An Action Plan for Infusing Technology into the Teaching/Learning Process (166180690)

7/29/2019 An Action Plan for Infusing Technology into the Teaching/Learning Process (166180690)

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An Action Plan for Infusing Technology into the Teaching/Learning Process

Copyright 1990 CAUSE From _CAUSE/EFFECT_ Volume 13, Number 2, Summer1990. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material isgranted provided that the copies are not made or distributed forcommercial advantage, the CAUSE copyright and its dateappear, and noticeis given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association formanaging and using information resources in higher education. Todisseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission. Forfurther information, contact CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E,Boulder, CO 80301, 303-449-4430, e-mail [email protected]

AN ACTION PLAN FOR INFUSING TECHNOLOGY INTO THETEACHING/LEARNING PROCESS

by E. Michael Staman

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E. Michael Staman is Associate Vice President for Information Servicesat West Chester University. He has over twenty years of experience inthe information technology industry, about one-third of which recentlyincluded consulting, sales, and marketing responsibilities in the

private sector, with the remainder in various teaching, institutionalresearch, and computing positions in higher education. Dr. Staman hasbeen the editor of two issues of New Directions for InstitutionalResearch, has published in Research in Higher Education and

_CAUSE/EFFECT_, and has presented over fifty papers and served in manyothers capacities in support of CAUSE, AIR, SAIR, and SCUP.

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ABSTRACT: This article addresses the concept of technology/pedagogyintegration in higher education and proposes a model for a supported,managed effort designed to create an environment in which interestedfaculty can, if they choose, successfully integrate technology into the

teaching process. The model is based on a set of fifteen needsidentified by the information services organization at West ChesterUniversity as part of a plan to foster and support the use of technologyin teaching and learning at WCU. A calendar and alternative financialmodels are offered.

"The average university in this country, in terms of its use ofinformation technology in teaching, is substantially behind the typicalelementary and secondary school."[1]

The problem of integrating technology into teaching and learning inhigher education is not easily solved. In almost every case,successfully integrating technology into an existing course is hard

work, probably involving a multiple-year effort, hundreds of hours onthe part of an individual faculty member, and the coordination andsupport of a number of different campus units. It is not, as someoneonce suggested to me, simply a matter of "buying a package and placingit on the network for students to use."

Indeed, the problem (regardless of the solution) is not even wellunderstood by many members of institutional faculties, staffs, oradministrations. Each has a different role in the process, and each setof roles must be carried out if a college or university is to benefit



from the widespread integration (as opposed to today's relativelyisolated uses) proposed by proponents of the use of technology in theteaching/learning process. One can begin to understand the difficulty ofthe challenge by attempting to develop an environment which would trulyencourage such integration.

At West Chester University,[2] the problem was put clearly inperspective by the University President when he asked why, after severalyears of significant investments in technology, so little had changed inthe classroom. The model proposed in this article evolved as a result ofthat question. University and private funding for an implementation ofthe model is being developed for the 1990-91 academic year, and specificcase studies will be the subject of a future article.

The question we are addressing in this article is how informationtechnology professionals can best foster and support the use oftechnologies in the teaching/learning process on campus. It is not ourintention to grapple with other important and related questions, such aswhether and when technology is an appropriate tool in theteaching/learning process, how best to obtain an adequate return oncampus technology investments, or why, in many cases, professors simplychoose not to use computing or other forms of technology in theclassroom.[3] Our assumption is that, like WCU, many institutions havealready wrestled with the questions of "whether" and "why," and are now

trying to deal with "how."

Rise of Instructional Computing

Early instructional software (1950s and 1960s) ran on mainframecomputers and was programmed in languages like FORTRAN and BASIC. Ittended to be drill-and-practice material, providing elementary question-and-answer sessions in a line-by-line mode (no CRT terminals) and wascommonly referred to as computer-assisted instruction (CAI). By the1970s, much of the instructional software tended to be written in BASICfor CRT terminals, but still had the drill-and-practice orientation ofearlier periods.

With the advent of the PC (late 1970s and early 1980s), teachingsoftware slowly began to evolve in sophistication. However, softwarepackages still tended to continue as CAI exercises, primarily because oflow memory and disk capacity. By the mid-1980s, the picture waschanging.

Since 1985, dramatic increases in memory, disk capacity, speed, andexperience have led to a truly new generation of instructional software.Users do not have to work their way through mechanical obstacles, butrather concentrate on the actual content of the instruction. That is,machines have begun to conform to people, rather than the reverse, whichleads us to the present.

