Sender: DEOS-L - The Distance Education Online Symposium

From: Patricia Cravener <cravener@CRAVENER.NET>

Subject: Re: [DEOS] Flexible Delivery Culture
 

Dan Clarke wrote:

> Flexible delivery: staff encouragement: offer them support and training and

> they will come.

I would add: " . . . and time in their work day to participate" (and they will come). At many institutions of higher learning, the faculty have a workload that already requires 55-60 hours/week at a minimum. Overworked faculty are simply unable to add more tasks/undertakings to their workloads, no matter how convenient and supportive the training opportunities.

> Instructors know that they must learn how to deliver on-line

> and are anxious to learn how.

Some are anxious to learn how. Others, a not insignificant proportion of the faculty, are equally anxious to forestall any developing distance education initiatives.

I believe that though opposition to distance learning paradigms is often couched in quality control language, the underlying issue is really self-defense. At many institutions, the demands on faculty are already extraordinary -- far beyond what any business would impose. I perceive that a lot of "resistance" to distance education is really resistance to being entirely overloaded, such that the faculty member would no longer have even the slightest chance to meet the workload demands being placed on him/her.

Few institutions have planned for additional instructional staff who could relieve faculty of some of their existing obligations so that they could learn new instructional technologies and new teaching methodologies, and then teach distance sections. Few institutions have arranged any release time for faculty to develop the skills and then develop the materials with which they would teach online. Instead, faculty are simply expected to somehow work longer hours, adding an entirely new job their existing ones (teaching, service, and research responsibilities).

No wonder faculty are reluctant to engage in distance initiatives. Many cannot do so, under existing circumstances. To attempt it would be professional suicide, since they would no longer be able to succeed with their present obligations to the institution.

So, "offer them support and training and they will come. Instructors know that they must learn how to deliver on-line and are anxious to learn how."?

Not quite right. It could be so, but at most institutions, does not yet reflect faculty realities.
 
 

-- pc
 

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