Straddling the Chasm: Rethinking Faculty Support

Straddling The Chasm: Rethinking Faculty Support from Michelle Pacansky-Brock

Today I had the honor and pleasure to share a keynote presentation at the NUTN Annual Conference (#NUTN15) in Savannah, GA. NUTN (National University Technology Network) originally started in 1982 as a group of representatives from institutions delivering distance learning through tele-courses. This was my first time attending a NUTN conference and it was a fantastic experience! There were a few familiar faces in my audience (Alex Pickett, John Sener, Christi Ford, Deb Adair) and I have enjoyed making many new connections.

Prior to my session, I attended a presentation by MJ Bishop and Anne Keehn, who shared the results of a national survey about the impact of Teaching and Learning Centers. Their findings show a significant trend underway in higher education organizations that connects Centers of Teaching and Learning with efforts to bring about organizational change. In short, the findings underscore the pertinent role that the intersection of learning and technology play in organizational transformation.

While the findings weren't surprising to me, it was refreshing to see this trend highlighted and recognized as a significant shift. During the presentation, I recalled a memory from one of my previous positions in which I suggested renaming the faculty support group I was a part of to a name that included "learning" and "innovations." My idea was returned with a cold, blank stare and the comment, "That sounds like a group that would get eliminated in the next budget cut." It's good to see times are changing in higher education.

But the changes that Teaching and Learning Centers are tasked with are deep-rooted organizational changes, which conflict with organizational cultures and histories. The most talented TLC staff cannot bring about this type of change on their own.  In her presentation Dr. Keehn shared that organizations spend $9B annually on organizational change consultants.  She wanted to break that statistic out for her study to understand how much of that spending occurs in higher education -- but, apparently, data is not collected for higher education because no money is spent on it (citation needed). This leaves me with a far greater understanding and appreciation of the conflict and tensions experienced by so many who are in roles that connect learning and technology.

The presentation I shared today was a new for me. It was an exciting opportunity to try to bring together several ideas I've been contemplating with findings from my dissertation study and another recent study I conducted with Jill Leafstedt and Jaimie Hoffman. The title of my presentation was Straddling the Chasm: Rethinking Faculty Support (slide deck also embedded above) and its focus was on investigating the gap between the support needs of higher education faculty and the types and formats of support that are provided today. For example, 80% of higher education faculty are contingent employees (part-time or graduate assistants); yet, at 9 out of 10 institutions faculty who teach online are required to come to campus for online professional development. Sitting in a room with peers listening to a conversation about effective online teaching strategies does not immerse faculty in the online learning experience, which is the only way to have a person learn the potential and power of an excellent online class. But that is not the only problem with this model. Many faculty who are part-time teach at multiple institutions, some which may be located hundreds or thousands of miles from campus. This is just one disconnect in motion today with faculty support. Our models of faculty support are out-dated remnants of machine-age thinking and we are missing rich opportunities for collaborative solutions. We must begin to understand each higher education institutions as members of a complex ecosystem. Each is an organic system that is in a continuous state of change and very much affected by its exterior situation. 

Another of my goals for the presentation was to encourage my audience members to relate to how it feels to a faculty member at the various stages in the diffusion of innovation. I showed the great graphic from Phil Hill and Michael Feldstein that illustrates faculty on both sides of ed tech chasm and had each person in the room identify themselves with one of the groups illustrated in the image. Then we discussed how it feels to "straddle the chasm." And to support this experience, I referenced the powerful comment George Station shared with me on Google+ about his own experience straddling the chasm (see slide 3 of my prez). There were many nods shared during the presentation.

This is an ongoing conversation and research topic for me and it's one I feel very committed to. I truly believe that our social era is rich with opportunities to transform the traditional model of faculty support and, I also believe, that faculty who are early adopters and innovators are those who will lead this change and encourage others to jump across the chasm.  I feel proud and excited about the my team at CSU Channel Islands is doing as we strive to support both sides of the chasm with online professional development and CI Keys.

Many thanks to the NUTN Board for inviting me to speak in beautiful Savannah today! I will enjoy my evening ghost tour before I head back to California. Brooohahahaha!!

Transforming Faculty Support through Co-Creation

In 2007, I began integrating web-based technologies into my online and face-to-face classes. In the years that followed, I discovered new ways to engage my students, learned how technology can support more diverse groups of learners, and grew into a passionate supporter of online and blended learning. Along the way, I've learned a lot and have shared many of my experiences with other faculty. These experiences have led me to several observations about the value of faculty support in higher education at this time of momentous change and the need to transform how we think about and develop faculty support.

