of-course availability and perform preparation and
correction tasks for a total of 32.5 hours per week, as
described by the collective agreement signed by the
National Federation of Teachers of Quebec (2010-
2015). In terms of university education, a teacher
must normally choose a certain number of courses to
be given for the year, varying from four to six courses,
drawn from the same list of courses that the institution
offers from one semester to another.
In both college and university, the teaching task
is very variable in terms of effort, since the teacher
can give the same course several times, or several
different courses, during the same year. Although
these courses may be new to the teacher, they are
rarely new to the institution. In the first few years of
a teacher’s career, a lot of time is spent preparing
lessons. When a teacher reaches mid-career, he
generally is able to devote much more time to the
other parts of his task, since he benefits from the
materials developed over the years, which
considerably reduces the preparation time of his
courses.
3 ONLINE TEACHING
Given its peculiarities and constraints, e-learning
requires a work organization that is different from
teaching in the classroom, which affects not only the
technology and teaching methods used, but also the
teachers’ task. Although Poitras (2016) expresses
his belief that online teaching will transform the
teaching profession, he doubts that teachers will
gain benefits from it, since in an online course, you
have to change from intuitive teaching to
programmed instruction (Loisier, 2013; Poitras,
2016), which requires much more preparation time.
Many teachers are reluctant to abandon classroom
teaching for online education fearing that classroom
teaching will lose its importance (Audet 2011;
Loisier 2013; Poitras 2016). However, some
teachers who venture to do online courses, either by
preference or by conviction, do so without proper
recognition for the work done (Poitras, 2016;
Racette et al., 2017b). Collective agreements,
adapted for face-to-face teaching, are slow to take
into account the tasks related to online education
(Bates et al., 2017). The design time of a course
offered asynchronously is much more important and
these courses requires much more refined
interventions to properly support the student who
finds himself alone in his online course. On the other
hand, in synchronous courses, all activities must be
carefully planned in terms of the content, form and
technological tools to be used. However, the greatest
constraint to making the shift to online course design
seems to lie in the ignorance of some teachers,
managers and unions concerning the work entailed
for a post-secondary teacher (Audet, 2011; Bates et
al., 2017). Thus, several teachers in online courses
decide to simply carry their classroom course onto
the design of an online course (CSE, 2015), despite
the fact that the simple transmission of knowledge,
practiced extensively in face-to-face courses, is
more and more questionable. Online courses should
offer a much wider variety of resources (texts,
videos, audio, forums, etc.) to adapt to different
learning preferences (Del Moral and Villalustre,
2012, 2013, Santo, 2006) and thus compensate for
the physical absence of the teacher. In addition, the
scientific literature shows that communication in
online courses is not sufficiently developed,
constituting a limiting factor for socialization
(Loisier, 2013; Racette et al., 2014).
Regarding the teaching task, the collective
agreements of universities and traditional colleges do
not normally take it into account online education
such as the National Federation of Teachers of
Quebec (2010-2015), the collective agreement of
UQAM (2016-2018 art.10.w07) and UQTR (2013-
2017, art.10.14), to name just a few. In spite of
everything, almost all universities in Quebec offer
online courses. Regarding Laval University (Laval
University, 2016), despite the fact that 57.6% of
students are enrolled in at least one online course out
of the 42,663 students enrolled in the fall of 2016, the
collective agreement (2016-2020, article 3.5.02) only
mentions the following with respect to distance
education: "The employer provides the support
services needed for teaching, regardless of the
teaching methods used, especially for course
preparation and for teaching a online course or off-
campus...". For the design and dissemination of
online courses to take off, new tasks must be taken
into account.
4 APPROACHES TO ONLINE
COURSES
The approach chosen for designing an online course,
by a teacher or an institution, will have a significant
impact, both on the design task and the student
supervisors’ task, and this, in terms of the time and
efforts to be devoted. Roberts (2011) divides these
approaches in online courses according to whether
they are centered (1) on the teacher, (2) on
independent learning or (3) on interaction. The