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League for Innovation Leadership Abstract - Integrating Instructional Technology Across the Campus


In 2001-2002, a statewide technology-training project located at De Anza College (CA) commissioned a landmark research initiative to determine the extent to which faculty development services could be linked to student outcomes. Read about the resulting significant insights to critical questions in the January Leadership Abstracts.
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Integrating Instructional Technology Across the Campus
Catherine Ayers and Bill Doherty

Over the last decade, community colleges have spent millions of dollars implementing information technology in the campus environment. Much of this money has focused on improving the computing infrastructure of the campus to better support all aspects of the campus operation. However, a large portion of the expenditure has supported the introduction and use of new technology in the classroom. In part, this has been done because the students who are being served by the colleges demand such technology and their future employers demand technology-literate employees. In part, it was to help address the current increase in enrollment without having to build new campuses and expand physical plants. Not least, this instructional technology has been aimed at enhancing student learning.
However, very little is known about the impact of instructional technology on student learning, and little is known about how best to train faculty to use technology to boost student outcomes in higher education. In fact, there are no federally funded research centers that have investigated faculty development in higher education and technology use. Further adding to the lack of information of what works best in this arena is the fact that faculty development is the purview of each college that funds it, defines it, and operates it.

In 2001-2002, a statewide technology-training project located at De Anza College (CA) seized the opportunity to commission a landmark research initiative that would inform future faculty development efforts throughout the state. The Center for Student Success (CSS) conducted a study to determine the extent to which faculty development services could be linked to student outcomes. The research provided evaluative data about the @ONE project, but in addition provided significant insights into the following critical questions:

What organizational conditions and enabling factors contribute to campuswide integration of instructional technology?

What faculty development methods best foster effective technology integration in instruction?

A Growth Model for Instructional Technology Integration
The literature and the needs assessments conducted in the California
community colleges demonstrate that the relationship between faculty
development efforts and resulting technology integration in the classroom
is a complex one. Specifically, the relationship depends on external
factors, such as the organizational support environment, and varies over
time. Without basic enabling factors, the likelihood of successful
deployment and implementation of instructional technology is reduced. These
factors include:

Universal student access to computers,
Reliable networks,
Multiple opportunities for training and consulting, and
A faculty ethos that values experimentation and tolerates failures.

Growth in the effective integration of instructional technology can be viewed as a natural progression from one stage of development to another, similar to any programmatic maturity model. Further, the transition from one stage to another is characterized by a specific challenge that must be met in order to advance.

Challenges in Supporting Instructional Technology Over Stages of Growth
To resolve each challenge, a campus must mobilize resources in three different areas, each of which has strategic drivers:

Organizational Support Conditions
Leadership - the extent of involvement of campus leaders
Funding - the consistency of funding for technology and faculty development
Infrastructure - the nature of the technical infrastructure and its ability
to support instructional technology integration
Professional Development Activities
Focus - the substance and content of the faculty development activities
Delivery - the method of delivery used for faculty development activities
Format - the location and frequency of faculty development activities
Technology use and instructional application
Participants - the nature of faculty groups involved
Uses - the primary use of technology in the classroom or instruction
Assessment - the frequency and focus of assessment

The literature places significant emphasis on the differentiation of faculty into early adopters and second-wave instructional technology users, faculty concerns in adopting instructional technology, and the organizational conditions that are conducive to successful faculty development in instructional technology.

Initial Stage of Technology Integration: New Venture
The initial challenge facing any new effort to integrate technology on the campus is one of commitment. This challenge is multifaceted. Commitment must be garnered from the institutional administration, from those responsible for the campus computing resources, and of course from the faculty itself. Further, commitment must be consistent, reliable, and durable. The central challenge in this stage is to identify the early adopters and mobilize them around the emerging leaders to generate enthusiasm and movement. External training and development resources are essential at this initial stage.

Expansion of Instructional Technology Integration
The critical challenge for this stage is one of leadership. Leadership must emerge, consolidate, and be able to handle the stress of expanding the services and resources associated with instructional technology. This means that the leadership must solidify commitment from the institution, from the IT department, and from the faculty. Further, the leaders must mobilize the resources necessary to provide more services to more faculty and lay the foundation for institutionalizing the faculty development activities. A critical role to be performed by the leaders at this stage is to paint a vision that all can rally behind.

The technology is primarily used by those inclined to new innovations (early adopters), although leaders have emerged and have begun to generate momentum. The move to the next stage must happen in a timely manner in order to arrive at critical mass.

Professionalism of Instructional Technology Efforts
The central challenge of this stage is one of autonomy. This challenge is twofold. First, various departments and individuals may have innovated in a vacuum and are doing their own thing, often well. Supporting innovation while starting to discuss what works best for the college's audiences is critical. Faculty development activities and interventions must be implemented to attract and enlist the majority members of the faculty. That is, instructional technology use must move beyond the early adopters and out to the mainstream faculty. Second, the early adopters must be retained as part of the mainstream effort. That is, the faculty must feel that their needs are being addressed as individuals, not as one homogeneous mass.

