K-12 School Computer Networking/Chapter 25/Developing Faculty in the Information Age: Insights from Academia

Developing Faculty for the Information Age: Insights from Academia

“The fundamental issue is not of new versus old education, but a question of what anything must be to be worthy of the name education.” John Dewey

Introduction

In 2004, the US Department of Education polled over 160,000 K-12 students to determine their perspectives relative to their current and anticipated use of technologies in the classroom (USDE, 2004){4-5}. From the analysis of those student responses a picture of learner expectations emerged that today’s teachers and their enabling staff may be unprepared to meet.

“Every student would use a small, hand-held wireless computer that is voice activated. The computer would offer high-speed access to a kid-friendly Internet, populated with websites that are safe,designed specifically for use by students with no pop-up ads. Using this device, students would complete most of their in-school work and homework, as well as take on-line classes both at school and home. Students would use the small computer to play mathematics-learning games and read interactive e-textbooks. In completing their schoolwork, students would work closely and routinely with an intelligence digital tutor and tap a knowledge utility to obtain factual answers to questions they poise. In their history lessons, students could participate in 3-D virtual reality-based historic reenactments.”

Though K-12 students may have a crystal clear vision of the role of technology in the future, the application of such emerging technologies is neither as linear nor as predictive as one would imagine. History suggests the role of technology in education may be shaped more by the social and cultural context in which that technology evolves than the technology itself (Nye, 2006){53-57}. Thus in considering teacher or faculty development, a technical coordinator must not be blinded by a narrow belief in technological determinism as viewed through the eyes of their students. On the contrary, the aim of faculty development should be to efficiently educate and train today’s teachers such that they can confidently approach tomorrow’s technology in context with the curricula that it supports. In support of such a broad theme this section explores some basic technological principles; introduces some relevant trends within the field, and finally offers insights from academia that may be helpful for the K-12 technical coordinator charged with aligning technology with teaching and learning.

Technology as Lever for Distance Learning

Dr Arthur Chickering, famous for his work in area of student development, proposed seven principles that form a reasonably good foundation from which to build, employ, and, in turn, harmonize technology as a lever for successful integration within a distance learning program (Chickering, 1996){1-2}. Chickering states good technological practice:

  • encourages contact between teachers and students
  • develops cooperation among students
  • uses active learning techniques
  • gives prompt feedback
  • emphasizes time on task
  • communicates high expectations
  • respects diverse talents and ways of learning

Built upon a broad and clearly defined foundation of good technological practice, derived through benchmarking and alignment to some established standard (state, regional, or national accrediting criteria), a faculty development program can start to envision the unique needs of its constituents.

Some General Trends To Consider

But given such principles what kind of tomorrow should a faculty developmental program prepare for? The future is always hard to predict, but at the end of the day those charged with developing faculty have to have a vision and design their programs around that vision or else risk the dilemma Alice faced when chatting with the Cheshire Cat in Alice and Wonderland.

Alice asked “Which way I ought to go from here? That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where. Then it doesn’t matter which way you go”

Technical coordinators care which way they take their faculty and have to plan for the future based on some shared sense of tomorrow. Thus one of the early steps in any developmental program is an environmental scan to determine what trends await the faculty and whether developmental changes are required to assure the faculty competencies in place today will meet the anticipated needs of tomorrow. In 2003, researchers from Brigham Young University (Howell, 2003){1-14} proposed 32 trends that affect distance learning; eight of which are shown below:

  1.  The need for faculty development is growing  
  2.  Instruction is becoming more learning centered, non-linear, and self-directed  
  3.  There is a growing demand for accountability in teaching and learning
  4.  Academic emphasis is shifting from course completion to competency development  
  5.  Technology devices are becoming more universal and ubiquitous  
  6.  Funding challenges are the top IT concern for many schools
  7.  The distinction between distance and local education is disappearing 
  8.  There is an increasing need for strategies that exploit the capabilities of technology

