fitzpatrick is an Associate Professor at George Mason University where he teaches composition. His research is primarily focused on workplace writing, as well as online and hybrid pedagogies. He is the co-founder of the Archive of Workplace Writing Experiences and was recipient of the Conference on College Composition and Communication's Emergent Researcher Award for 2017-18. His work has appeared in Effective Teaching of Technical Communication: Theory, Practice, and Application by WAC Clearinghouse, as well as Performance Improvement Quarterly and Double Helix.
Lourdes Fernandez is Assistant Director of Composition at George Mason University, where she teaches advanced composition, technical communication, document design, and rhetorical theory courses. Her work has been published in Rhetoric Review, Technical Communication Quarterly, and Reflections: A Journal of Community Engaged Writing and Rhetoric.
Ariel M. Goldenthal is an Assistant Professor of English Composition at George Mason University. Her research interests include community-engaged courses and hybrid English Composition, which she has taught since the pilot of the course in Fall 2017. Her recent and presentations at the Conference on College Composition and Communication and the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference share findings on hybrid course design and implementation.
Jessica Matthews is the Associate Director of Composition for George Mason University. Since 2019, she has served as the Faculty Fellow for the George Mason Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning where she provides professional development for online course design and pedagogy. Her recent presentations at EDUCAUSE, the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, and the Conference on College Composition and Communication focus on how students and faculty evaluate the quality of learning in online writing courses.