Distance Administration of Distance Staff

ABSTRACT

Since the late 1990s, internet-based distance-education programs have attracted students and instructors who could be geographically distributed they could learn and teach from anywhere. However, the model for the staff who support distance-education programs was overwhelmingly the traditional place-based office with co-located physical and human resources. The idea of the campus as the physical location where services are literally housed was slow to shift to a distributed-workforce model until the COVID-19 pandemic forced an emergency shift to remote instruction and remote support services, starting in early 2020. While there have been a few colleges and universities whose distance-education staff were intentionally flexible, hybrid, or agnostic regarding the physical location of work, far more of our programs remain stuck within larger institutional contexts, policies, and expectations that the work of the campus must take place on the campus. This article outlines the history of distributed work in higher education, shares models for shifting from co-located to hybrid and fully remote units, offers tips for how to manage such arrangements, lists ways to attract and keep remote distance-education staff members, and suggests policy and infrastructure needs that support successful remote-staff units.