Addressing the problem of faculty resistance to using IT tools in active learning instructional strategies

[James Morrison]

Earlier this month I attended a UNESCO Educational Leaders Forum sponsored by Microsoft. The forum’s theme was thinking through the challenges that lie in the future of higher education and to focus on the vision, barriers, and strategies to address these challenges as they develop.

The vision discussed by a number of panelists (see http://blogs.msdn.com/elf08/default.aspx ) was that we should be using technology enhanced active learning strategies to improve student learning. One of the primary barriers to doing this was a traditional faculty and organizational culture that relies on the lecture method as the primary instructional strategy.

Current approaches to broaden the instructional repertoires of faculty members include faculty workshops, summer leave, and individual consultations, but these approaches work only for those relatively few early adopter faculty members who seek out opportunities to broaden their instructional methods. The major problem is how to affect organizational culture as a whole so that most professors will be receptive to adopting active learning methods and using IT tools to enhance the effectiveness of these methods in their classes.

The purpose of this forum is to discuss how to encourage faculty members to expand their range of instructional strategies and enhance them via the creative use of educational technology.

To get the discussion started, the approach that I advocate to this challenge is to engage faculty members at the departmental level in thinking about the future and its implications for their institution, their curriculum, their students, and their careers. See “Using A Futures Approach to Organizational and Faculty Development” at http://horizon.unc.edu/projects/seminars/ELME.html for the complete argument.

[Scott McLeod]

As I said on my blog recently:

Colleges of education are not going to accept any responsibility (for technology training, outreach, service, PD) until legislatures, departments of education, and/or accrediting agencies make them do so. [performance review at my previous research university: ‘Dr. McLeod’s work with schools is exemplary but inappropriate.’]

The research universities are under extreme pressure to obtain grant funding, particularly if they're public and facing dwindling support from the state government. All professors at all universities are under tenure publication pressures. There are rarely institutional incentives, and usually institutional penalties, for technology integration learning by faculty.

In other words, if it's a culture issue, then - as we tell our preservice principals and superintendents - the culture begins at the top.

[James Morrison]

Scott, you have identified a major reason that faculty members at research universities are not excited about expanding their pedagogical repertoires and I certainly concur with you that they will not be willing to invest time on curricular or teaching issues until the reward system is changed. The situation may well be different, however, for faculty members at institutions that are not research one institutions and are not in institutions trying to achieve research one status. But unless the folks at the top see the benefit of faculty members using active learning strategies enhanced via technology, nothing much will happen.

I am have worked with college faculty members in the Middle East and Asia where there is another cultural obstacle in that curricular decisions are often made at the ministry level and faculty members have little or no sense of empowerment. The futures approach that I advocate is designed for participants who are free to develop their curricular programs and teaching styles. In one country, where I served as a strategic planning consultant, ministry officials were stunned when their employer survey revealed that employers were unhappy with the competency of graduates. I suggested that they should take a close look at the teaching strategies used in their institutions (primarily lecture) and explore how effective modifying this style to include engaging students in "authentic" project-based learning activities could better prepare their graduates for the world of work. I don't think that my suggestion had much effect.

The bottom line appears to be that modifying organization culture is a difficult task, and one made more difficult if it is not fully supported from the top.

[Robert E. Wood]

It is certainly the case that broader institutional contexts matter a great deal (as suggested both by Jim and Scott's reply). But I also feel that the phrase "instructional technologies" artificially separates the technological tools we use today in our teaching from those we employ in our research and in our other administrative and civic responsibilities. For me, there has been a huge spillover from what I've learned mastering technology for teaching purposes with my ability to carry out these other tasks--and vice versa. And when I look at colleagues who do not do instructional technology, they often are sadly deficient in the tools available for these other purposes--which are often part of the same or overlapping tool set.

I'd like to see graduate education focus more on how the technologies of research can be carried over into teaching, and vice versa. Similarly, efforts to get faculty members on board using IT might be more successful if they could demonstrate the other advantages of mastering these skills.

This is obviously just one part of a complex picture, but I do feel that a focus on "instructional technologies" alone can be, if not counter-productive, at least not as effective as it might be.

[James Morrison]

Robert, your note stimulated this thought: faculty members need "just in time" access to technical support if they are ever to use IT tools in their research and/or teaching. Some schools (e.g., Wake Forest) have a program of using undergraduate students as assistants to senior faculty members who lack technology skills.

