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If teaching online results in faculty burnout, you’re doing it wrong…

Written by CEN-PICKETAL on . Posted in blog, Instructional Design, teaching online.

 

Not you, personally — but the systems around you. Burnout isn’t inherent to the online modality; it’s a symptom of course design that hasn’t been optimized for both effectiveness and efficiency, coupled with the absence of institutional infrastructure to support it. When faculty are left to reinvent the wheel, make design decisions without technical expertise or evidence-based pedagogical guidance, they often absorb unrealistic expectations to fill systemic gaps — and exhaustion becomes inevitable. The persistent myth that online teaching takes more time endures precisely because the design expertise, support infrastructure, and evidence-based practices designed to make online teaching efficient are too often missing. When instructors are unsupported, courses are developed without the benefit of evidence, expertise, and informed guidance, leaving faculty to fill every gap with time and labor — and that’s what makes online teaching unsustainable. It doesn’t have to be.

With intentional design, strong instructional-design partnerships, evidence-based frameworks such as OSCQR, online courses and instruction can be engaging, high-quality, and sustainable. Faculty time and energy are finite; institutions that invest in instructional design support and adopt effective practices that make it possible for that time to be spent on what matters most — teaching, connection, & learner success.

It’s Not the Modality — It’s the Design

For more than two decades, studies have repeated the claim that online teaching requires more time than face-to-face instruction (Cavanaugh, 2005; Stone & Perumean-Chaney, 2011). Yet accumulating evidence shows this is largely a perception, not a measurable fact.

McLain (2005) found that estimated faculty workload for interaction in online graduate courses did not exceed typical expectations for traditional instruction, suggesting that perceptions of excess workload stem more from course design and interaction choices than from the online modality itself. Mandernach & Holbeck (2016) reported that online instructors typically spend about 40 percent of their time grading and giving feedback, 30 percent facilitating discussions, and the rest on content development or one-to-one communication — a distribution that reveals inefficiency in task design, not in the medium itself.

Van de Vord & Pogue (2012) reached a similar conclusion: the sense of overload arises when faculty attempt to replicate face-to-face practices online rather than redesigning courses for the digital environment. Dennen et al. (2007) also observed that time inflation is magnified when interaction tools such as discussion forums are used without clear pedagogical purpose or limits. Shea (2007) reinforced that experienced online faculty report higher efficiency and satisfaction once they gain confidence in course design and teaching strategies.

More recently, Mulla et al. (2023) found that faculty most often cite lack of institutional design support, role ambiguity, and limited access to instructional design expertise as the primary reasons online teaching feels heavier. Faculty described “reinventing the wheel” each term due to absent infrastructure or shared templates — exactly the systemic gaps your argument highlights. Similarly, Ahmed et al. (2023) reported that while faculty perceive engagement and interaction as ongoing challenges, they consistently emphasize that well-structured, clearly organized courses reduce cognitive and logistical workload and make teaching more sustainable.

Together, these findings suggest that burnout emerges when design choices fight against, rather than leverage, the modality.

Could online faculty burnout actually be our clearest indicator of missing instructional design infrastructure?

Why the Myth Persists — & Why Faculty Burn Out

Research and faculty experience point to several intertwined causes:

  1. Inexperience & design literacy gaps.
    Novice instructors often over-invest time because they lack modality-specific expertise & efficient digital workflows. As faculty gain online experience, perceived workload declines (Mandernach & Holbeck, 2016; Mulla et al., 2023).
  2. Role overload & task creep.
    Faculty frequently perform designer, technologist, & student-support roles simultaneously. Shea (2007) found that this role ambiguity, more than technology itself, drives frustration & time loss.
  3. Weak institutional infrastructure.
    Without embedded instructional-design support, shared templates, review cycles, or authority to make design changes, instructors rebuild courses each term from scratch (Reed et al., 2025).
  4. Emotional & relational labor.
    Students often equate instructor visibility and constant responsiveness with caring. Bolinger et al. (2025) found that learners interpret cues such as personalized feedback, immediacy, and time investment as evidence that faculty “care” — a dynamic that can inadvertently pressure instructors to overextend in the name of connection.
  5. Blurred boundaries & constant connectivity.
    A 2024 WGU Labs survey reported that 64 percent of instructors struggle to “turn off work,” linking fatigue to constant digital presence rather than course volume (Inside Higher Ed, 2024).
  6. How workload is framed.
    Wang et al. (2025) distinguished challenge stress (motivating) from hindrance stress (depleting), showing that when workload is framed as a meaningful challenge and supported institutionally, instructors report higher engagement rather than exhaustion.
  7. Broader context of educational stress.
    Following pandemic transitions, Mosleh (2022) found that shifts in delivery mode intensified stress mainly where institutions lacked clear policies, training, or peer support — underscoring that burnout reflects structural readiness, not modality.

Design-First, Support-First Solutions

If the problem is design & support, then the remedy lies in infrastructure, expertise, & continuous improvement.

