Some of the Compassionate Pioneers could be instrumental in aggregating and focusing those efforts, to help avoid some of the wasteful duplication. That is, if the culture of colleges, universities, and academic disciplines will support the development and use of shared instructional resources. At most colleges and universities the supply of resources available to help faculty improve teaching and learning with technology is simply inadequate to meet rising expectations. The usual lack of coordination and collaboration among different parts of most educational institutions compounds the impact of the shortage of support service professionals and undermines the college's or university's capacity to adopt and adapt valuable new combinations of technology, pedagogy, and educational purpose. Attractive new technology applications keep arriving faster than colleges and universities can integrate them.
Most novices ask lots of predictable questions which can be easily and quickly answered.
However, these veterans are likely to see how they might use it to achieve more sophisticated, educationally attractive goals. Their questions and support needs become more complex and require more expert, possibly lengthy assistance. The variety of technology tools and applications used at most colleges and universities also exacerbates technical support problems. In many other industries, institutional standardization on certain hardware, software, and related tools can reduce support costs by restricting the variety of technical support services provided. Unfortunately, this kind of standardization may reduce instructional options and, thereby, conflict with some interpretations of academic freedom.