Teaching online courses can be frustrating for professors and may ultimately bring them to experience "a high degree of burnout," according to a study by R. Lance Hogan, an assistant professor of technology at Eastern Illinois University, and Mark A. McKnight, an assistant professor of business communication at the University of Southern Indiana.

"Burnout," write the authors, describes "a syndrome of emotional exhaustion and cynicism that occurs in response to the stressors and strains of professional life." In their study, based on responses to a questionnaire completed by 76 faculty members at colleges and universities across the United States, they found that online-course instructors exhibited the three main symptoms of burnout: Instructors were emotionally exhausted, they felt a sense of "depersonalization" in interactions with students, and they experienced "reduced feelings of personal accomplishment."

A variety of factors play into why teaching online courses can be so deflating. For example, faculty members "traditionally perceive teaching online as more work and more time-consuming than teaching a traditional course," write the authors. That stigma can become "a major workplace stressor," they say. Another possible source of stress, they say, is "the additional training and knowledge required to effectively teach online."

"Burnout is an important concept and has rarely been investigated among higher-education faculty," write the authors. With more than two million students now enrolled in at least one online course, they say, the "need to examine burnout specific to online instructors" has been established.