As colleges and faculty shift from pioneering to integrating instructional technology across the curriculum, the need for locally provided and sustained training infrastructures becomes more essential. External resources can be used incrementally to augment or supplement the local resources, but the control and central resource base must be at the local campus.

At this stage the faculty development efforts have significant resources and breadth of offerings and involve the majority of the faculty. Much work still needs to be done in terms of the use of technology for instructional purposes and the solidification of the technical and organizational infrastructure.

Maturity of Instructional Technology in the Institution
The central challenge of this stage is one of control. The task is to address the need for individual faculty control in the classroom while establishing campus-based standards for technology use. Thus, attention must be given to individual faculty needs and voices, along with planning and implementing instructional technology use based on students' needs and outcomes. The leaders of the professional development efforts must focus their attention on monitoring the changing face of technology and translating that to their constituents for use in the classroom. This suggests recurring needs assessment and considerable local communication across disciplines on campus. The ultimate goal for this stage is institutionalization of the instructional technology based on faculty-developed and accepted standards.
The research suggests that for this institutionalization to happen it is necessary to have the sustained commitment of the CEO, primary administrators, and academic senate leaders. Further, it is necessary to have a growing IT infrastructure with IT leaders who understand student needs for learning and what the faculty needs to generate that learning. Finally, there needs to be a funding plan with a minimum annual percentage of the budget dedicated to learning technology.

At this stage, the faculty development efforts are an institutional resource and are applied to ensure quality and consistency across the curriculum. By later stages in the evolution of campus instructional technology, the preferred training format changes from workshops that teach basic computer skills to sessions that help individual instructors integrate technology into a specific course. Intensive institutes that use project-based work to focus the training are particularly effective.

The crisis of control is one of managing the culture, one where innovation is alive and where risk-taking and risk-avoidance are in balance.

Best Practices: Faculty Development in Higher Education
The preceding elements should assist campus leaders in their understanding of the dynamics involved in a successful instructional technology effort. To help in efforts to achieve mature, effective faculty development programs, best practices derived from the CSS research are presented below. These practices are derived from the literature review but were largely confirmed in the ethnographic and survey studies.

1. Training modules should blend pedagogical principles and technological features. Training modules should be linked as much as possible to actual practical situations and should focus on pedagogical innovation and student learning.

2. If possible, training should try to keep the technology transparent.
Training should allow faculty to pursue pedagogical and content goals without being hindered by prohibitive technology learning curves.

3. Training should be reinforced by follow-up to ensure that instructors are integrating what they learned into their teaching and curricula. Local faculty development efforts are best positioned to provide continuous technical support and respond to questions and concerns.

4. Learning from peers has been found to be highly effective in the academic environment. Showcasing examples of successful integration of instructional technologies by other instructors, particularly those in the same discipline, should be a training approach pursued on a systematic basis.

5. As in the delivery of instruction for students, faculty development in instructional technology should be just-in-time and on-demand including virtual faculty development, electronic communities, and self-paced faculty development. The just-in-time and on-demand requirements assume constant monitoring of faculty training needs.

6. Training offered through summer institutes should cover a range of content such that faculty can have choices for intensive training. This work should be in the form of project-based work directly related to the faculty's instructional responsibilities.

7. Training by itself cannot accomplish much unless campuses provide an enabling technological environment that emphasizes instructional technology integration throughout the curricula.

Assessment
Assessment programs should include formal and informal studies, quantitative and qualitative measures, classroom research, and anecdotal evidence. Faculty should retain control of assessment of student learning outcomes with the role of researchers being one of support. A first step is for faculty in each discipline, and perhaps each program, to identify what technology can do for student learning.

Background
The complete executive briefing, Integrating Instructional Technology in the California Community Colleges (Doherty & Ayers) is posted and can be downloaded from the CCC Chancellor's Office website at the Telecommunications and Technology Unit page, under Research and Reports.

The original study report, @ONE Technology Training Project, July 2002, is posted at the CCC Research & Planning Group's site under Center for Student Success. The Center for Student Success was established by the Research and Planning Group in 2000.

The research team for the study:
Dr. Brad, Phillips, Project Director
Dr. Kenneth Meehan, Lead Researcher for the Survey Study
Dr. Susan Obler, Lead Researcher for the Ethnographic Study
Ms. Eva B. Schiorring, Lead Researcher for the Ethnographic Study
Dr. Andreea M. Serban, Lead Researcher for the Literature Review

The @ONE project was funded at De Anza College for its first five years (1997-2002) to provide professional development resources in effective use of instructional technology to all of the California Community Colleges. The @ONE project is now hosted at Evergreen Valley College (CA) and continues to provide professional development resources for faculty and staff.

Catherine Ayers (<mailto:cathayer@pacbell.net>) was Director of @ONE during 2001-2002. Bill Doherty (<mailto:bdoherty@third-star.com>) worked with @ONE and the CSS research team to coordinate efforts during the 2001-2002 study.

** To view the web version of this abstract, in printer friendly layout, go
to:
<https://www.league.org/publication/abstracts/leadership/labs0103.htm>

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Dr. Susan Salvador
Office for Student Services
01/21/2003