Boundaries - the secret to keeping your sanity

There's a fine line between being accessible to your students and being too accessible. When I first started teaching online, I checked into my course several times a day because I was paranoid about missing an important question or problem or issue. I found that the questions and problems and issues expanded to fill as much time as I devoted to them, and I was rapidly getting burned out. I've settled on a compromise that works very well for me -- I check in on my classes every day, but I only do it once a day. After I get home from my day-job, I relax, work out or do something with one of my hobbies, and have dinner. After that, usually around 7:30 or 8:00 PM, I login to my online classes to see what's going on. This keeps me in touch with the discussions and issues of the class, while allowing me to stay caught up on answering questions and emails. This makes it much less stressful on me, but my students always comment on how responsive I am. Every semester, at least one of my students says something like, "My other online instructor never answers my emails -- thanks for being so responsive!" I don't feel like I'm working terribly hard to stay in touch with the students, but they sometimes perceive it as something extraordinary.

Obviously, my schedule isn't going to necessarily work for you, but I encourage you to find your own boundary balancing point that allows you to be accessible and responsive, but still leaves time for the rest of your life.