My point in raising the issue of implementing technology-enhanced active learning instructional strategies is because I believe that such strategies will be more effective in developing student motivation for learning as well as preparing students to become independent learners able to access, evaluate, and communicate information who also have the attitude that learning is a life-long activity. Given that we live in a global village, it is also important that our graduates be able to work effectively with people from other cultures and, given the conditions of modern economic organizations, it is important that they be able to work effectively in groups. For example, instead of an accounting professor delivering lectures on accounting principles in an accounting class, what if the professor designs a project where student teams act as accounting consultants to investor groups, the task being to analyze three potential investments and make their recommendations to their “clients.” And what if this class was operated in conjunction with a class in another country, and the accounting teams were composed of people from both classes? I suspect that students in this class would learn far more that students in the traditional lecture class. However, most professors do not have the mind-set to teach using an active-learning strategy and may not have the technical talent to implement such a strategy.

BTW, we have published a number of articles illustrating technology enhanced active learning strategies. I am thinking in particular of the article by Ana-Paula Correia titled “Moving from Theory to Real-World Experiences in an e-Learning Community” at http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=495&ac... where Ana described teaching instructional design online. At the conclusion of her class, the student projects were so professional, the students were seriously considering becoming a consulting firm.

If you buy the argument that teachers would be more effective if they used active learning strategies enhanced with technology, the challenge is (1) how to get them to want to expand their mind-set to incorporate other than the traditional methods and (2) assist them to learn to implement these strategies.

[Steve Eskow]

Perhaps the first "innovation" we need is a new formulation of the problem.

As long as I've been at it, the problem is always... "resistance to change."

Resistance to radio, movies, television, and now the computer. Always "early adopters," the visionaries, and the rest of us, trying to slow down the onrush of the future.

There is MIT, the breeding ground of new technologies, making available thousands of online courses. And one highly publicized star prof, Dr. Walter Lewin. I turn to YouTube to see this technology prof in action--and ye gods of the future--he is in a lecture hall writing with chalk on a slate and talking to what seems like a thousand students. The same old technologies: the talking head, the chalkboard, the lecture hall. Nothing that Cardinal Newman wouldn't recognize and admire.

And, increasingly, the profs are banning the use of laptops--and these are the technology profs.

And that ban may be the key to a reformulation of the problem.

The 600-square feet classrom; the lecture hall; the 50-minute hour; the credit system; the "curriculum". . .are all parts of a designed and integrated technology system. They are a coherent "technology package."

Perhaps, then, what we have is a clash of technologies. The lecture/lecture hall technology and the student with the computer who may be in touch with his girl friend while the prof is lecturing are not yet a coherent "technology package."

Jim's futurist strategy, it seems to me, has much going for it. But I think we need to dig for a new approach to talking and thinking about the endless struggle between the ancient technologies which have become invisible as technologies, and the new.

[James Morrison]

Steve, with respect to MIT, please check out my interview with Phil Long titled "The iCampus Technology-Enabled Active Learning Project at MIT" in the April/May issue at http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=666&ac...

In the August/September we will publish a second interview that further elaborates how MIT is moving towards more technologically-engaged redesigned courses.

Best.

Jim

[Steve Eskow]

Jim, I know you're interested in how we think--no matter how erratically!

Parts of the Phil Long interview saddened me.

Consider this approach to "blending," to "hybridizing":

<< As a consequence, the physics department at MIT has adopted TEAL as the standard way that introductory physics is taught. This approach allows living-room style active learning to be taught to 560 students. It is taught in these special rooms that seat a maximum of 117—with up to seven or eight sections offered. (Most of the time, sections are smaller, tending toward the 80-90 student range.)

JLM: What role did technology play in this redesign?

PL: The class and the space are pretty technology heavy, in part because it's MIT and that's the way we approach these kinds of things. Each table of nine students has three computers, one per team of three students; its own projector; its own ceiling-mounted camera; and its own whiteboard. This setup is designed to allow students to share work that might be of value to the rest of the class. For example, while circulating throughout the class, the instructor might see that table 12 is doing something really interesting to solve a particular problem. The camera pointing at the whiteboard for that table can then be switched on so that all of the screens around the room show table 12's work and the students at table 12 can talk about it. This kind of setup makes it much more difficult for students to avoid participating.>>

Is that really how to use technology to bring high quality physics instruction to our poor communities and institutions, and to the poor countries of the world?

On he other hand, MIT's i-Lab project is an important way to use technology to share MIT level of instruction with the rest of the world--without poor communities needing to construct new facilities to house expensive technology that needs well-trained academics to exploit.

