download Chapter 4 Quality of Support and Effectiveness at Promoting Technology in Teaching
Lehigh Lab staff members, and LTS staff in general, place a high value on the quality of support they provide. They conduct regular surveys to measure user satisfaction with existing facilities, tools, and service. Faculty are periodically surveyed regarding classroom technology; faculty and students are invited each spring to complete a Blackboard survey; and students are asked annually about their satisfaction the WIRED (Worldwide Information Resources in Every Dorm) computing support program. The results of these surveys drive decisions related to staffing; approaches to end-user support; purchases of equipment, software, and library resources; and upgrades to classrooms and computer labs. An inventory of the various surveys can be found in Appendix 15.
Our most recent survey shows that 87% of faculty find the support either very effective (35%) or effective (52%). 11% were neutral on this question and 3% judged the support to be ineffective. We believe this is a strong endorsement of the level of support the our campus provides its faculty.
| Very Effective | Effective | Neutral | Ineffective | Very Ineffective |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 63 | 94 | 20 | 5 | 0 |
| 35% | 52% | 11% | 3% | 0% |
When asked, “In each of the following areas, how effective is Lehigh at promoting the use of technology to enhance teaching and learning, ” faculty offered high praise for classroom technology (88% very effective or effective); electronic library resources for students (83%); faculty development programming (74%); software resources (69%); technology life cycle (67%).
Again, we believe these numbers represent an impressively high level of faculty satisfaction with library services, classroom and instructional technology support, computing and support, and faculty development efforts. (Readers can review an inventory of library resources in Appendix 7; an inventory of current computing facilities in Appendix 8; an inventory of current software available to the campus in Appendix 9; an inventory of software used and supported by instructional technology and media in Appendix 10; and an inventory of recent faculty development programming in Appendix 14.)
The following views are representative of faculty opinion in this area:
“The library is great; the Blackboard people are great. Blackboard has made my life so much easier. I can now get articles, etc. electronically through the library so easily, and then so easily upload them to Blackboard, that last semester one of my reading lists was much more focused on examples of course material seen in current events. One student wrote on their evaluation that they now read the paper and followed the news with much greater interest.”
“LTS personnel is very responsive and their help and solutions comprehensive and to the point. Maintenance of technology is superb.”
“I have found campus support to be pleasant and eager to help. In addition, they offer a variety of frequent opportunities for faculty to inform themselves about new technologies.”
“The support for integrating clickers into my lecture course has been fantastic at every step from design to training to implementation.”
“Librarians are always willing to make a class presentation, and have a good one that uses 'clickers' on plagiarism. They will make a customized presentation and class-specific web page on primary sources for a term paper assignment. IMRC played a major role in getting my slides scanned for PowerPoint.”
“Resources have improved dramatically in the last 10 years and on-line access to library materials is now excellent.”
“I am a HUGE fan of the IT folks -- they are helpful, encouraging, and very knowledgeable. I wouldn't have been able to do any of the things I've done without them. I consider myself an early adopter; without them, I'd probably be a non-user.”
“It is incredibly helpful to have LTS staff 'embedded' in the colleges. Our team in the COE is outstanding... both from the standpoint of being responsive as well as from the standpoint of being proactive through seminars and suggestions.”
“I think the institution takes a very proactive role in technology adoption through the Lehigh Lab Forum.”
“I can go into any multimedia classroom and be confident I can be ready to use the computer and the classroom display within a few minutes.”
The following comments represent some of the views of those who judged the support to be overall neutral (11%) or ineffective (3%):
“Effective: campus support staff are well trained and eager to help. Ineffective: campus support is stretched WAY to thin; support staff can be difficult to get ahold of and even more difficult to get time with.”
“Our students are graduate students who take classes from 4-10 pm. Our support staff works only from 9-5. It would help to have some night support available for students.”
The comments in this area indicate that the things Lehigh supports well, it supports very well. Nevertheless, there is always room for improvement. For example, many faculty commented on the excellent classroom technology but others pointed out specific areas where the classroom technology is not meeting their needs. Similarly, in the areas of electronic library resources, software resources, and computer replacement, most faculty believed that Lehigh is supplying the necessary resources, but the comments reveal some gaps. Given the nature of these deficits, we believe they can be addressed via existing channels for aligning faculty needs with the allocation of resources (e.g. software committees, ACIS, etc). Nevertheless, it may be helpful to better inform faculty of the procedures for requesting new resources and to invite more frequent input into whether these existing procedures are meeting their needs.
