Monday, September 12, 2005
Faculty and the internet
A good article is out this month about the effect of the internet on professors. Titled "Professors Online: The Internet's Impact on College Faculty," the article focused primarily on email but touched on the use of the web more broadly as well. One thing I noticed was that there was little mention of blogs at all except through a few comments, though they may have been included under course web sites and web boards. The most fascinating aspects of the article are the quotes from the faculty.
These are two very important components of online communication; basically, the faculty members are trying to draw the students into their intellectual community by treating them essentially as colleagues. There is still concern about the impersonal nature of the internet. One faculty member noted:
Several faculty members extolled the virtues of being able to exchange ideas, articles and to collaborate with far-flung colleagues. That's certainly something I've observed myself and heard from other faculty.
To be expected were the quotes complaining about the lack of support from IT departments, most of which I don't disagree with. Here are a few of my favorites:
When I first read the final quote about the gap between IT and academics, at first I was somewhat offended. After all, I consider myself an academic, with classroom and research experience. However, when I think about the way the administrative side of a college functions compared to the academic side, I see that there are some cultural differences. For example, the staff tend to work 9-5, 5 days a week and no more. They shut off their computers and don't think about work again until 9 the next morning. Faculty may work many more hours than that and may have expectations that an email sent at 10 pm will get an immediate response while on the other side, the staff may be unaware that there may be urgent matters to attend to outside of regular hours. There's also the calendar year problem. Staff are around during the summer months while faculty aren't. I think both sides need to think about how the other side works and come up with compromises that allow faculty to get the support they need without infringing on the rights of the staff.
It's also true that the IT departmentss don't always know what faculty need. Mentioning something to someone in the hallway doesn't necessarily translate into action. In many organizations, there aren't good channels for asking for support. Ours has a few, but it's often hard to differentiate between a need/request vs. fixing a problem. A bigger problem is often a lack of vision as it relates to academic computing. What is the broad vision for how technology should fit within the curriculum? Into research? When you have a vision, you can begin to determine what resources you need, including the human ones. Often, technology needs evolve an emerge, but still, once you begin to see patterns emerging, you can decide how best to handle them. I think that vision or the patterns emerging have to be assessed by both faculty and IT staff. Leaving either side out would result in poor results.
I'm doing what I can on my end. Mostly, I'm listening. Listening to faculty. Listening to students. I'm happy to hear from anyone. What are your needs? Your complaints?
education, internet, instructional technology
Others noted that they use the Internet to send students material on the spur of the moment, such as "articles, things I get in my e–mail that might be interesting for them to read," or to notify them of events and lectures that are class related. Still others noted the importance of Internet contact with students as a means to provide "encouragement (and) building community" and "to foster intellectual community, to enable students to see how academic conversations might unfold, and to encourage them to participate in an intellectual community."
These are two very important components of online communication; basically, the faculty members are trying to draw the students into their intellectual community by treating them essentially as colleagues. There is still concern about the impersonal nature of the internet. One faculty member noted:
the Internet "and e-mail (have) a degree of 'detachment'" that face-to-face communication does not.While there can be an unemotional and detached nature to electronic communication, that detachment can also be used to train students to convey their thoughts in writing more effectively. A faculty member can point out in an email response or on a discussion board exactly where the student is being unclear. In a way, having to convey ideas in writing is not dissimilar from publishing peer-reviewed articles.
Several faculty members extolled the virtues of being able to exchange ideas, articles and to collaborate with far-flung colleagues. That's certainly something I've observed myself and heard from other faculty.
To be expected were the quotes complaining about the lack of support from IT departments, most of which I don't disagree with. Here are a few of my favorites:
"The Internet would be of more use to me as a teacher . . . if my institution had a more effective IT department."I think it's absolutely true that most IT departments, including our own, could do a better job supporting faculty in using technology. But we have to think about how to provide that support. When you only have one staff person dedicated to instructional technology, as we do at Bryn Mawr, the most effective method of training faculty is by providing documentation and holding classroom-based workshops. Though I have a stunning number of people signed up for tomorrow's PowerPoint workshop, typically workshops aimed specifically at faculty are not well attended, often with only 2 or 3 people. At least with such a small number of people, we can meet everyone's needs.
When technology training is provided, it "is too often classroom based and undifferentiated."
The problem is that the academic culture and the IT culture simply do not mix together well.
When I first read the final quote about the gap between IT and academics, at first I was somewhat offended. After all, I consider myself an academic, with classroom and research experience. However, when I think about the way the administrative side of a college functions compared to the academic side, I see that there are some cultural differences. For example, the staff tend to work 9-5, 5 days a week and no more. They shut off their computers and don't think about work again until 9 the next morning. Faculty may work many more hours than that and may have expectations that an email sent at 10 pm will get an immediate response while on the other side, the staff may be unaware that there may be urgent matters to attend to outside of regular hours. There's also the calendar year problem. Staff are around during the summer months while faculty aren't. I think both sides need to think about how the other side works and come up with compromises that allow faculty to get the support they need without infringing on the rights of the staff.
It's also true that the IT departmentss don't always know what faculty need. Mentioning something to someone in the hallway doesn't necessarily translate into action. In many organizations, there aren't good channels for asking for support. Ours has a few, but it's often hard to differentiate between a need/request vs. fixing a problem. A bigger problem is often a lack of vision as it relates to academic computing. What is the broad vision for how technology should fit within the curriculum? Into research? When you have a vision, you can begin to determine what resources you need, including the human ones. Often, technology needs evolve an emerge, but still, once you begin to see patterns emerging, you can decide how best to handle them. I think that vision or the patterns emerging have to be assessed by both faculty and IT staff. Leaving either side out would result in poor results.
I'm doing what I can on my end. Mostly, I'm listening. Listening to faculty. Listening to students. I'm happy to hear from anyone. What are your needs? Your complaints?
education, internet, instructional technology
