Online Teaching Positions: Education Requirements, Duties and Salary Info

Online teachers lecture, prepare curricula and administer coursework like their counterparts teaching in tradition classrooms, but they must also integrate distance-learning technology into their online classrooms. The educational requirements to teach online may include bachelor's, master's or doctoral degrees, depending on the grade level taught.

Education Requirements for Online Teachers

The educational requirements for teachers working at online schools typically mirror the requirements of teachers working at traditional brick and mortar buildings. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), all teachers working at public schools who teach grades K-12 must meet state licensure requirements (www.bls.gov). Requirements for a regular teaching license include completion of a bachelor's degree program, taking a state-approved teacher preparation program and obtaining state licensure. Teaching positions at the postsecondary level usually require a master's or doctoral degree in the subject area taught. Additionally, many online educational institutions require teachers to take classes to better understand the methodology and technology used to teach online courses.

Online Teacher Job Duties

Online teachers are trained educators who typically specialize in teaching students at a particular grade level between kindergarten and college. Besides creating a curriculum, assigning homework and setting up quizzes, online teachers have the additional challenge of organizing and tailoring their coursework to make it accessible and visually compelling to students accessing course materials remotely. As part of the process, they often combine traditional learning tools, such as books and handouts, with online tools, such as message boards, chat rooms, videos and online media presentations.

Salary Information for Online Teaching Positions

Educational institutions offering online courses often compensate online teachers based on their course loads and online teaching experience. For example, Bergen Community College provides three levels of training and compensation, based on online teaching experience (www.bergen.edu). Full time-faculty members who teach online courses at Southern Oregon University are compensated at standard rates, but they receive additional pay when teaching online courses causes them to exceed their normal course loads (www.sou.edu). The pay for teaching an online course at Southern New Hampshire University, as of November 2011, was $2,200 for an 8-week undergraduate course and $2,500 for an 11-week graduate course (www.snhu.edu). Online teachers employed by Lawrence Tech, whether as full-time faculty or adjunct instructors, received $3,000 per course, according to data obtained in November 2011 (www.ltu.edu).

Although industry-wide salary averages specifically tailored to online teacher's aren't readily available, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in May 2010, the median salary for elementary school teachers was $51,660 per year, the median salary for middle school teachers was $51,960 per annum and the median salary for secondary school teachers was $53,230 per year (www.bls.gov). According to the American Association of University Professors, for the 2009-2010 academic year, the average yearly salary for postsecondary teachers was $80,368 (www.aaup.org). Instructors earned an average of $47,592 per year, while professors earned average yearly salaries of $109,843.

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Online Teaching provides instructors with the flexibility of accessing their materials 24 hours a day. The average salary for an Online Teacher job is approximately $49,000 a year.