Insights from Academia

Understanding future trends, as noted above, is only one component of a much broader and overarching framework required to develop faculty. Once an environmental scan is conducted a technical coordinator should also consider how any new technology should be employed. Such alignment is absolutely critical given that history suggests that “faculty development has often adopted a scattershot approach which awarded money to early adopters to pursue their personal technology interests”…even though these programs failed to … “tie faculty development to anything more than general improvements in the use of technology or simply increasing the number of faculty who use technology in instruction” (Agee, 2003){2). So where should the technical coordinator begin? Again academia offers some insights. 1n 1998, George Mason University (GMU) implemented a Technology Across the Curriculum initiative. This initiative had three major focus areas (Agee, 2000){6}:

 1.	Ensure technology was focused on learning and integrated with the academic content
 2.	Set up a programmatic rather than an episodic approach to technology integration.
 3.	Provide adequate support for students and faculty to use the technology for both problem solving and product creation.

Armed with the vision of these three focus areas, GMU then set about aligning technology and the curricula. In doing so GMU staffers created 10 technology goals reinforced by supporting skills/competencies that students would need to master within the curricula (Agee, 2000){7}. The faculty were then charged with aligning their courses with the technology goals and integrating technology into the curricula to facilitate student learning. GMU’s technology goals are listed below:

     1. Electronic collaboration	                  6.  Use of databases to manage information
     2. Electronic document creation	                  7.  Use of e-tools to analyze data
     3. Electronic presentation	                  8.  Use of geographic information systems to handle data
     4. Use of e-tools for research and evaluation	  9.  Familiarity with legal, ethical, and security issues
     5.  Use of spreadsheets to manage information	  10.  Working knowledge of IT platforms

By linking technology to the curriculum, GMU was able to design a developmental approach that seamlessly and systematically integrated technology with learning and teaching while providing a roadmap for faculty development. Although environmental scans and systematic developmental approaches are important, they are but two, though arguably central components, within an overarching framework that the technical coordinator should consider.

                     Framework For Faculty Development (FD) in an Information Age

 1.	Get leadership buy-in for a systematic FD program. 
 2.	Employ a faculty development specialist either part-time or full-time.
 3.	Determine the sufficiency of investment (time, money, manpower, technology) in FD.
 4.	Conduct an environmental scan to get a sense of what factors shape your school’s future. 
 5.	Envision and describe the role of technology in the school’s curriculum.
 6.	Conduct a needs assessment to determine the gap between where the curriculum is today and where it needs to be tomorrow     
         relative to technology.
 7.	Craft specific faculty developmental competencies that will help fill the curriculum gap.
 8.	Create faculty training objectives that align to those developmental competencies.
 9.	Establish a long-term faculty development plan that harmonizes the training objectives not only with the curricula but also 
         with manpower, money, equipment, facilities, and culture
10.	Get leadership and faculty buy-in to the overall plan and execute 

Within such a framework, another key to implementing FD learning solutions is differentiating between when objectives (step 8) require training solutions and educational solutions to achieve the required competencies; training and education are not the same

                 Training                                          Education

           -- Applied knowledge and proficiency               -- Search for understanding
              developed through experience and practice          --- Often no approved solution
              -- Reproduce exactly what was taught            -- Shapes what you think and feel
              -- Right or wrong                                  -- Degrees of interpretation
           -- Applied learning without variation                 -- Allows generalization beyond what was taught
           -- Instructor as the director                      -- Instructor as a guide

Most new developmental programs will require awareness and education, followed later by specific training on e-learning tools that are relevant to an instructor or an emerging course. A short list of some of those e-learning tools currently in use by category is shown below (Lee, 2006) {22-23}

      One to One                                 One to Many                            Many to Many

      E-mail                                      Static web pages                       Content Management System
      
      Instant messaging                           Dynamic content web pages              News server

      Voice over IP                               RSS                                    Forum discussions

      Friend of a Friend (FOAF)                   Blogs                                  Chat

                                                  Podcast                                Games
                    
                                                  E-portfolio                            Wikis

From an education perspective it may make sense to expose faculty to such a wide variety of tools and their potential, but it would not makes sense to attempt to train faculty on any such tool that is not relevant to the curriculum or the student it supports. GMU’s program succeeded because it harmonized education and training directly to the curricula, the learning needs of the students, the hiring interests of their potential employers, and, in turn, the teaching needs of the faculty. Many others schools, colleges and universities have faculty development programs that are similarly finding their future in an information age. Whatever combination of education and training is used to develop the faculty, it would benefit the technical coordinator to learn the contextual lessons from others in the field such as Virginia Tech (VT) whose Faculty Development Institute (FDI) is widely recognized as a benchmark. Below find five lessons learned from FDI (Moore, 2003){5}that are relevant to technical coordinators today.

