No instructional design is hardy enough to withstand the detrimental effects of content expert faculty who cannot, or will not, communicate effectively with their geographically dispersed students. This paper presents a different model for faculty development programs and describes the outcomes of its first year of implementation in one department. The Paradoxical Disjunction Model One would anticipate that the faculty, as teachers and researchers, would participate in technology oriented faculty development programs primarily to learn how new technologies might be used to improve teaching and research processes. Paradoxically, the faculty are rarely interested in new technologies to support teaching and learning. Already successful teachers and researchers, most faculty feel relatively little need to make dramatic changes in either area.
Few colleges reward use of technology, or even distance teaching, with tenure and promotion awards.
For many faculty, learning to use new technologies to support distance teaching and learning is a time-consuming undertaking for which no immediate gain is apparent. Since academic faculty represent the largest investment made by the university, it seems reasonable to plan faculty development programs that maximize faculty effectiveness by adapting to the workload, psychological, and social needs of faculty. The Paradoxical Disjunction Model shows differences between the focus of technology support personnel and actual concerns of faculty related to the adoption of new technologies for distance education. Faculty's efficient use of time is maximized and social status concerns are minimized by having training sessions in their own offices instead of a public central location. When faculty members learns on the same equipment that will be used for daily work, generalization of training to performance domains is maximized.