Instructional Designers as Essential Partners

Instructional designers (IDs) bring expertise in pedagogy, technology, accessibility, & evidence-based practice. They help faculty:

  • Map learning outcomes, assessments, & activities coherently.
  • Build reusable templates & interactive modules.
  • Embed accessibility & RSI compliance into design rather than retrofitting later.
  • Offload technical & structural tasks so faculty can focus on teaching & connection.

Quality Frameworks & Rubrics such as OSCQR

Tools like #OSCQR provide shared, research-aligned criteria for accessibility, interaction, assessment alignment, & learner support. They guide both new course development & periodic refreshes, turning quality review into collaborative professional learning rather than evaluation (Shea, 2007; Reed et al., 2025).

Scalable Efficiency Practices

  • Use public Q&A or Ask-the-Instructor forums to answer common questions once for everyone.
  • Maintain feedback banks that can be personalized instead of rewritten each semester.
  • Incorporate peer-reviewed assignments so learners share responsibility for feedback.
  • Employ auto-graded quizzes & adaptive release paths for foundational concepts.
  • Leverage analytics dashboards to identify at-risk learners early.
  • Adopt course shells & templates that embed proven structures & save build time.

When IDs & faculty collaborate under shared frameworks, efficiency & quality reinforce one another rather than compete.

The Institutional Imperative

Preventing burnout isn’t about individual resilience; it’s about institutional design. How might we reimagine faculty workload conversations to center design efficiency, not endurance? Campuses that value online education must:

  • Formally integrate instructional designers into academic structures, empower them with decision-making credibility, and ensure that both IDs and faculty are given time and recognition for collaborative course design work.
  • Provide pedagogical online course design and faculty development opportunities for both new and experienced online instructors/courses.
  • Establish policies & review cycles grounded in quality rubrics like OSCQR.
  • Invest in tools, templates, & analytics infrastructure that streamline repetitive tasks.
  • Recognize design & facilitation labor in evaluation, promotion, & workload models.

Institutions that build this infrastructure enable sustainability; those that ignore it will continue to confuse burnout with inevitability.

Faculty burnout in online teaching isn’t proof that the modality is the cause of it … it is evidence that the system hasn’t been designed to support it. With thoughtful instructional design, shared frameworks such as OSCQR, & institutional commitment to continuous improvement, online education can deliver on its promise of flexibility, inclusion, & authentic human connection within effective online instructional environments.

The real question is not whether online teaching takes more time, but whether we’ve invested the time to design it well.

What would happen if institutions treated course design quality reviews (like OSCQR) not as checklists — but as acts of care for faculty and learners alike?

How is your campus making online teaching more sustainable? Or, where do you still see gaps? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

References

Ahmed, V., Anane, C., Alzaatreh, A., & Saboor, S. (2023). Faculty perception of online education: Considerations for the post-pandemic world. Frontiers in Education, 8, 1258980. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2023.1258980

Bolinger, A. R., Bolinger, M. T., Conner, K., Morgan, J., & Perry, S. (2025). Cues of Caring: How Students Perceive That Faculty in Online Classes Do (or Don’t) Care. Journal of Management Education, 49(3), 333–362. https://doi.org/10.1177/10525629241262309

Cavanaugh, J. (2005). Teaching online—A time comparison. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 8(1). https://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring81/cavanaugh81.htm

Dennen, V., Darabi, A., & Smith, L. (2007). Instructor participation in online discussions: Time investment and workload implications. Distance Education, 28(1), 65–79. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587910701305383

Inside Higher Ed. (2024, August 26). Professors are burned out thanks to technology. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-innovation/teaching-learning/2024/08/26/report-finds-professors-are-burned-out-thanks

Mandernach, B. J., & Holbeck, R. (2016). Teaching online: Where do faculty spend their time? Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 19(4). https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1124530

McLain, B. P. (2005). Estimating faculty and student workload for interaction in online graduate music courses. Online Learning Journal, 9(3). https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v9i3.1784

Mosleh, S. M. (2022). Stress, burnout, and role change among university faculty after pandemic transitions. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 920742. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.920742

Reed, R., McCall, A., Peterson, M., & Stewart, L. (2025). From burnout to belonging: Re-engaging online faculty. Online Learning Journal, 29(3). https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v29i3.5026

Shea, P. (2007). Bridges and barriers to teaching online college courses: A study of experienced online faculty in thirty-six colleges. Online Learning Journal, 11(2). https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v11i2.1728

Stone, M. T., & Perumean-Chaney, S. (2011). The benefits of online teaching for traditional classroom pedagogy: A case study for improving face-to-face instruction. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 7(3), 393–400. https://jolt.merlot.org/vol7no3/stone_0911.htm

Van de Vord, R., & Pogue, K. (2012). Teaching time investment: Does online really take more time than face-to-face? The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 13(3), 132–146. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v13i3.1190

Wang, H., Sun, Y., Wang, W., Li, J., & Zhang, X. (2025). Exploring the relationship between teachers’ perceived workload, challenge-hindrance stress, and work engagement: A person-centered approach. BMC Psychology, 13, 201. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-025-02537-y

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