A recent request for online teachers landed in my University of Phoenix Online mailbox and offers some fascinating insight into how The Apollo Group, parent company of the for-profit University of Phoenix, is growing beyond its own ability to deliver college-level courses:
Apollo Group has contracted with Lutheran High School of Orange County (LHSOC) to manage its online delivery of high school curriculum. Established in 1973, LHSOC is a comprehensive, college preparatory high school with a growing national reputation for its outstanding academic programs. Through its new innovative program, Orange Lutheran Online is able to bring a highly successful blend of education and character development to high school students across the country and around the world.
The Academic Affairs department is looking for exceptional online facilitators who are interested in joining this exciting new program. This opportunity includes:
- High academic and character development contact with students (you must be available online M-F for participation/discussion; weekends not required)
- Traditional high school age student population
- 8 week classes
- Strong administrative support
- Two-week training programming prior to teaching a class
Historically, LHSOC students have graduated with GPAs and SAT scores that are substantially higher than the national average. In surveys, the vast majority of graduates (93%) reported successfully continuing their education at a college or university, including some of the nation�s most prestigious institutions: Baylor, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Loyola Maramount, Pepperdine, Princeton, Purdue, Stanford and Yale.
If you are interested in teaching high school students in a faith-based curriculum, while taking advantage of the conveniences that an online environment affords, please send your resume to [address deleted for privacy] for consideration.
What do you think? Is this a smart direction for the University of Phoenix to expand out, or do you think it’s diluting their brand and identity?
The Apollo Group parent company to Univerity of Phoenix Online. The UOPO contracts with other educational institutions to provide a state of the art online delivery system. What better business model than to contract out a delivery system that is so well designed. The partnership with other leaders in educational industry makes sound business sense.
I currently teach three courses online in the area of religion, two at undergraduate level at Delta College and one at graduate level at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. I would be very interested in teaching online for you. I have been interviewed (unsuccessfully!) as an on campus teacher by you at Lathrop so you may look at that file. I have a BA and MA from Cambridge University and a doctorate from a university in Japan. My most recent book is published by McGraw-Hill and entitled “Back to Basics: the Sources of the New Testament” and I have been a visiting professor in Islamic studies (I am fluent in Arabic) at Pepperdine University. I have been teaching online for a mere year and I am having to eat my words about it; my former negative views were the result, I confess it freely, of sheer prejudice born of academic vanity! If you feel that I can be of service to you, please be in touch.
Michael Duffett
I have taught literature and writing on-line and find that one can create a serious pedagological model with on-line instruction. I also teach in “live” classrooms at the college level. Is one better than the other? Consider gas prices, difficulty of access for persons in rural areas, childcare challenges, and weather extremes as reasons a person may prefer to study in his or her jammies rather than gas up and drive through the snowy night to a college that may be hours away. Please don’t claim that in-person teaching is superior to on-line. Obviously, I attended college and graduate school, and three-fourths or more of the professors added little by virtue of their scintillating personalities. I’d have preferred to read the books and interact with my fellow students on-line. On-line education is equal-opportunity for students, or can be. Students of color need not worry their (usually) white prof is ignoring them in class, as many students have confided is the case in the ivory towers. My only concern is that participation on-line can tend to be a “family affair,” where the student has more than one person contributing to assignments. But that can happen in “live” classrooms too when research papers come due.
I am just now finding out about online teaching and subsequently was led to this blog from 2005. I am new to blogging, so I hope you get this response to “University of Phx responds to religious teaching. How can I get started? It would be a good fit for me as I see a need to advocate for my children receiving a more “holistic” education. I really don’t see all the myriad ways of learning being taking seriously at the secondary level. I think I will be homeschooling in the future, as I begin work on a Joint PhD program with Iliff School of Theology and the University of Denver. Social Justice is the area of concentration, with my area of research being how Sport factors into the Civil Rights Movement in America.
An exceptional integration of accelerated online learning and technology. Great opportunity for many students. Thanks Univ of Phoenix.