Tech Solutions Can Address Teacher Workload Management Concerns

There are a number of critical issues facing teachers in the K-12 and higher education spaces, none perhaps more pivotal than workload management. While pay and resources continue to plague school districts and educators, a disturbingly growing trend has been the number of teachers saying they do not have enough time in the day to complete their work, oftentimes because they are saddled with tasks that fall outside their role as instructors.

According to a 2024 Pew Research study, “most teachers (84%) say there’s not enough time during their regular work hours to do tasks like grading, lesson planning, paperwork and answering work emails.” In fact, this trend has been present and growing. A 2022 RAND study found “58 percent of teachers said they experience frequent job-related stress.”

With this in mind, this article explores ways technology, specifically virtual learning platforms, can help address these issues and free up educators to dedicate their time to the most important element of their position: teaching.

Automation

One of the quickest ways to remove unnecessary and non-teaching responsibilities from educators’ plates is to automate tasks where possible. With online classroom platforms, tasks such as attendance and gradebook entry can simply be automated. Class removes this time-consuming and mundane task from each instructor’s to-do list for every class and assignment.

Not only does this save time, but removing this redundant, monotonous responsibility also reduces the proclivity for human error when dealing with transferring data manually from one piece of software to another (or even doing so physically via paper). In addition to the time and effort reduction automation provides, it also can modernize and unify data so that greater insights can be gleaned from the micro-exploration of a singular student to the macro-analysis of multiple classrooms or even entire school systems.

Hierarchical distribution of labor

The reality is that educators at the top of their field should be spending the majority—if not all—of their professional time educating. Virtual classroom platforms provide a unique solution to make this a greater possibility for school districts, colleges, and universities. By leveraging the power of online coursework, schools can better distribute educational tasks to instructors and non-educational tasks to professionals who lack teaching credentials. By putting educators in front of students, regardless of their physical proximity, schools, and institutions can extend the reach of top-performing instructors and allow these individuals to focus solely on their teaching responsibilities. With the bandwidth of fewer instructors to reach more students, school districts and higher education institutions can then allocate additional funds to in-classroom aides, assistants, and helpers who can take on the non-teaching responsibilities necessary to keep classrooms running smoothly. Additionally, coursework that may not have previously been available to all students—a foreign language course or advanced physics class—can now be accessible to a deeper pool of the student body.

Synchronous and asynchronous learning

Some school districts and higher education institutions may recognize the benefits of a hierarchical distribution of labor that allows for exclusively teaching rather than exclusively managing classroom responsibilities between professionals, but they may not be able to transition to this setup as quickly as necessary. For educators who are already overburdened with non-teaching tasks, repetition may offer a temporary solution.

In some ways the reverse of automation (as laid out above), virtual classroom platforms can allow an educator’s teaching energy to go further by promoting a combination of synchronous and asynchronous learning styles. If instructors find that, at the end of each week, there are still hours of non-teaching tasks and responsibilities that have been neglected throughout the week that still must be done, creating an academic curriculum that features built-in time for these tasks can better help workload management.

Educators can create pre-recorded, asynchronously delivered lesson plans on the last day of the week which students can participate in without needing direct supervision from their instructor. During this time period, which is replicable with templates and shareable lesson plans, educators can then work on their non-teaching responsibilities without being overwhelmed or being pushed past the available hours in a week to complete these tasks.

Tech as an assist

While there are many well-documented reasons for the current strain educators are under to accomplish their jobs with fewer resources, less time, and less pay, the reality is that, without some sort of intervention by school districts and higher education institutions, the education workforce will cease to bend and, instead, ultimately break. The only solution is to identify a path that doesn’t compromise the caliber of education being delivered while working to aid teachers who are being pushed beyond their capacity.

Utilizing the powerful, education-designed abilities of virtual classroom platforms like Class can help reimagine teaching responsibilities in a way that allows hardworking professionals, both inside the classroom and within academic administration, to do incredible work for future generations of learners.

Are you interested in seeing how Class can help navigate the delicate balance of resource limitations and teacher workload management? Reach out to a Class team member today, and let’s explore solutions that empower further advancements in education.