eLearning Problems: The vanishing weekend?

Just read an interesting piece - "Saturday, bloody Saturday: now it's all right for grafting" over at the Times Higher, and it got me thinking (a rare event)...

When I was at School I expected to work weekends (either at my weekend job to earn some money, or to do my home work), when I was an undergraduate I expected to work weekends writing lab reports and essays, and revising (don't get me wrong, I did go out and have fun, but I always expected to work part of the weekend), when I was a PhD student I again expected to work weekends writing up papers, reading and preparing for the next week. And finally, when I was a post-doc I worked weekends as I needed to feed cells, and read and write papers. Admittedly as a post-doc I didn't work as much as weekends as when I was a PhD student, but I did still expected to do some work.

So, basically I have been conditioned to work weekends and evenings. All those years in education (pre-Uni, undergrad and post-grad) have taken their toll and conditioned me, and now, as a lecturer I still find I am working weekends, but thanks to the Times Higher article I know I am not alone.

What the article didn't cover was this 'conditioning' event, and also the impact of eLearning can have on the erosion of the weekend.

One of the 'big' selling points of online learning are that it saves the academic time However, I think that statement is not true.....

These days I find that the more teaching I deliver online the more work I have to do. This happens in two ways: first as I put more and more teaching online the students seem to expect more and more teaching to be online, this is not a problem, but it does mean more work; and second, as I put more teaching material online the number of 'support' emails I get increases.

I have no problems with receiving 'support' questions. However, in recent years I have seen a significant increase, and I now even get support questions for systems that I have been using with the students for years, why? Why has there been an increase? It has even got to a point that if I have an eSubmission deadline set for students on a Monday I will make sure I am available online on the Sunday evening to answer questions and deal with technical issues.

And so, this is the problem. As learning moves online more support questions are generated, and as online learning is 24/7 these questions are going to come in at all hours of the night and day, and there goes the weekend.... We need to plan for this!

Photo: Flickr

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