University of the People Experiences

[sacredrain]

Hello all. What is your experience as an instructor or student for University of the People?

I'll be starting there as an instructor on January 6th.

HI Askir, I have been an instructor at University of the People since 2013, I am one of the "veterans." I currently am an instructor for the business and IT schools. My experience has been great so far, except for a blip this year, which was resolved quickly. 

My main gripes is the fact that the content is outdated, but they have recently redeveloped two courses I teach, with less emphasis on the peer grading. In fact in those two courses, peer grading only takes place in week 5. So it is more work as an instructor to assess all of the work, but less complaints.  The university has worked hard to improve the faculty experience, we now have regular faculty meetings and professional development, plus we have department chairs and course leads, something the university did not have until around 2 years ago.

The university has taken some strides to improve, they do have student centers, they are just hard to find with the cumbersome set up. The faculty department uses many automatic reports that are not alwasy accurate, so you may get an email that you did not grade all of your assignments that week, when in fact you have. Most of the staff are in India now, so it can be hard to get assistance in your time frame, but email generally works. Welcome to the university!