Best, Jim

Steve

[James Morrison]

Steve, I see no reason to be sad. Phil described how MIT, with its resources, redesigned their large introductory physics classes. They, of course, had no intention of using their redesign as a model for the developing world or for anyone else. I doubt that they distributed marketing materials about their redesign.The only way that we found out about it was through Phil's interview.

And, as you point out, the materials and the iLab are available to the world. Their approach to opening their resources freely to the world should make every one very happy.

Best.

Jim

[Steve Eskow]

Jim, perhaps the underlying and overriding issue for those of us interested in higher education and ICT is whether "blending" them really brings together the advantages of both, or limits the educational power of each.

Since Newman's time, and before, the campus has been advertised as the scene of "influence:--the impact of the living scholar and his or her living voice on the novice. I want to do some writing on Newman's Idea of a University, which makes the case for personal influence as the soul of the university: the technology of instruction that he was resisting as central to instruction was print:the book and the pamphlet and the newspaper. Carlyle had already announced that the university of the future was the book.

To have students leave home to spend their time in front of computers raises--for me--questions as to whether this is the way to use the educational power of the campus and the computer..

I know that you and INNOVATE are comfortable with debate on these matters, and the potential for fruitful disagreement on this matter is very large!

Best, Steve

[James Morrison]

Steve, the straightforward response to your statement "To have students leave home to spend their time in front of computers raises--for me--questions as to whether this is the way to use the educational power of the campus and the computer." is this: It would be educational malfeasance to not design educational experiences requiring the use of computers and the Web for students on a residential campus.

As per our earlier exchange, from my perspective, there is a significant educational benefit to an on-campus educational experience, particularly for young students. This experience can be enhanced via IT tools (e.g., working with students in other cultures on projects designed cooperatively by professors in each institution, or on projects designed only by their professor).

Best.

Jim

[Steve Eskow]

Jim, my own first encounters with what I considered "educational malfeasance" began with the older technologies of radio and phonograph records. How could English faculty I asked, teach Dylan Thomas' "In My Craft or Sullen Art" without having the students listen to him reading the poem in his beautiful voice and intricate interpretation: one reading recorded when he was drunk.Now those readings of Thomas are on YouTube, and we are probably still using the explanation for the avoidance of technology we used in those radio days:

"Resistance to change."

Jim , is it possible that "resistance to change" is an empty analysis that says only: for some reason the faculty is not willing or able to use the new technology. . .

on campus.

Distance learning, beginning with correspondence education, has always found it quite easy to find faculty who embrace the new technologies.

Victor Young, the great vaudevillian, had an act called "Change Your Act or Go Back to the Woods." He did that act for forty years.

We've been blaming "resistance to change" for the failure of faculty to embrace each new technology as it comes along and excites us "innovators."

Might it not be time for us to change our act?

Best,

Steve

[Tadeusz Lemańczyk]

When I've been reading yesterday morning Jim's opinion "A change of instructional paradigms--from passive to active (authentic) learning strategies, such as project-based learning, problem-based learning, or inquiry-based learning--is clearly needed" I've thought: IS CLEARLY NEEDED--by whom? Probably by American faculty furnished with IT tools much more than Polish faculty: hence I should be silent. Luckily for me, already Scott's reply has encouraged me to drop a line.

Passive learning strategies still prevail over active (authentic) learning strategies. Appearance of Internet databases easily reached by students furnished with their wireless equipment doesn't cause transition from learning by heart to learning how to search through Internet for needful pieces of information, "just in time" and "just for me" ( http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2008/06/pole-position.html ). For many years I've enthusiastically shared Jim's opinion "Given that we live in a global village, it is also important that our graduates be able to work effectively with people from other cultures and, given the conditions of modern economic organizations, it is important that they be able to work effectively in groups." However, how many examples (the concrete URLs) of "classes operating in conjunction with classes in another country, and the teams composing of people from at least two classes" could you point? For example, I expect my students studying European problems will join me [TadFromPoland ( http://forums.ec.europa.eu/debateeurope/profile.php?mode=viewprofil... ) and Neddy ( http://forums.ec.europa.eu/debateeurope/profile.php?mode=viewprofil... )] at http://forums.ec.europa.eu/debateeurope/index.php?language=english . There are present people from all over the world. However, will there appear not only students studying European problems at The European Career College ( http://www.kde.edu.pl/page.php/2/0/show/1/ )? Is it suggested by Steve "resistance to Internet", Internet that is still too open and too little commercial?