What are the main faculty policy issues in distance education?

Faculty policy issues in distance teaching are often resolved more easily by single-mode than by dual-mode institutions. In dual-mode institutions, where faculty often work in both modes or where faculty performing markedly different tasks work side by side, the need to negotiate collective agreements may become a serious challenge.

Here are some questions about faculty policy that typically need to be asked in a distance teaching program:

• When and in what circumstances will faculty be expected to prepare or revise course materials?
• What is the relationship between the development of course materials and a faculty requirement for publication?
• How are faculty teaching loads to be calculated?
• What is the relationship between teaching and providing academic advice?
• What is the effect of having a significant number of part-time or contract instructors?

Increasingly overlying all these questions are issues related to using, providing for, and managing the use of the rapidly multiplying technologies available to teaching institutions.

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