Equipping Faculty for Success with Technology

Citation

Fark, R. (2001), "Equipping Faculty for Success with Technology", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 18 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2001.23918aac.008

Equipping Faculty for Success with Technology

Lisabeth Chabot

Equipping Faculty for Success with Technology

For this session, a panel of academic technology support staff members representing three large university systems and one small college discussed their institutional programs for global replacement of faculty desktop machines, as well as related training, purchasing, and support activities.

Virginia Tech's Faculty Development Institute was established to enhance teaching and learning through faculty training. The Institute staff has developed a series of three-day workshops each of which enrolls 20 faculty members. Workshop content has been refined over the years to focus on practical applications, not theory. Graduate students serve as tutors, with a 4-to-1 student-to-tutor ratio. Workshop sessions are divided into modules with participants completing an online evaluation at the end of each 90-minute module. Three-quarters of the Virginia Tech faculty have participated in at least two workshops over the history of the program. Two sample workshops were mentioned: Applied Instructional Design and Creating Multimedia Content. Once a faculty member has completed a workshop, he or she is eligible for hardware and software upgrades of his or her desktop machine. Eleven computer choices are offered. The institution currently has a four-year cycle for training and PC replacement, but hopes to shorten the cycle to three years. The staff has found that many faculty want to learn at a faster pace. A major challenge for the program has been to balance what the faculty want with what the information technology (IT) staff can provide. One solution being considered is to make most of the training available in an asynchronous mode in campus labs. Web site for additional information: www.fdi.vt.edu

The Carolina Computing Initiative at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), proposed by the UNC Chancellor, encompasses a laptop PC requirement for undergraduate students as well as a computer entitlement program for faculty and staff in the School of Arts and Sciences. The university has a sole source contract which covers two laptop and two desktop PC models. The IT staff, charged with the implementation of the initiative, learned that early and frequent communication is critical to the success of such a project. The articulation of service boundaries also enhances success, but does not solve many of the inherent problems related to hardware and software use. The primary outcomes of the project have been more computers that work well (as opposed to many more computers), more computer usage by faculty and students, and faculty appreciation of and recognition of the efforts of the IT staff.

The University of Mississippi has completed its initial year of a program for the systematic replacement of faculty desktops. An Academic Computing Task Force, as charged by the University administration, compiled a list of targeted departments and developed a set of performance standards for all purchased equipment. Department Chairs complete forms that require an evaluation of currently available systems, including a rationale for any upgrades. A cafeteria-type plan offers eight PC choices. While a committee reviews all requests, the provost's office determines which requests are honored. Training is offered in the form of conference-style concurrent sessions. The IT staff found a surprising need for basic training activities and discovered that using faculty members as trainers increased the perceived credibility of the training. Several lessons were learned during the course of implementing the program. Numerous problems with data transfer occurred when faculty switched from one operating platform to another. In the future, the vendor will pre-image all machines in order to save IT staff time. The IT staff is also considering ways to streamline the purchasing and receiving processes.

Mt Holyoke College merged its library and IT functions in 1996 to create LITS: Library, Information, and Technology Services. The internal collaboration of a curriculum support group that knows how faculty use computers and technical staff who know how PCs work, as well as a focus on process rather than task, has enhanced the success of LITS projects. A set of guidelines for requests for upgrades and service, as approved by a LITS Advisory group, serve as the rules for campus PC upgrades. IT staff use a team approach to upgrade faculty workstations, completing entire departmental upgrades at one time. The PCs, pre-imaged and tagged for inventory by the vendor, are ordered, delivered, and installed on a weekly basis, primarily during the summer months. Training sessions for faculty and staff are not mandatory. Technical support staff and reference librarians work in teams through a liaison program to provide much of the computer support service. Designated faculty representatives from each department serve as local experts who provide technical support. Trained students provide additional support in the Faculty Resource Center. Future plans call for an analysis of previous experiences to plan for the automation of the upgrade process and creation of a new classroom plan in order to find a better way to set up media in classrooms. Web site for additional information: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/lits/tsr/status/status.html

It Takes a Village to Raise an Integrated System: Collaboration Within and Beyond the Institution

In this session the Director of Web and System Services, the Systems Librarian, and the Registrar from Reed College discussed the development of an integrated information gateway at their institution.

Reed College received grant funding from the Mellon Foundation for a ten-month planning project for the development of a user-centric information gateway for its faculty, staff, and students. The project's goal was to create an integrated gateway to facilitate access to a variety of content developed by diverse campus constituents such as the library, faculty departments, and the registrar's office. Members of the project team came from several campus departments. Additional input was solicited from front-line managers in various offices as the project progressed. The team believed that gateways would ease access for users, as opposed to portals, which would allow for much more user customization. The grant provided funds for release time, the evaluation of software and tools, and travel for the development team. Costs for infrastructure needs and hardware/software upgrades were projected as a part of the plan. As the plan was implemented, funds were drawn from existing budgets to supplement the project costs.

The team found that collaboration enhanced and augmented the limited resources available at a small college, and generated better ideas. There was also an acknowledgement that shared decision making and collaboration are culture-dependent. The success of this integrated project was supported by the strong working relationships already established at the institution. Collaboration bred additional collaboration and flexible collaboration was critical to the project. One major collaborative effort of the team was a student information project that provides access to information about campus events, academic advising, the registrar, the bookstore, and the library. A course materials support system was developed to offer a one-stop page for faculty to enter information about individual courses, including syllabi and electronic reserves links. As a result, students also have easy access to the same information. The team found that there was often not a clear-cut choice between buying versus building parts of the system. The team identified several areas of shared concerns that the College needs to address, including user confidentiality, data integrity, and license agreements.

While the development team is confident that the new gateway has provided more users with more access to information, additional enhancements are being reviewed. Future plans call for the development of a campus-wide authentication system, more integration of library and student information resources, and the creation of a guest access system. The college is also extending its collaborative efforts to work with another liberal arts college that has other strengths in system development. The two colleges hope to use their complementary strengths to jointly develop additional system components. In the coming year, the project will also expand to include additional colleges to demonstrate that collaborative efforts can leverage the resources of small colleges and help them address the problem of rapid technology transitions.

At the conclusion of the presentation, the team responded to questions from the audience. Although the college uses SCT's Banner administrative software, the team decided not to employ Banner software for the gateway project because it would have been expensive to purchase two or three Banner products and then tailor them for local use. They also did not like the functionality of Banner software. They did purchase OCLC's SiteSearch software to integrate their electronic resources under one Web interface, provide flexible access to resources, and create unique local databases. Pervasive Software's Tango was selected for Web site development because it supports XML generation, runs on multiple platforms, has a short learning curve, and enables an interface between databases and a Web presence.

Lisabeth Chabot is College Librarian, Grafton Library, Mary Baldwin College, Staunton, Virginia. lchabot@mbc.edu