Supporting Online Adjunct Faculty Across Institutional Roles: An Inclusive Playbook for Academic Leaders & Instructional Support Staff

Online adjunct faculty need more support, and the time to ensure they get the necessary support is now. In the summer of 2021, the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies  (WCET) and the Online Learning Consortium (OLC), with support from the Every Learner Everywhere Network, conducted a study to examine current practices for hiring, onboarding, developing, and supporting online adjunct faculty with the goal of publishing resources to help academic leaders operationalize this knowledge and improve online faculty experiences at their institutions. In the report, Online Adjunct Faculty: A Survey of Institutional Policies and Practices, researchers shared findings from the study and several preliminary recommendations for supporting adjunct faculty who teach online. This piece extends the work of the report by presenting six concrete strategies for academic leaders, college-level leaders, and instructional design staff to adopt now to better support their online adjunct faculty and the community of students and learners in their classrooms.