Automated Onboarding
for Online Faculty

Analysis & Insights

Challenge #1: Onboarding in an online environment can feel isolating and impersonal.

Historically, without the luxury of getting to meet colleagues spontaneously or stroll through a physical campus, new online faculty have felt isolated during the onboarding process. Furthermore, this process was very bare-bones, entailing little more than preliminary phone calls with an HR officer and our Program Coordinator, and strictly functional emails that walked through account registration procedures for USC’s myriad of online services. The emails might encourage the instructor to “reach out if they have any questions”, but this often only adds to the burden as the instructor struggles to determine if they are truly stuck, or if they might have just overlooked an instruction among onboarding content. Conversely, instructors who did not struggle in acclimating to their teaching role historically either (1) already knew a current instructor, from whom they were likely already comfortable seeking individual advice or mentorship; (2) were alumni of the online program, and thus were already familiar with the mechanics and challenges of the online environment.

Especially in an online space where social interactions are already diminished by default, it is critical to minimize the risk of isolation for our new instructors. Potential solutions may seek to revamp the experience to feel more inviting and promote a sense of belonging in the teaching and learning community, such as through changes in language and imagery. Other considerations may seek to boost confidence or self-sufficiency, such as through support mechanisms and how they are scheduled throughout the experience.

Challenge #2: The overall onboarding experience feels inconsistent and fragmented, since new instructors interface with different offices for different tasks.

Onboarding entails all sorts of preliminary tasks that allow a new instructor to successfully integrate into USC’s professional and teaching environment. Some are concrete tasks that only need to be completed once, such as mandated compliance trainings and email setup. Some are informational, such as learning about various campus services. And some involve skills training, such as learning how to use a learning management system or web conferencing tool.

A historical inconvenience with onboarding is that different tasks were administered by different offices within USC Price, with each office having little knowledge of other training requirements beyond their own. As a result, new faculty were often “bounced around” between offices, and felt that the overall onboarding experience was fragmented. In some cases, training might overlap between two offices, which would lead to risk of inconsistency. For example, a digital tool might receive updates or adjustments to its interface, and only one office might become aware of it. Ultimately, the new instructor bears the greatest burden since they have little context to help them adapt to such inconsistencies.

Another problem caused by fragmented onboarding was that no one had a bird’s eye view of the overall process. Understandably, instructors felt like they were acquiring new skills and fulfilling new tasks indefinitely until reaching my Moodle and Adobe Connect training, at which point I would have to confirm for them that they were ready to teach.

Thus, potential solutions to address the fragmented experience should ensure that the entire onboarding process is transparent. This would enable the instructor to accurately assess and manage expectations around their own progress at all times. This would also reduce inconsistencies previously caused by overlapping office responsibilities.

Challenge #3: Two hour-long Moodle and Adobe Connect training sessions are exhausting and convoluted.

About two weeks before the first day of the semester, Pearson Embanet staff (with whom USC Price partners to develop and maintain its online environment) offers training sessions on Moodle and Adobe Connect, lasting 2 hours for each platform. While all new faculty feel compelled to participate, most of them are frustrated that they cannot remember all the details of the training. As well, some content seems arbitrary or convoluted, such as the requirement for Adobe Connect users to dial-in with a phone instead of using VoIP to initiate an audio connection despite hosting the class on a desktop computer. Solutions such as just-in-time learning strategies might aim to restructure the training so that new instructors do not have to rely so much on memory or notes to use technology effectively.

Furthermore, our faculty rarely use all the features taught during the training sessions anyway, such as Adobe Connect’s virtual whiteboard. Thus, training content should also be revised to align with with instructors’ specific teaching needs. For example, Pearson Embanet’s training typically presents a laundry list of technological affordances, showcasing all the bells and whistles of a digital platform but without much attention to the specific teaching contexts that would benefit from one feature over another. One example solution might be to begin training with a formative assessment component that concretely determines what USC Price instructors need to teach effectively, and work backward from there.