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Aculty M 62 EducausE R e V I e
Aculty M 62 EducausE R e V I e
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By Joel L. Hartman, Charles Dziuban, and James Brophy-Ellison
M
uch has been written recently about the Net Gen-
eration—the generation (roughly twelve to twenty-
five years old) that makes up the majority of stu-
dents attending U.S. colleges and universities—but
relatively little attention has been given to the col-
lege and university faculty who teach them. Faculty
roles and the processes of teaching and learning
are undergoing rapid change. Most faculty mem-
bers did not seek careers in the academy because of a strong love of
technology or a propensity for adapting to rapid change; yet they now
find themselves facing not only the inexorable advance of technology
into their personal and professional lives but also the presence in
their classrooms of technology-savvy Net Generation students, lead-
ing them to feel a bit like the character Valentine Michael Smith in
Robert Heinlein’s 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land.
Joel L. Hartman is Vice Provost for Information Technologies and Resources, University of Central
Florida. Charles Dziuban is Director of the Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness, University
of Central Florida. James Brophy-Ellison is Senior Faculty Fellow at the Research Initiative for Teach-
ing Effectiveness, University of Central Florida.
62 Educause r e v i e w September/October 2007 © 2007 Joel L. Hartman, Charles Dziuban, and James Brophy-Ellison Illustration by Jeffrey Smith, © 2007 September/October 2007 E d u c a u s e r e v i e w 63
The three traditional roles of col- TABLE 1. Differences between Teaching-Centered
lege and university faculty are teaching, and Learning-Centered Approaches
research, and service, with the relative Teaching-Centered Learning-Centered
emphasis on each varying by institutional
Deliver instruction Produce learning
type and mission. Each of these roles is un-
dergoing substantial change, but teaching Transfer of knowledge from teacher to Discovery and construction of knowledge
student
and research are being most significantly
altered by technology. The growing im- Active faculty Active students
pact of technology on research has been One teaching style Multiple learning styles
well documented in recent publications: Curriculum development Learning technologies development
the National Research Council’s Prepar- Quantity and quality of resources Quantity and quality of outcomes
ing for the Revolution: Information Technology
Quality of faculty Quality of students
and the Future of the Research University; the
National Science Foundation’s Cyberin- Time held constant; learning varies Learning held constant; time varies
frastructure Vision for 21st Century Discovery; Learning is linear and cumulative Learning is a nesting and interacting of
and reports from the EDUCAUSE Center frameworks
for Applied Research (ECAR), including Promote recall Promote understanding
What Do Researchers Need? Higher Education Faculty are lecturers Faculty are designers of learning
IT from the Researcher’s Perspective and IT environments
and the Changing Face of Research in Higher Learning is competitive and individualistic Learning is cooperative and collaborative
Education. These publications, and many
others, chronicle the transformation that Source: Robert B. Barr and John Tagg, “From Teaching to Learning: A New Paradigm for Undergraduate
is under way in research tools and meth- Education,” Change, vol. 27, no. 6 (November/December 1995): 12–25.
ods, in the composition of research teams,
and even in the structure of academic dis-
ciplines. Nearly every discipline has been lecturing has been equated with teaching: responses noted general growth in the
redefined to some extent by technology, approximately 80 percent of instruction availability and use of various instruc-
and entirely new branches of traditional has been delivered in this mode. Yet even tional technologies on U.S. campuses.
disciplines are emerging. A recent though lecture-based classroom teaching However, in 1995, Green reported that
Google search for the word computational has long been held as the “gold standard” the survey data indicated that “the use of
conjoined with the names of traditional against which newer, technology- information technology in instruction”
fields of study revealed more than thirty enhanced methods are often compared, was “finally moving past the early adopt-
newly defined fields, ranging from com- A. H. Johnstone and W. Y. Su have noted ers and breaking into the ranks of main-
putational astrophysics to computational how inefficient lecturing can be as a stream faculty” at all types of institutions.4
zoology. As the title of a New York Times means of conveying information. The Instructional integration of IT remained
column by George Johnson suggests, “All typical lecture contains approximately the number-one issue as reported by
Science Is Computer Science.”1 5,000 words, of which a student may cap- the Campus Computing Survey through
Although research and publication ture about 500—a mere 10 percent.2 2003, after which network and data
are undeniably important components Over the past two decades, broad and security bumped it to the number-two
of the professional lives of many faculty rapid advancements in new theories of position.
members—for some, they form the most learning, new student-centered pedago- The diffusion of technology into the
important component—we are focusing gies, and new online- and classroom- teaching and learning space is producing
here on the less-visible changes brought based interactive technologies have a number of subtle—and not-so-subtle—
about by technology in the teaching begun to enable the pedagogical changes changes to which faculty members must
and learning space and on how these called for by Oblinger and Maruyama. adapt:
changes are fundamentally reshaping the Donald P. Buckley referred to this shift as
processes and tools associated with the a transformation from a teaching-centered to n Most faculty members are experts in
institutional structures, extending to the a learning-centered paradigm,3 as elaborated their respective disciplines, and as
roles and responsibilities of campus IT by Robert B. Barr and John Tagg (see teachers, they expect to be regarded as
leaders and organizations. For the first Table 1). such. Confronting new and unfamiliar
time in their careers, faculty members In 1995 the Campus Computing Sur- technologies can quickly turn them
are expected to teach in ways that differ vey, an annual study of IT activities and into novices, and with technically-
from how they were taught when they priorities in higher education conducted savvy Net Generation students in
were students. Diana G. Oblinger and by Kenneth C. Green, documented a their classes, they may find that their
Mark K. Maruyama have observed that major shift in the use of technology to students know much more about
historically, at a majority of institutions, support instruction. Before 1995, survey specific technologies than they do,
Faculty Development
The above changes do not affect all
faculty members equally. First, not all Source: Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 4th ed. (New York: Free Press, 1995), p. 262.