Like too many faculty, when I began using web-based technologies in my teaching, I did not have access to faculty support. Those who do commonly have services provided to them through face-to-face workshops and consultations. This boutique model of faculty support relies upon an institution to employ individuals who are capable of and have the time to develop resources to support the needs of all faculty. As faculty needs diversify and the demographics of faculty change (more part-time and remote instructors with less access to campus), this model becomes less effective. The boutique model is a remnant of industrial-age thinking and is no longer sustainable in today's social era. The recent increase in the integration of technology into learning, growth in online and blended course enrollments, and shifts in faculty demographics are increasing the need to transform the boutique model of faculty support.

A New Higher Ed Ecosystem

This is not a new problem; however, little change has occurred since the conversation began more than a decade ago (Walkowiak, 2003; Hartman, Dziuban & Brophy-Ellison 2007). Consequently, the composition of the higher education ecosystem has experienced striking changes. As more faculty integrate web-based tools into their teaching, the educational technology companies developing these tools co-exist alongside colleges and universities in an ecosystem. This idea triggers skepticism and tension for many within higher education. Critical dialogue is important. The recent boom in venture funding for startups has resulted in steep competition in the startup space, as well as a higher risk for failure, and more companies out to make a buck. Through grassroots leadership, faculty will determine which tools are effective and worthy of growth and traction.

Co-Created Faculty Support Resources

Teaching with technology can be a catalyst for change in a faculty member's career, as it was for me.  But for many faculty, integrating technology into a classroom can surface concern, fear, frustration, and require subject matter experts to step into a very vulnerable situation. This is where support comes in. To inspire new approaches in teaching and learning, the culture of an organization must support risk-taking and build community for faculty innovators. Services and resources are central to supporting faculty, but supporting the social and emotional experiences involved with change are too.
As we move forward into the future of higher education, institutional leaders will need to focus more on cultivating a culture of innovation and find more sustainable solutions for developing resources and services.  Co-creation is a model that has grown out of the collaborative nature of our social era and may hold potential for transforming how faculty support resources are developed. In co-creation, individuals from different groups come together -- for example, a company and its customers -- to identify solutions to a problem that members of all groups have a shared interest in improving. Innovations in teaching and learning are at the center of improving higher education and, as such, colleges, universities, and edtech companies share an interest in providing support resources and services to faculty who teach with technology.

To inspire co-creation, edtech companies must cultivate relationships with their early adopter faculty users and faculty must acknowledge how valuable their input is to improving the technologies they use. These relationships act as formative feedback loops to ensure their experiences are understood and valued within the product development life cycle. In these interactions, the value of the product will be defined and examples of how to effectively teach with the tool will be discovered. These practices must be showcased and shared with educators across institutional boundaries -- and, yes, faculty should be compensated for the value they provide.

From 2012-2013, I negotiated a consultancy with VoiceThread, an educational technology company, that resulted in the development of co-created faculty support resources.  This position provided me with the opportunity to host a monthly higher ed webinar series. The live webinars (which are available in archived form) consisted of demonstrations of my own VoiceThread teaching practices and those of other faculty around the nation, who I located through my social networks. After a year, I self-published an eBook that contextualized the use of VoiceThread in learning theory, discussed instructional design strategies, and detailed specific teaching activities from my classes. The eBook incorporated links to brief videos, illustrating the practices discussed in textual form, as well as screenshots of examples.

The webinar series and eBook were mutually beneficial to myself (providing me with income and the opportunity to share my ideas and those of other faculty) and the VoiceThread organization (whose product was demonstrated to be effective by a credible source). In turn, faculty across the nation and beyond have accessed these co-created faculty support resources and learned from them.
If you are an innovative faculty using emerging technologies, think like an entrepreneur.  Share your stuff, preferably with a Creative Commons license to encourage re-sharing.  Develop relationships with the edtech organizations that develop the tools you use. Provide feedback -- honest feedback -- about how the product could be improved. As these relationships mature, propose to develop sustainable faculty support resources that showcase your work, the products you use, and support faculty across institutions.

In my next post, I will discuss the potential of co-created eBooks to support faculty. Drawing upon findings from my recent study, the post will provide a list of features to include in eBooks intended to support faculty who teach with emerging technologies.

References

Hartman, J. H., Dziuban, C., & Brophy-Ellison, J. (2007). Faculty 2.0. EDUCAUSE Review. 42(5) 62-76.

Walkowiak, S. (2003). Training Busy Faculty; Developing Scalable Training Solutions. In D. Lassner & C. McNaught (Eds.), Proceedings of EdMedia: World Conference on Educational Media and Technology 2003 (pp. 2057-2059). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Retrieved July 30, 2015 from http://www.editlib.org/p/14144.

5 Ways to Support Faculty who Teach with Emerging Technologies

"We must support both sides of the chasm." -Phil Hill

As online and blended learning reshapes the landscape of teaching and learning in higher education, the need to encourage and support faculty to move from delivering passive, teacher-centered experiences to designing active, student-centered learning increases.  Our new social era is rich with simple, free to low-cost emerging technologies that are increasing experimentation and discovery in the scholarship of teaching and learning. While the literature about Web 2.0 tools are impacting teaching and learning is increasing, there is a lack of knowledge about how the adoption of these technologies is impacting the support needs of higher education faculty. This knowledge is essential to develop new, sustainable faculty support solutions.

