Why Technology Training?
As higher education continues to put more and more emphasis on technology, training for faculty is becoming increasingly essential. As the 2001 National Survey of Information Technology in US Higher Education reports: "respondents across all sectors of higher education identify assisting faculty to integrate technology into instruction as the single most important IT issue confronting campuses" (Green 2). What institutions of higher education have realized is that the mere presence of technology does not equate to instructional use or integration of that technology. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, "80 percent of public four-year colleges make course-management tools available to their faculties, [but] professors actually use them in only 20 percent of their courses," and web pages are associated with only 35 percent of courses. (Lynch 1).
Faculty's attitude toward the use of technology has been identified as one of the strongest barriers to the effective integration of technology into the classroom. Faculty, of course, are employed as subject-matter experts. And many of them received their formal education and training prior to the explosive acquisition of computer technology that occurred in the mid-1990s (Bryan, Ariza, Knee 4). As a result, many faculty perceive technology, and particularly instructional technology, as a significant challenge (Bryan et al 4): one that they often feel ill equipped to face.
Training in instructional technology goes a long way to changing faculty perceptions and use of technology. Studies reveal, for example, that faculty who receive training become more confident about using technology and are more likely to integrate it into the classroom (Beck and Ormand 4). Faculty who do not receive training (and who do not fit an early adopter profile (Brace 1)) often maintain negative attitudes towards technology use and even "feel threatened by technology" (Bryan et al 4). And, in many cases, they distrust the motivation behind the integration of technology into education.
Given the discourses that frequently surround technology in higher education, faculty distrust is not unwarranted. Many administrators and policy makers have articulated technology integration in terms of efficiency, productivity, and economy. Early characterizations of the benefits of technology often focused on the promise of increasing economies of scale where larger numbers of students could be taught by fewer faculty (Karelis 22).
For the majority of faculty, the priority is not efficiency or cost effectiveness but enhanced learning and improved teaching. As Scheffler and Logan note, faculty want to integrate technology if it promotes "inquiry, critical thinking, and problem solving" (2). Such a pedagogical wish list, however, appears incompatible with visions of economic efficiency in which education becomes the transfer of information while technology is reduced to a container or tool for delivering the information.
In such a context, technology training serves not to build faculty confidence simply to solicit cooperation, but to build confidence to empower faculty to play a more active role in the practices and implementation of technology within education. Faculty who know how to use technology are better able to assess its effectiveness for learning and teaching and to articulate sound pedagogical models for its use. They are also better equipped to participate in the decision making process that determines how technology will be integrated and applied in their academic institutions.
The Costs of Creating Effective Training
But getting faculty knowledgeable about technology and getting them to explore its impact on learning and teaching requires a considerable investment of resources. Robert and Ferris estimate that it takes 1,000 hours of training to get faculty comfortable with technology (qtd in Matthew et al 5). In addition to the actual time spent training, release time is needed to enable faculty to take administrative roles in technology training, to act as faculty technology mentors, and to work with the technology to develop learning materials.
Although time is crucial, there are other resource investments needed to ensure the success of faculty technology training. Successful training requires access to up-to-date, stable, and reliable technology. Research has found, for example, that both high-end and low-end users of instructional technology express a strong distrust of the reliability of technology to work when needed. To mitigate this distrust and the barrier it creates, ongoing IT support is essential. This means not only ensuring that the technology is upgraded and well maintained but also providing assistance to faculty when it is needed. Help-personnel need to be knowledgeable both about the software and hardware and about its pedagogical uses and possibilities.
Incentives and recognition are equally important to motivate faculty to commit their time and energy to acquiring new technology skills (especially if those skills are not related to research and publication). While offering release time is important, other incentives and rewards also ensure faculty commitment. Incentives can include access to technology -- providing laptops and software that otherwise might not be available to faculty -- formal recognition in promotion and tenure practices, and formal awards the recognize effective and innovative integration of technology.
Finally, clear models of effective integration and use of technology are also needed to ensure faculty success (Brace 2). Faculty need to be able to visualize how they can use technology (Green 2) rather than just learn applications independent of teaching and learning contexts. Studies focusing on faculty training strongly suggests that faculty need hands-on experience applying technology in context specific ways, and they respond best to one-on-one peer training or mentoring (Brace; Byron))
While all of these factors, (time, support, incentives, rewards, and models) contribute to the success of technology, they also contribute substantially to the cost of training. In their study of computer technology in schools, Scheffler and Logan state that "technology and professional development . . . can be expected to require 30% or more of . . . budgets (2). Effective technology planning practices have tended to confirm this expectation. When the State of California funded its Telecommunication and Technology Infrastructure Program (TTIP) in 2000, for example, it allocated between 25-30% of the budget to professional development with just over half of that being designated specifically for faculty (Williams). Using a Total Cost of Ownership model, the TTI Program required that technology training be justified in terms of both need and existing college plans. The funds were designed to build onto existing development activities and included allocations for planning and coordination, the development or expansion of development centers, the purchase of self-paced training tools, the development of training materials, attendance at conferences, and the development of activities to increase awareness, as well as practice and demonstration forms of training. The direct cost of training for community colleges (at a 25-30 % level) was estimated at $325/yr/PC (Williams 28).
Despite the mounting evidence that training is essential for the effective use of technology in higher education, many post-secondary institutions still view it as a luxury item. And it is often one of the first items cut when budgets get tight. On average, academic institutions spend far less then 30%. A Market Data Retrieval report on technology in education indicates that in 2001 only 14% of the total estimated spending for technology was designated to professional development (Charp 10).
With shrinking budgets, faculty often find that they have even less time for learning technology skills. As Bryan, Ariza, and Knee report, "Faculty loads have increased due to the staff reductions, financial cutbacks, and legislative changes regarding load and contact hours. Time for inservice and staff development are often lost, and no release time is offered for necessary training" (7). Faculty inevitably find themselves spending more time on course preparation, student advising, and clerical duties, while the expectations for research and scholarship continue to rise.
In essence, many academic institutions pay lip service to the value of teaching with technology, but tenure and promotion practices and institutional climates often tell another story. Faculty who take the time to learn and integrate technology into instruction without support and recognition from their departments and institutions, often do so at the risk of their academic future. IT support personnel are also considered an expensive part of the equation. Reduced IT staff means slower response times when faculty need help, and in some case, institutions have introduced consulting fees, making access to help an additional cost factor for faculty and their departments.
It is in this context that those who are charged with creating or providing teacher technology training often find themselves. Inevitably, they must negotiate the complications of understanding the local technological and political environments of their institutions. In addition, they need to procure funding, understand and access existing resources, create effective learning and teaching environments, and develop effective models for training.
Teena A. M. Carnegie (2002)