Recently there has been an increasing awareness on the part of bothfaculty and administration of the availability and potential oftechnological tools, and examples of their successful application toteaching and learning. Examples of non-commercial sources for academicsoftware include CONDUIT, WISC-WARE, Kinko's, and the Clearinghouse forAcademic Software.[4] EDUCOM now holds an annual NCRIPTAL Awardsceremony at their national conference to recognize outstandingachievements in instructional software, and it is highly probable thatmost (if not all) individuals involved in teaching, research, andadministration have received at least one of the many marketing



publications distributed by vendors containing articles about successfulapplications of technology in teaching and research. Examples ofjournals and magazines that include articles about technology in theclassroom and/or building the infrastructure to support academiccomputing include T.H.E. Journal, EDUCOM Review, Academic Computing,and, recently, _CAUSE/EFFECT_. Finally, EDUCOM'S new Educational Uses ofInformation Technology (EUIT) program (which arose out of the EDUCOMSoftware Initiative project) is a major focal point for promoting theuse of information technology in teaching and learning in highereducation[5]

With a growing consensus among higher education leaders thattechnology has clear advantages in many pedagogical situations and thatmuch of the infrastructure is now in place to take advantage of thesepotential benefits, it is difficult to ignore the need to find ways tosupport faculty in the pedagogical application of technology on ourcampuses.

Nature of the Challenge

It is important to note that most faculty are users, notdevelopers, of teaching/learning materials. They use resources such astextbooks developed by their peers, audio/visual materials frequentlydeveloped by vendors, and libraries and information technologies

developed and/or supported by their institutions. In the case of writtenmaterial, the use of resources prepared by others as tools forinstruction has been occurring since the beginning of time; in the caseof computing, since the middle of this century. The first professor touse the first IBM 704 sometime in the early 1950s probably beganenvisioning the instructional potential of the technology as soon as thepower of the resource was understood, and certainly there are manyexamples of using computing in course work in the early 1960s.

Thus efforts to develop courseware are not new. What is new is thatthe key barriers of excessive cost and an insufficient amount ofacceptable software are rapidly being overcome. Given the number ofsuccesses reported in recent years it would seem that by now the use of

technology in teaching/learning environments would be as common as theuse of other resources available to faculty, or that we would at leastsee momentum in that direction sufficient to convince us that the use ofsuch resources would become commonplace during the next few years. Butthe use of technology in pedagogic environments is not commonplace, andwhat momentum exists is developing at an excruciatingly slow rate.

Efforts to develop the momentum have focused on a series ofperceived, tangible obstacles. For example, the NCRIPTAL Awards evolvedbecause their developers correctly believed that major obstaclesincluded a lack of awareness both of the potential offered by technologyand of successful examples of the use of technology in disciplines ofall types.

More fundamental than these kinds of obstacles, however, is thequestion of what truly happens when a member of the faculty walks infront of a class and begins to teach. It (the act of teaching) is a veryspecial event, highly individualized, unique to a given professor in agiven environment, teaching a given lecture in a given course. Theissues are curriculum restructuring and courseware portability (in thepedagogic, not the technical sense) because the way in which aparticular course is actually taught depends upon a specific professorat a specific university and is typically a function of the specific



tools available. The problem is further exacerbated by more mundanethings such as a lack of detailed technological expertise on the part ofmost faculty, insufficient staff support, lack of resources, minimal orno administrative support or commitment, and a general lack of focus onthe problem. It is not surprising that the results have not been good.Simple problems become incredibly complex: which software package tochoose for a given segment of a course, whether the package will run onexisting hardware, what the use of the package will do to the existingcontinuity in the course, and even how to load memory, get started, andrecover from a myriad of potential technologybased failures.

A discussion on barriers would not be complete without recognizingthat the professoriat at most institutions have yet to accept thedevelopment of high quality, successful academic software in the sameway as contributions to refereed scholarly journals. Universitypromotion and tenure policies are not the subject of this article.However, it is certainly appropriate to observe that the intellectualeffort required to develop much of today's nationally recognizedacademic software is at least equal to if not far greater than theeffort of publishing some of the articles that appear in academicjournals, and it is highly conceivable that such software may, in fact,be of greater pedagogic value. Newman provides an excellent treatise inthis area.[6]

Finally, in some cases the problem may be made more complex if anadministration makes incorrect assumptions about whether and how a givensegment of the faculty will want to change, and then proceeds to installresources which may not be appropriate to the teaching/learningenvironment at the time. Integrating technology into the curriculum isnot an administrative process. It is a faculty process which requires agreat deal of administrative support, possibly in the form of facultyreassigned time, and certainly in the forms of staff assistance andfinancial support.

Structuring the Project

Successfully creating an environment in which interested faculty

can integrate technology into the curriculum is a relatively complexproblem. At WCU, we envision a three-year developmental project toaccomplish these goals, and have identified fifteen unique needs thatunderlie the endeavor (see Exhibit 1).