faculty members are equally engaged in
teaching; second, those who are deeply
engaged may differ in their willingness If we apply Rogers’s model to faculty ing initiatives often do not scale because
to explore or adopt technology in their members’ adoption of technology in they are heavily dependent on one or
teaching. Everett M. Rogers studied the teaching, several points become appar- only a few individuals. Bates cautions that
diffusion of innovation throughout ent. First, the motivations, incentives, and faculty enthusiasm and self-reliance may
organizations. Rogers’s “diffusion of in- support required for each population not be sufficient to ensure the diffusion
novations” model, depicted in Figure 1, of adopters are different. At each stage, of these efforts institution-wide. Bates’s
suggests that members of an organization the adopters become more pragmatic, second faculty-development model is
(e.g., college or university faculty) are not less likely to adopt an innovation for the “boutique approach.” Boutique solu-
homogeneous but rather can be classified its own sake, and more entrenched in tions provide one-on-one support to
as sub-populations based on the order in traditional beliefs and practices. It will faculty members as they come forward
which they are likely to become engaged therefore take higher levels of energy and and request assistance. This model is
with an innovation. Rogers labels these resources to support an innovation such satisfying to both faculty and profes-
sub-populations as innovators (I), early as technology-facilitated teaching and sional staff—until the number of faculty
adopters (EA), early majority (EM), late learning as it moves through an institu- members requiring support begins to
majority (LM), and laggards (L). Innova- tion. Second, after an innovation passes increase. Although boutique projects
tors are the few pioneers who are first to from the early adopters to the early and may themselves be scalable, the sup-
experiment with a new concept and put late majorities, the size of the population port structure is not, eventually leading
The later stages of diffusion will involve large populations at various levels of
adoption, bringing the new challenge of supporting multiple populations with
differing needs and attitudes.
it to use. Often having advanced technical that must be supported increases dramat- to the “support crisis” present on many
skills, innovators bring attention to the in- ically. Third, the later stages of diffusion campuses. In Bates’s third model—the
novation within the organization, where will involve large populations at various systemic approach—campus support
it is subsequently observed and then levels of adoption, bringing the new chal- resources, including instructional de-
attempted by the early adopters. Early lenge of supporting multiple populations signers, programmers, and digital media
adopters are the first to begin moving the with differing needs and attitudes. specialists, are brought together under a
innovation into the mainstream, and the Tony Bates explains how to apply common strategy, scaffolded by scalable
greater the visibility and credibility of this Rogers’s model to the design of effec- systems and by processes for dealing with
group, the more likely the innovation is to tive faculty-development programs.12 rapidly increasing support needs. Return
be adopted by the early and late majori- He cautions that although providing on investment is improved by designing
ties. The final category, laggards, is named direct support to individual early adopt- systems that scale for enterprise-wide
in recognition of its members’ relative ers—what Bates calls the “Lone Ranger” delivery as opposed to developing what
unwillingness to give up their traditional faculty-development model—may seem Chris Dede calls “islands of innovation.”13
beliefs and practices. attractive to IT organizations, the result- Because teaching with technology
change is occurring across the spectrum e-learning—has become an area where broader network for supporting teaching
of institutional types and sizes.18 In terms institutions of all types and sizes are and learning.
of how IT leaders are spending their spending significant human and finan- As faculty members confront the
time, CIOs at large or doctoral-research cial resources. expanding impact that technology is
institutions report that research sup- The above changes will challenge IT having on their scholarship, research,
port is among their top-ten IT-related leaders in many ways. They must become teaching, and students—what Peter Vaill
issues, whereas CIOs at small-to-medium familiar with new technologies (those that calls “Permanent White Water”—IT or-
institutions and those at master’s, bac- are supported by the institution as well ganizations must assess what role they
calaureate, and associate’s institutions do as many that are not), understand and will play in shaping, implementing, and
not. Conversely, CIOs at master’s, bacca- serve new populations of faculty at vary- supporting the assimilation of IT into the
laureate, and associate’s institutions and ing levels of sophistication, find the fiscal teaching and learning process. Should
those at small-to-medium institutions are and human resources to support and the goal be to persuade and assist faculty
more likely to report that faculty develop- sustain these new initiatives, and adapt members to adopt technology, or should
ment and support, course management their organizations to serve new missions. it be to enable systemic transformation?
systems, and electronic classrooms are This will require modifying existing When technology is “bolted on” to an
among their top-ten IT-related issues. organizational structures (e.g., adding existing process, the usual result is a
The survey clearly shows, however, that instructional designers and digital media modest improvement in the process and
the infrastructure to support technology- producers) or forming new campus part- also higher costs.19 To obtain both greater
enhanced instruction—course manage- nerships with instructional technology improvement and reduced costs, higher
ment systems, electronic classrooms, and organizations in order to create a much education institutions must redesign the