Driven by my own experiences as a full-time and part-time faculty and early adopter of VoiceThread -- a Web 2.0 tool that fosters asynchronous voice, video, and text conversations around media -- I designed my dissertation research study to investigate the how the use of Web 2.0 tools is impacting the support needs of higher education faculty. I performed this action research study in collaboration with the VoiceThread organization with the purpose of improving the support needs of their higher education users.

The study's sample included 50 higher education faculty members, comprised of a mix of part-time and full-time faculty from 2-year and 4-year institutions in the United States with a VoiceThread account (free, an individual Higher Ed account, or a site license). The interview and reflection data revealed unique support needs of faculty who teach with emerging technologies, a growing demographic. These include:

1. Just-in-time resources. Faculty support programs comprised of face-to-face workshops and consultations will not meet the needs of faculty. The issues underlying this finding are related to the significant changes in the demographics of faculty. Today, most classes are taught by part-time faculty and many of these individuals also have a full-time job and teach at multiple institutions. Online resources that can be accessed from anywhere at anytime from multiple devices are essential to supporting innovations in teaching and learning.
2. Non-linear PD experiences. Faculty who adopt new technologies desire non-linear professional development experiences to support the integration of technology into their classes. Faculty noted that accessing an eBook to learn new strategies to teach with VoiceThread was "less risky" than spending the time in a workshop, as the eBook provided non-linear pathways, allowing a faculty member to engage with the topics that align best with her/his needs.
3. Community. The adoption of emerging technologies by faculty is resulting in pockets of innovation on campus. As a result, faculty who integrate emerging technologies into their teaching feel isolated from their peers. Professional learning networks designed to connect faculty and promote sharing of practices and ideas will be key to supporting faculty. Social technologies like Twitter, Hangouts on Air, and Google+ Communities will continue to play important roles in connecting faculty innovators across campuses.
4. Funding for accounts. The freemium model employed by most edtech companies provides faculty with a low-barrier entrance and encourages experimentation. However, as the adoption cycle for Web 2.0 tools matures, many faculty are finding themselves paying out of pocket for the premium version(s) of their tool(s) of choice. While will need to consider new funding approaches for supporting faculty within these pockets of innovation. 
5. LMS integration. Learning Management Systems (LMSs) remain the most pervasively used technology in higher education. Learning Technologies Interoperability (LTI) is an industry standard that provides a simple way for web-based technologies to integrate with major LMSs. offering streamlined teaching experiences that may eliminate the need for students to create accounts and provide the ability to grade the activity inside the LMS. Faculty see LTI integration as an opportunity to save them time and promote more adoption across campus. However, faculty have the perception that administration want to see strong adoption rates prior to considering an LMS integration. This tension is evidence that faculty use of web-based tools is reshaping the teaching and learning landscape.

Faculty support must be understood as a dynamic process that needs to adapt to the changing needs of instructors. Colleges, universities, and edtech companies exist within a new edtech ecosystem. Organizations within this ecosystem have a shared interest in supporting faculty who teach with emerging technologies.  In my next post, I will discuss the potential that co-created faculty support resources hold for providing continuous support for faculty, as well as empowering instructors to be leaders in teaching and learning innovations. 

Integrating Online Teaching into the Campus Culture

Has your college/university experienced a significant increase in online classes in recent years?  Or is your campus preparing to ramp up its online offerings?  The success of a student's online learning experience hinges largely upon how thoughtfully and strategically this new teaching and learning method is integrated into the fabric of your campus culture. 

This month, in my GETideas.org blog post, I explore these ideas and more in my post titled "Integrating Online Teaching into the Campus Culture."

I will be holding a free online "office hour" to discuss your related thoughts and ideas.  If you have a success story to share, please join us! If you'd just like to listen in, pull up a seat too!  Everyone is welcome. 

October Office Hour with Michelle: 

Tuesday, October 19th at 12pm PST (3PM Eastern)

A registration link will be available shortly at the top of the blog post.

Online Learning: pay it forward

Things are a mess in higher education now and we need new ideas to help us move forward. In my last blog post, I reflected on the loss of California's proud history of higher education which includes magical stories of free community college degrees that opened gateways and fulfilled dreams of socially disadvantaged individuals who, otherwise, would likely have never completed a college education. I received a few comments from that post and several heartfelt emails from individuals who had earned degrees through this "free college" system. The emails were filled with tremendous heartbreak over the recent budget cuts to California's higher education system and, more specifically, how those cuts are impacting students' access to learning.