[EXHIBITS NOT AVAILABLE IN ASCII TEXT VERSION]

As illustrated by the list of needs, there are not just a few butmany challenges to be met. The successful incorporation of technologyinto the curriculum includes faculty becoming engaged in self-directeduses of technology, the creation of new approaches in curricularpresentation, and the development of specific expertise.

We have identified as the most important aspect of our project theestablishing of early successful experiences on campus so that otherfaculty will follow by example. To have any impact, a "critical mass"must be built -- one or two projects will not do. The key is to puttogether "teams" of academicians to be supported by the University'sAcademic Computing Services. This support, which is vital to the successof the project, needs to include assistance in:

* the identification of appropriate software* management



* documentation* training* evaluation* dissemination of successes to other faculty.

Clear, focused management will be required. For the purposes of agiven effort, each "team," consisting of one faculty member and oneassistant, will need to be under the direct supervision of competentmanagement within the academic computing center. During the initialstages of the project, each team will need to develop a plan, acalendar, resource estimates, deadlines, and so forth -- in other words,follow the principles of good project management.

A special, temporary "organizational unit" (perhaps a task force)will need to be formed so that the focused nature of the effort can bereinforced. Resources and project control will be granted to this "unit"which, because of the University-wide nature of the project, is probablybest managed by the chief academic computing officer.

A Three-Year Model

Our model proposes that approximately ten faculty members beidentified, each to spend about 25 percent of their time for one yeardeveloping material to be applied to a specific, targeted course during

the next year. The intent is to successfully integrate technology into atotal of ten courses. Each faculty participant will then present twoseminars to the University community during the third year for a totaltwenty seminars (see Exhibit 2).

[EXHIBIT NOT AVAILABLE IN ASCII TEXT VERSION]

Each individual who volunteers for the project will go through aprocess of identifying software and/or technology which, because of thedocumentation, review, and/or national recognition, appears to be anexcellent candidate for a particular course. The process of identifyingthe technology, acquiring it, learning how to use both the software andthe hardware, and developing initial approaches to the targeted course

will be conducted during the initial year of the project.

The second year (first actual classroom implementation) is alsodevelopmental in nature. Problems, knowledge of what works and what doesnot work, and ideas about how to improve on the use of the toolsdeveloped in the first year will become apparent only through classroompilot and evaluation efforts. Faculty will teach the course onesemester, make revisions in curriculum and technology use, and re-teachthe revised course to complete pilot work.

The final, very important component of the project is thedevelopment of two seminars that faculty participants will conductduring the third year. Each seminar need be only a few hours in

duration. The successful "experiences" of faculty can be discussed andused as catalysts to encourage other members of the faculty to seek waysto integrate technology into their courses. That is, proof by a knowncolleague that the use of technology truly improves the teachingprocess, or that students learn better (this means that they learn morefrom a given course, gain different insights, retain the material forlonger periods of time, learn faster, and so forth), will generate moreinterest on the part of the faculty than any number of papers, reviews,or sales efforts by people external to the University. Third-yearseminars will be offered under the auspices of Academic Computing



Services, and faculty will lead seminars as part of their projectcommitment without reassigned time.

Financial Models

The figures provided in Alternative #1 in Exhibit 3 reflect ourestimates for a budget to cover our three-year model. These figuresassume the project involves ten courses, ten faculty members reassignedone-quarter time for one academic year to learn the technology and tomodify a course, ten students (one for each faculty member for a two-year period), an average of $3,000 for software and equipment and $200for miscellaneous expenses, per faculty member. In Year #1 the majoractivities are acquisition, learning, and curriculum modification; inYear #2 the activities are teaching and evaluation; and in Year #3 eachfaculty member presents two seminars. Figures for the other alternativesshown in the exhibit are adapted from this basic model.

[EXHIBITS NOT AVAILABLE IN ASCII TEXT VERSION]

It is important to note that the budget estimates are specific tothe WCU project, and that budgets could vary significantly, depending onitems such as local costs, equipment, and software. Software andequipment, for example, could vary from zero to $10,000 (or more),depending upon the needs of a particular course. The estimate of $3,000

is based on the costs that appear to be associated with entry-levelexperimentation using a typical NCRIPTAL-recognized piece of software.

Preliminary Experiences

Currently, we have initiated several projects in preparation forimplementing the ten-course, three-year model. Actual implementation ofthe full model requires funding, planned for the 1990-91 academic year.