Because change in instructional practice sometimes requires more than quality resources and effective support, we also asked faculty for their views on the question of how better to encourage or reward faculty effort in the use of technology in their teaching. On this question, faculty seem divided. When asked how effective Lehigh is at promoting the use of technology to enhance teaching and learning through faculty incentives, 62% of respondents with an opinion on the matter found that such incentives were ineffective (43%) or very ineffective (19%) (37% of respondents reported that they weren’t familiar enough with these processes to judge and only 25% thought these policies were effective). Similarly, when asked how effective Lehigh is at promoting the use of technology to enhance teaching and learning through tenure and promotion policies, 54% of those with an opinion on the matter found that such policies were ineffective (35%) or very ineffective (19%) in this regard (49% said they did not know enough to judge).
In the comments area of this question, faculty offered a range of ideas. A number (7) pointed out that Lehigh does not do enough to reward teaching or use of technology (consistent with the quantitative values above). Several others made specific recommendations, specifically regarding incentives, rewards, and promotion:
“It is unclear to me that using technology in innovative ways is part of the way faculty are assessed either for annual raises or for promotion and tenure. But I would like it to be at least a modest factor.”
“I would love to spend more time developing my technological skills, including using video clips, podcasts, and such to support and deepen my teaching. I find, however, that I mostly continue to do what I can (rather than develop new things) because of the extreme limits on my time and lack of recognition for developing technology (not that I need to be rewarded for doing this, but that the tenure system looks at my publications and not whether I'm using innovative technology-assisted techniques or traditional teacher-fronted lectures).”
“The tenure and promotion process has no obvious way of including the use of technology to enhance learning and scholarship in its criteria, though it should. The current criteria tend to overemphasize archival journal publications and student teaching evaluations.”
“Blogs, online publishing and journals, and other non-traditional ways of putting out work need to be recognized and supported by departments, since this is an important direction for publication.”
“There is no area on the PAR [Professional Activity Report] that specifically addresses learning new technologies. Professional development funds for attending conferences where we learn about new technologies are limited. (This is even worse for staff who support high-tech environments.) Software resources may be generally effective but budgets are too restrictive for adopting technologies early enough for evaluation when the technology is new.”
“I think there is little recognition and reward for innovation in teaching as part of faculty merit review. This might encourage more faculty to take risks and put in the effort.”
“Provide course release time for developing Web-based and Web-enhanced courses. I could do much more to integrate more pedagogically sound technology in my courses if I had time to do so. At Lehigh, innovative teaching is not really rewarded compared with research and scholarship.”
“[T]here is no incentive for me to take the learning curve for new technology, as my time is better spent doing research.”
“My general sense is that any aspect of instruction is a distant second to research.”
A number of faculty members felt that Lehigh should avoid adding more pressures on faculty, arguing that tenure and promotion shouldn’t be a considered as a tool in this effort:
“I would not want to see the use of technology in the classroom tied to tenure/promotion/pay increase etc.”
“The tenure and promotion decision does not need to become more demanding. The problem with faculty development is the lack of faculty incentives, not the staff. There is only so much time in the day.”
“Tenure and promotion is not an area that should be used to promote the use of technology. ”
Based on these viewpoints and our deliberations on this topic, we do not believe that including a measure of technology usage in the tenure and promotion policies would be effective (or well received), principally because doing so would place additional undue pressure precisely on those faculty who would not benefit from it. Nevertheless, there are two areas where specific changes would help.
First, because methods of research and publication are changing in the digital age, we urge faculty and administration to seriously consider what such changes mean for the future of tenure and promotion practices. If we as a university want our faculty to help define new forms of scholarship for the 21st century, we need to adjust practices so such scholarship is seen for what it is: serious work presented in new formats that often eclipse previous forms of publication in terms of presentation, direct connection to primary sources and data, and scope of dissemination.
Second, we encourage colleges and departments to recognize and reward those faculty who undertake innovative teaching ventures, educational research, or the scholarship of teaching and learning projects. Such projects are valuable contributions to higher education and disciplinary advancement, but faculty need assurances from their departments, colleges, and administration that time devoted to such projects is time well spent. Such assurances might take the form of public recognition, funding for course development or training, and acknowledgment during annual reviews of accomplishments in these areas. Specific recommendations on this topic are offered below, in section IV.
While we hope such faculty are rewarded through traditional channels such as those just discussed (tenure, promotion, recognition, awards, etc.), we also urge our faculty development program to work together with colleges and departments to implement new ways to reward and recognize faculty work in the areas of academic technology innovation, educational scholarship, and the adoption of new teaching practices.