 -- Faculty don’t care about technology for its own sake…it must provide some benefit to the learning environment.
 -- Faculty must be trained to integrate new technology…training must be ongoing and specifically designed for their campus.
 -- Faculty must have access to sufficient technical support staff.
 -- Faculty must have sufficient time and funding to risk integrating technology in their courses.
 -- Faculty must have strong endorsement from their departments to pursue technology integration.

In considering such lessons researchers from the University of North Carolina (UNC) add that most instructors have “little time to devote to developing new teaching strategies” associated with distance learning” (Henshaw, 2003){184}. Further their research suggests that successful implementation of computer based teaching strategies is “more likely to occur iteratively over a number of semesters.” Consistent with the finding of iterative learning, UNC set up a three tract program to systematically develop faculty to use and be better stewards of technology (Henshaw, 2003){185}.

  -- Tract One:    Introducing Instructional Technology in a Course  
  -- Tract Two:    Enhancing the Use of Instructional Technology in a Course 
  -- Tract Three:  Applying Advanced or Emergent Instructional Technologies

The UNC and GMU programs reinforces the premise that context matters and, as such, large infusions of money tied to quick training technology-based learning solutions will not guarantee results and, in many cases, may simply exacerbate the underlying developmental problem. Armed with some basic principles, a general sense of the future, a realistic sense of timing, an implementation framework and an approach that aligns technology with the curriculum, and informed by some simple lessons a technical coordinator can begin to design a faculty development program efficient and impactful.

Conclusion

This section laid out a framework for faculty development that was built upon seven pedagogical principles that provide focus for those charged with coordinating the digital landscape of tomorrow. Upon those principles, trends were presented followed by a 10 part faculty development framework that may help shape and support systematic faculty development efforts going forward. That framework is, in turn, continuously informed by lessons learned from those who have previously worked in the field to include faculty and staff at GMU, VT, and UNC. In the end, technology offers an institution another thread, tool or technique that contributes to more meaningful and “connected” learning; a long established ideal once entrusted to Anglican administrators of yesterday, but passed through time to the technical coordinators of today, who in collaboration with their faculty developers, will shape how we teach and learn tomorrow.

“When the intellect has been properly trained and formed to have a connected view or grasp of things…one can enter with comparative ease into any subject of thought and take up with aptitude any science or profession.” ~ Cardinal Newman (1854).

                                                    Bibliography

1. Chickering, A. and Ehrmann, S. Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as a Lever. AAHE Bulletin, Oct 96, pp 3-6

2. Henshaw, B and Mathis, L. Better, Cheaper, Slower: Evolution of an Instructional Development Program. In Developing Faculty to use Technology, David G. Brown ed. Wake Forest University Press. 2003

3. Howell, S, Williams, P. and Lindsay, N. 32 Trends Affecting Distance Learning, Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, Volume VI, NumberIII, Fall2003 State University of West Georgia, Distance Education Center

4. Lee, S. and Berry, M. Effective E-learning through Collaboration, in Coming of Age an Introduction to the new World Wide Web, Terry Freedman ed. Terry Freedman LTD. 2006

5. Moore, A. and Head, T. Philosophy of Faculty Development at Virginia Tech, In Developing Faculty to use Technology, David G. Brown ed. Wake Forest University Press. 2003

6. Nye, David E. Technology Matters. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. 2006.

7. Vision 2020.2 Student Views on Transforming Education and Training Through Advanced Technologies. US Department of Commerce and the US Department of Education, 2004. http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/os/technology/plan/2004/site/documents/visions_20202.pdf