The preliminary projects address the problem of upgrading coursesyllabi to enhance basic writing, quantitative, and computer skills. Inthe area of writing skills, sixteen faculty members from elevendepartments are participating in a joint project to use word processing

and grammar packages and electronic mail to upgrade their courses. Withrespect to quantitative skills, the University has involved ten facultymembers from various departments to use such packages as MathCad,MicroCalc, MiniTab, and Excel as well as electronic mail to upgradetheir courses. To improve computer skills, two faculty members areconducting a pilot project in teaching the introductory computer coursefor general education. In addition to accessing word processing,spreadsheet, database, and programming software from the network, allcourse communications (syllabi, assignments, homework, classroombulletin boards) are conducted using electronic mail.

To date, these projects have involved reassigned time for only asmall number of key participants, with perhaps too much reliance on

external funding. Our current budget planning is recognizing the realityof the need to commit to the approach described in this article if weare to achieve a critical mass in integrating technology into thecurriculum at WCU.

Summary

From the standpoint of university administration, the problem ofhow best to integrate technology into the teaching/learning process mustultimately evolve into the question of how best to create an environment



in which interested faculty can, if they choose to, create change inindividual courses, one course at a time. There are a number ofdifficult and sometimes complex implementation issues, such as: where tostart the process and who leads the effort; who does what and how bestto provide support; what does it cost, who pays, and how to fundinitiatives; how to sustain the project; and how to disseminate theresults. Though we have resolved some of these issues, others can onlybe resolved as we implement our plan and learn through experience.

There are examples where highly motivated and knowledgeableindividuals have developed courseware modules for some aspect of acourse. The more general case, however, and the conclusion suggested bythis article, is that the successful incorporation of technology into ateaching and learning environment is a multiple-year process requiring agreat deal of hard work on the part of designated leadership andsignificant support on the part of the institution.

If our institutions want to have an environment where the use oftechnology in instruction is more the general than the special case, andwe are not willing to wait until the middle of the next decade for thisto occur, then we must find a way to build momentum on our campuses.Fundamental to the model presented here is the initiation and support ofa sufficient number of projects to establish a critical mass so that thesuccessful experiences of a core group of individuals become the

foundation of a more widespread use of technologies in teaching andlearning environments.

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For further reading:

Academic Computing magazine, 200 West Virginia, McKinney, TX 75069-4425.

Anandam, Kamala, ed. Transforming Teaching with Technology: Perspectivesfrom Two-Year Colleges. EDUCOM Strategies Series on InformationTechnology. McKinney, Texas: Academic Computing Publications, Inc.,1989.

EDUCOM Review and EUIT Newsletter, EDUCOM, 777 Alexander Road,Princeton, NJ 08540.

FIPSE Technology Study Group. Ivory Towers, Silicon Basements: Learner-Centered Computing. EDUCOM/Academic Computing Software InitiativeMonograph Series. McKinney, Texas: EDUCOM/Academic Computing, 1988.

Graves, William H., ed. Computing Across the Curriculum: AcademicPerspectives. EDUCOM Strategies Series on Information Technology.McKinney, Texas: Academic Computing Publications, Inc., 1989.

Smith, Shirley. Managing Academic Software. EDUCOM/Academic Computing

Software Initiative Monograph Series. McKinney, Texas: AcademicComputing Publications, Inc., 1988.

Sprecher, Jerry W., ed. Facilitating Academic Software Development.EDUCOM/Academic Computing Software Initiative Monograph Series.McKinney, Texas: Academic Computing Publications, Inc., 1988.

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Footnotes



1 Frank Newman, "Technology on Campus: An Uneven Marriage,"CAUSE/EFFECT, Spring 1990, p. 10.

2 WCU is a comprehensive university with an emphasis on teaching andapproximately 12,000 students, located in suburban Philadelphia.

3 See R. Kanigel, "Technology as a Liberal Art," Change, March/April1986, pp. 20-27; R. Glover, "Realizing the Benefits of InformationTechnology Investments on Campus," CAUSE/EFFECT, Winter 1988, pp. 17-25;and D.E. Drew, "Why Don't All Professors Use Computers?," AcademicComputing, October 1989, pp. 12-14.

4 See also the Directory of Software Sources for Higher Education,published by EDUCOM/Peterson's Guides, 166 Bunn Drive, Princeton, NJ08540. CONDUIT is located at the University of Iowa, 301 OH, Iowa City,IA 52242; WISC-WARE, University of Wisconsin, 1210 West Dayton Street,Room 3110, Madison, WI 53706; Kinko's Service Corp., 255 West StanleyAvenue, Ventura, CA 93001; Clearinghouse for Academic Software, IowaState University, 297 Durham Center, Ames, IA 50011.

5 For further information about ESI/EUIT initiatives, the SiliconBasement Seminars, the NCRIPTAL Awards, and numerous publicationsavailable on educational uses of information technology, write to

EDUCOM, 777 Alexander Road, Princeton, NJ 08540; or send electronic mailto [email protected].

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An Action Plan for Infusing Technology into the Teaching/Learning Process (166180690)