Approved-By:  "EDTECH Moderator" <21765EDT@MSU.BITNET>
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.edtech
Date:         Wed, 22 Jul 1992 22:37:04 EDT
From:         Carol Taylor <ctaylor@diana.cair.du.edu>
Subject:      Convincing Faculty to Change

I too support faculty in the use of educational technology.  I am
writing in response to recent messages discussing how best to entice
faculty to the use of technology in the curriculum.

I would agree that part of the problem is the lack of convincingly
excellent tools for faculty to use and another part of the problem is
a reluctance to change and a resistance to the new.  However, I think
there are another couple of other issues at play here as well:

Equipment:

At our school even those faculty members who are interested and would
like to get going with educational technology are hampered by lack of
equipment.  Facilities are very limited and the limited facilities we
have are rapidly aging (80286 and older Macs) to the point where they
can't take advantage of many of the new and excellent technologies now
available.

I have shown multimedia to many members of our faculty and have met
with an enthusiastic reception for the most part.  However, I then
need to tell them that the next step is to try and free up funds to
purchase the necessary equipment.  Needless to say, this has a
dampening effect.

Actually, I feel the problem of equipment is a fairly easy one to
solve.  It only requires fiscal resources, not changes in attitudes.
A more serious problem lies in how faculty are rewarded at
universities.

Faculty Reward Systems

Very few schools place the major emphasis of their reward structure
(tenure, promotion, recognition among peers, etc.) on teaching.
Faculty are rewarded primarily for research.  Although I know this is
not true at EVERY school, it certainly seems to be the norm at most.
I have come to this conclusion from talking with faculty here and at
other schools and from reading.

Certainly we all know that re-writing a curriculum, especially using
new tools and technology, is not a trivial undertaking.  If this is
what is required to adapt to new technology and there is little or no
reward for time spent on curriculum development, how can we reasonably
expect faculty, especially younger faculty, to endanger their careers
by pursuing this course?

An interesting sidelight to this here at DU is that faculty will
routinely agree with this while administrators (deans, dept. heads,
etc.) routinely disagree.  That is to say, administrators think that
teaching is emphasized in the reward structure, faculty do not think
so.

Support Issues

Even if curriculum development and teaching is rewarded and equipment
is plentiful, I think many administrators do not want to address the
issue of human resources to provide support.  I do not believe that
faculty should have to struggle with every new technology that comes
along in order to determine whether or not it will benefit them.
Historians after all, probably want to be historians more than they
want to be computer people.

Certainly it is not too much to expect faculty to gain some level of
basic knowledge and literacy with computers.  However, the quantity
and speed with which new technologies reach the marketplace raise the
very real question of what academics should spend their time doing.  I
think a computer support staff that actively engages in research,
development and support of educational technologies is a must for
technology to be implemented successfully.

I would find any continuing discussion of topics relating to the
practical implementation of educational technology very interesting --
including and criticism or commentary on the issues I have raised.

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Carol Taylor					Internet:  ctaylor@du.edu
University of Denver				BITNET  :  ctaylor@ducair
Faculty Computing Lab                   	Phone   :  303/871-2110
2020 S. Race - BA 367
Denver, Colorado 80208 USA
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