Our online academic coaching model gives your faculty more time to focus on student success! But what are their duties and qualifications? These are some of the most common questions we receive from our distance learning and online course clients.
Through our innovative model, we are able to provide the highest flexibility for your faculty, as our online academic coaches perform varied duties depending on your distance course needs.
What is an Online Academic Coach?
An online academic coach is meant to aid the faculty member of record, or professor, that is teaching an online course. This gives your faculty the time to focus on student success, engagement, and course delivery.
Additional responsibilities include any course issues as defined by your faculty or any needs that relate to online and distance learning. Plus, our online academic coaches are flexible – so your faculty member simply needs to provide us with instructions on their needs and expectations for the course, and our online academic coaches deliver.
Our Online Academic Coach Duties
Though they may perform many duties, some of the most common responsibilities are:
- Grading assignments & essays
- Replying to discussion threads
- Handling course announcements
- Managing day-to-day issues
- Answering emails & messages
- Facilitating course discussions
- And more!
Graded materials with substantial feedback are completed and returned within 72 hours of the due date – which means no more waiting for grades and no rushed grading for your faculty or missed deadlines for online submissions of graded assignments.
All asynchronous discussion threads are monitored per the direction of your faculty, facilitating conversations, answering questions, and helping the students discuss deeper into the subject matter. For many online courses that are largely writing and discussion-based, this service from our online academic coaches is invaluable.
Our online academic coaches will also answer and respond to all inquiries, emails, messages, and calls within 24 hours, seven days a week. Even if the answer is to let the student know that they will have to perform their own additional research or consult with the faculty of record, no correspondence will be left unattended or unanswered for over 24 hours, even on weekends.
Our online academic coaches actively participate in weekly faculty and conference calls so that they may review the faculty’s expectations, grading guidelines and rubrics, failing or at-risk students, and discuss any issues in the class, scheduling, or upcoming needs and assignments.
Finally, our online academic coaches maintain compliance with all university policies and regulations, including FERPA.
Instructional Connections is the first of its kind to implement this online academic coaching model, which drives scale and helps assure high completion rates and student retention. The more tasks your faculty of record can delegate to our online academic coach, the more time they will have available for course success and student learning!
Instructional Connections and our model was carefully evaluated by regional accreditors during partner University site visits and was consistently found to be both innovative and effective!
Our Online Academic Coach Qualifications
Each IC academic coach is a highly qualified, experienced professional in the appropriate academic discipline. Each of our online academic coaches has earned at least a Master’s or Doctoral degree from an accredited university. Plus, on average, Instructional Connections’ academic coaches have 14 years of experience in their field!
Therefore, each online academic coach possesses the educational credentials and real-life experience to become an immediate asset to your faculty and virtual learning students. Our online academic coaches are tremendous resources to students in their related fields and are often able to help students outside of classroom questions as they have experience in the field that the student is hoping to break into after graduation.
Minimum Education Requirements for Online Academic Coaches
- Undergraduate Level Courses: A minimum of a conferred Master’s Degree with at least 18 graduate hours in the specific course content area, additional experience in online education is preferred.
- Graduate Level Course or Higher: A minimum of a conferred Master’s Degree in a related field with at least 18 graduate hours in the specific course content area. A Terminal Degree or actively pursual of a Terminal Degree is strongly preferred and may be required depending on the specific course or program. Additional experience in online education is preferred.
