19 September 1994
To: John Moseley, Provost
From: Educational Technology Committee
Subject: Faculty Technology Consultants Program
The Educational Technology Committee proposes the creation of a group of "champions" -- faculty members who would have special responsibility for fostering the appropriate use of educational technology among the faculty. These Faculty Technology Consultants would be instructional faculty who have an interest and knowledge of working with computers and educational technology generally, and who can work as liaisons with other faculty.
This memo further develops the concept and implementation of the faculty network.
Although little formal data exists, it seems apparent that few faculty at UO currently integrate modern educational technology -- technology more advanced than, say, the use of an overhead or slide projector in classroom presentations -- in their instruction. The consensus nationally seems to be that no more than perhaps 10% of faculty are doing very much with technology in instruction. At UO, two major impediments to more widespread adoption of advanced technologies are lack of training and lack of collegial support within departments. A network of experts would address both concerns by providing local support for and training of faculty.
It is critical that the design of this program recognize the heterogeneity in faculty technology needs. There is an existing wide range of levels of expertise and interest in particular technologies. More important, what works pedagogically in one discipline may be totally inappropriate in another. Also, different knowledgeable faculty have different styles (e.g. some love use of technology in lectures, others abhor it). A key benefit of the Faculty Consultants network is the opportunity to take advantage of existing patterns of faculty communication within departments and disciplines -- faculty should be able to turn to their close colleagues, who presumably understand their needs, for support in the application of technology.
We have identified three distinct goals that the Faculty Consultants network could address. Although not necessarily mutually exclusive, these three goals tend to benefit different groups of faculty, and tend to imply different implementation strategies and resource allocations:
Although many of Faculty Consultants are likely to be themselves leaders in the use of educational technology, we do not see this program as directly addressing their needs. Rather, we see the Faculty Consultants program as primarily addressing the first two goals above.
In addition to faculty members interested in moderately substantial personal commitments to help their colleagues, it is important to develop a larger community, both to increase the visibility of educational technology and to improve communications so that faculty can identify resource people and people with similar interests elsewhere on campus. Our conclusion is that we need at least two groups of faculty: a smaller, formally identified, group of "advocates," called "faculty consultants" in this discussion, and a larger group of "experts" and "interested educators" who are available to assist faculty with specific problems related to educational technology, who are known to be interested in or working on particular projects, or who are simply interested in staying informed. We believe that it is critical that the Faculty Consultants be conceptualized as a part of this larger distributed network of UO expertise in aspects of instructional technology.
The program should be expected to evolve, particularly over the first year, and should not be expected to hit its stride until the second year.
We believe the most effective organizational structure to be a distributed network of faculty consultants rather than a more formal departmentally-appointed group. The Faculty Consultants would self-identify, and would be entered in a database of faculty experts. Database entries would include indicators of willingness to assist colleagues with technology usage and indicators of particular areas of expertise. Self-identification encourages participation based on intrinsic rewards, and avoids problems with faculty potentially feeling left out or disenfranchised in the process.
Various approaches would be used to solicit Faculty Consultants: a general mailing to all instructional faculty requesting self-identification, requests to deans, department heads, and faculty colleagues for candidates who would then be approached individually, etc. Departments in which early self-identification did not produce Faculty Consultants would be targeted for special instruction in use of technology and special efforts to elicit Faculty Consultants.
Requests for self-identification would stress several desired properties of experts, including:
In addition to identifying instructional faculty willing to serve as Faculty Consultants, this process would identify a larger set of members of the UO community with specific interests in educational technology, and would generate an inventory of courses currently using educational technology.
Faculty members identifying themselves in the database as Faculty Consultants would receive several kinds of rewards for so doing, e.g.:
The primary role for Faculty Consultants will be fostering the use of educational technology by their colleagues. Methods for doing so will vary depending on discipline and individual style. However, some recommended activities will include:
The Faculty Consultants should help facilitate application of technology in the whole range of faculty duties, including research, advising, and service as well as instruction.
The organizational focus for coordination of the Faculty Consultants program will be the University Library. The Library will provide central infrastructure support. The coordinator of the program will be JQ Johnson. As one of his training initiatives, he will solicit Faculty Consultants, maintain the database of consultants and experts, distribute training materials to the Faculty Consultants, encourage the development of electronic communications among the Faculty Consultants (using e-mail, WWW, etc.), coordinate organization of meetings and colloquia, develop evaluation tools for use by Faculty Consultants, and provide feedback to Faculty Consultants to assist them in evaluating their success.
The program will include several centrally coordinated activities. We anticipate several colloquia and workshops during the year, some given by Faculty Consultants and others by outside speakers discussing experience at other universities. One important function of the Faculty Consultants group will be the organization of a regional conference on educational technology; the conference will need clerical support plus a budget for speakers, promotion, and refreshments. Since one important role for the Faculty Consultants will be presentations to faculty groups, the Faculty Consultants need access to a notebook computer and projection system that they can borrow when needed for outreach and other consulting activities.
It is also important that more UO faculty attend national conferences on educational technology, e.g. the Syllabus Conference and the AAHE annual conference. We recommend that several travel grants be allocated through the Faculty Consultants program for attendance.
This budget is specific to the Faculty Consultants program, and does not address other educational technology training initiatives. It assumes, for instance, the establishment of a multimedia lab that would provide access for faculty to software and hardware, the availability of small seed grants for faculty who need startup funds to implement a particular project, and the availability of student assistance for faculty who want to prepare materials for on-line access.
The budget does not include expenditures aimed directly at supporting the Faculty Consultants themselves. We believe that it is important to motivate the Faculty Consultants based on intrinsic rewards, and hence that it is desirable to avoid expenditures that directly benefit the Faculty Consultants in their own application of educational technology.
First year proposed budget:
student assistant (work study) to build and maintain database $2,000
clerical support (.5 FTE) 13,000
printing and publications 6,000
travel and training for central support staff 3,000
portable presentation hardware for loan to Faculty Consultants 6,000
evaluation software 3,000
speaker/colloquium series on educational technology 5,000
travel grants (6) to attend national conferences on Ed Tech 6,000
organize conference on educational technology at UO 8,000
contingency 10,000
total $62,000
The program should be evaluated in spring 1995 to determine an appropriate level of ongoing funding.