Developing an Effective IT Integration and Support System

Introduction As faculty are feeling increasing pressure to utilize technological enhancements in their courses (Neal, 1998), they are often frustrated by the myriad challenges they encounter using these techniques. They may find that the technology doesn't do what they thought it would do, that they don't have the training to use the technology effectively, or that their students don't have the training to use the technology. In a recent survey of faculty members at 378 institutions, educators ranked the stress of keeping up with technology as higher than stress caused by research/publishing demands, teaching loads, or the review/ promotion process. Nevertheless, most saw technology as educationally beneficial (Higher Education Research Institute, 1999). The challenge for higher education is to develop well-informed integration plans that enable faculty to effectively use the learning enhancements offered by informational technology (Bothun, 1999). This is a critical effort if we are to develop functional, educated individuals prepared for life in our ever-evolving knowledge society (Druker, 1993). However, many faculty see their institution's technology policies as misguided or inadequate (Trinkle, 1999). We sought to avoid this situation by proactively designing a responsive process to guide the implementation of technological enhancements. Effective utilization of information technology requires extensive access to technological expertise and supportive infrastructure (Stuart, 1999). Over a two-year period, we undertook an intensive upgrade in our IT resource system to meet the diverse pedagogical needs across our institution. At the end of this time period, we measured significant increases in technology use throughout the campus, and a substantial percentage of our students reported that the technological enhancements had either made doing their classwork easier or helped them learn more. The following discussion will present the model of interdisciplinary strategic development that made the use of information technology a more effective and accessible process for faculty at multiple levels of comfort and usage and helped us overcome common challenges to IT integration efforts. The Integration Model Initial Assessment The first step in any major change effort is to frankly assess an institution's current state in comparison to the end goal and to try to identify where there may be pockets of both support and resistance to the proposed changes. When we evaluated our campus, we felt that two aspects in particular would be quite helpful in facilitating our IT integration process--institutional youth and student population. Established twelve years ago in response to community demands, the Lewiston-Auburn Campus is one of three campuses of the University of Southern Maine. Its relative youth means that the facilities are modern and that the organization as a whole is fairly flexible in nature. The faculty is comprised of 15 tenure-track, 15 regular part-time, and approximately 30 adjunct professors, all of whom are firmly committed to trying pedagogical techniques that may improve the quality of their teaching and students' learning. The campus enrolls 1600 non-residential students whose course load equates to approximately 800 full-time equivalents. Eighty percent of the students are women. With an average age of 31, many of our students work and have families. The non-traditional profile of the majority of our students meant that they would likely welcome the flexibility that technology could offer their educational experiences, yet they might be less comfortable with technology than more traditionally aged students. We knew that we would have to carefully monitor reaction to our efforts across the campus in order to remain in touch with users' needs. A key element of the monitoring process was to develop an educational technology advisory committee comprised of representatives from the campus's faculty, staff, and students. …