Of course, we all realize something has to change. First, public education in California, and across our nation, needs more funding in order to ensure our students are provided with access to affordable college education. However, we need more than money. We need new approaches to education; new ways of thinking about connecting our students to learning experiences.

This week was the 15th Annual Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning. Two years ago, I was awarded with the Sloan-C Excellence Award in Online Teaching, which will remain a highlight of my career forever. Sloan-C has been a leader in the field of advocating for quality online learning since before most educators had even considered the notion of "distance learning." This was the first year since receiving my award that I did not attend the conference. Despite being invited to participate in a prestigious panel discussion titled "Ask The Experts," I was not granted funding to travel to Orlando due to the California budget cuts. Therefore, I was not in attendance this year. That was tough for me, as I feel being part of the international dialogue about online learning is an important part of growth as an educator and an advocate for faculty who teach online.

While I wasn't there in person, I did read an article today in the Chronicle of Higher Ed that featured some thoughts about the conference. Despite the drastic travel restrictions, conference attendance increased from 1,190 to 1,435 people (in person). Frank Mayadas, long time Sloan Program Director, addressed the crowd with a call to action -- a call to meet the demand to retrain Americans who have been laid off and are now in a state of transition seeking new skills for a career change. Online learning opens new avenues of opportunities to students who may be unable to attend a physical class due to other circumstances (which could include a host of topics from child care challenges, work schedules, psychological disorders, physical disabilities, etc.). Online learning is in demand. We know that. It's not a shock. Last year's Sloan-C report, Staying the Course, revealed that 3.94 students in higher ed were enrolled in at least one online class in 2007. That's about one in four students. I'm waiting for a new report to see the new numbers but I'd anticipate these numbers will continue to rise.

What's buried in these numbers is the fact that more than 50% of these online students are enrolled at community colleges. I can attest, from my informal research of observing and listening and conversing the online conferences I've attended across the nation in the past few years, that the large majority of those who attend professional development conferences focused on online learning come from four year universities. Also, having been employed as a full-time faculty member at a California community college for seven years, I can all share that I do not ever recall any community college in California that I came into contact with that had an instructional design team on staff or even a single instructional designer -- thoughts anybody? I'd love to hear from some of you about this topic.

If you are employed at a community college or a university, do you have an instructional design TEAM to support faculty with developing their online courses? What about multimedia support specialists, accessibility specialists, graphic designers, and learning management system staff? What's the faculty support structure like at your community college or university? Let's compare.

Developing online classes is a lot of work. This is not a myth. 85% of faculty with online course development experience agreed that it takes "somewhat more" or "a lot more" effort to develop an online course. The recent APLU survey provides an indepth look at faculty attitudes and opinions about online learning. Most important is their blatant disappointment in their campus support structure (including support for course development, delivery, students, and more). And we need our instructors to maintain a high level of teaching presence in a class for online learning to be high quality. This is where I get concerned.

We have an opportunity right now to put our heads together and support faculty, foster innovation and cultivate communities of course development and shared online content resources that result in online classes with high-touch teaching presence, rather than dull, dry, disconnected content deployed to students through a computer screen -- that's not a quality online course.

Back to Sloan...Frank Mayadas, Program Director for Sloan, has stressed the need for offering more online classes to fulfill the needs of training our workforce. Excellent point. He has also stepped up and encouraged the Obama administration to fund free online courses for community colleges. Perhaps, this is an opportunity to move us back closer to the 1960s free community college education in the California golden state.

This is sounding intriguing, isn't it!?

But the excellence of this plan hinges on whether or not our faculty, the subject matter experts and the human souls that foster and inspire learning, are a core element of the online learning experience. And whether or not instructors are teaching courses that are designed to actively engage students in creative, active learning environments with teacher mentoring and facilitation. It is not acceptable to think of "teaching presence" as a "bottle neck" towards achieving our goal of delivering access to online learning to our student population. Instead, we need to focus on new methods of organizing and funding support for our faculty as an integral element of online programs, rather than a secondary or tertiary afterthought that faculty must fight for.

Frank Mayadas said, "If we’re going to have instructor-led courses, you better get your faculty very enthusiastic, beating on the doors, saying, ‘Give me help. I want to go online.’ And I don’t think we’ve done that." I fully agree. It's time our faculty become empowered to be advocates for the support needed to deliver a quality online learning experience to their students.

And, finally, I also believe it's time higher education begins to foster the value of innovation. How will faculty be encouraged and motivated to try something new, something different -- to take a risk -- when academia is so focused on success? Failure is part of growth and success in a culture of innovation. And if we're modeling innovation and risk taking in our teaching methods but trying new activities and pedagogies, then we're cultivating strong, creative thinkers for the 21st century.

Online learning is our golden opportunity but it's up to all of us to advocate for quality online learning so we pay it forward, rather than open access to dead, irrelevant learning experiences. I hope we play this one right.