Some months ago, someone posted a message about faculty resistance to
technology, and I demurred. The original poster asked me for models, but
they took a while to formulate.
I. Traditional Technology Adoption Model (Push model)
1. A central committee of IT professionals from the University IT department
investigates all pedagogical technologies. Members of the committee go to
the trade fairs associated with conferences for university IT personnel,
where they see demonstrations of various technologies intended to facilitate
and support pedagogy. (Note 1.)
2. They evaluate these technologies, then select, purchase, and install
those technologies most appropriate to the faculty, students, and curriculum
at their institution. (Note 2).
3. The committee sends members of the professional IT training team to the
vendor's training to learn how to most effectively use the software. These
professional trainers then offer mini-courses in use of the technology to
faculty and students.
4. Faculty, having no idea what, if anything, these technologies might have
to do with their courses, seeing a substantial investment in time just to
find out, and perceiving a remote possibility of any payoff, avoid the
technologies. From a pedagogical perspective, the investment is usually
completely wasted. Adoption by 5% of the faculty is considered a major
success.
5. The technologies, looking like they've just been acquired and removed
from the original packaging (even years later) are available for
demonstrations to parents and other stakeholders and bill-payers, who see
evidence of recent technology acquisition indicating that the University is
really "staying abreast of the latest technology." From a marketing
perspective, the investment has been a complete success.
(Note 1.) In its purest form, faculty and other end-users are absolutely
prohibited from having any input into the committee's decisions, since they
lack the IT expertise necessary to provide any useful input. Faculty
suggestions are normally filed in the appropriate "round filing cabinet."
Faculty who make repeated requests that cannot be ignored have their
supervisors notified, with a request from the central IT committee that this
annoying and unprofessional behavior on the part of the faculty member be
stopped.
(Note 2.) The technologies demonstrated to the IT professionals are
particularly strong in the areas of security, ease of administration and
maintenance, and come with flashy demos, suitable for showing to visitors to
the University. The vendor's sales reps also provide iron-clad assurances
that these technologies have been fully tested and have received the highest
ratings for their pedagogical effectiveness, so there is absolutely no need
why the IT professionals need any training in the subject areas where these
technologies will be used, or any classroom experience in order to make
their evaluations.
Advantages:
1. Cheapest approach to technology acquisition. Guaranteed to stay not just
within the university's technology acquisition budget, but also within the
budget for administration, maintenance, and support of technology.
2. Economies of scale as to purchase, administration, and support. Other
economies of support accrue since the technology doesn't suffer from
overuse.
3. Enthusiastic buy-in of administration, support, and training personnel.
4. Excellent marketing tools for parents and other stakeholders and
bill-payers.
Disadvantages:
1. 95%-100% waste of investment from pedagogical/faculty perspective.
Overall Assessment: +3
The model works very well in cultures where the faculty don't want any
technology, don't think technology has a place in the classroom, and like a
model that doesn't take any of their time or too much of the university's
resources.
Where some of the faculty want to use technology in the classroom, and want
to have input into the selection of that technology, the above model in its
purest form may anger those faculty; however, in the cultures which adopt
such a model, such anger is not really considered a problem, so it isn't
listed as a disadvantage to the model.
On the other hand, there are some university cultures where this is a
problem. In these cultures, the above model might not be entire appropriate.
I-A. Modifications to the basic push model:
The simplest modification is to allow a few faculty and other end users to
sit on the technology evaluation committee as voting members, and to
convince faculty and end-users that their suggestions to the committee are
given full consideration. If these non-IT members are carefully chosen, and
if the committee publicizes that all technology reviewed and adopted by the
committee is based on suggestions by faculty members, the faculty may be
mollified without endangering the basic control model.
In extreme cases, some committees may even accept a few minor suggestions
for technology additions from the faculty and other end-users.
II. Alternative Model (Pull Model)
1. In its extreme form, each faculty member gets a budget for pedagogical
technology. Faculty members may spend their budgets on technology as they
like, and may combine their budgets for high-cost items which will be used
by multiple faculty members.
2. Faculty members view and evaluate the technology they see at the trade
fairs associated with the academic conferences in their disciplines. (Note
3.)
3. Faculty members use their budgets to acquire technology and send
themselves to training. (Note 4.)
4. They try to integrate this technology into their teaching, and, if it
works, they keep using it.
(Note 3.) I have only seen this model in its pure form at Rochester
University. Other universities I have seen may decentralize the technology
budget to some extent, but not down to the individual faculty level. Hence,
there is a complete spectrum between the pure push model and the pure pull
model.
The simplest metric for this spectrum is the probability that faculty
requests for specific new technologies will be approved. If there is 0%
chance of the request being approved, the institution is clearly in either
the Push Model or the No Technology Here Model. If there is a 100% chance of
approval, the institution is clearly in the Pull Model. Most institutions
will fall somewhere in between.
(Note 4.) Faculty tend not to consider security, maintenance, or
administration issues at all in their evaluations, unless the institution
makes it clear that they will be responsible for somehow obtaining
maintenance and administration of the technology they acquire. Life can
really get interesting in a mixed model where faculty are allowed to obtain
new technology, but are prohibited from engaging in administrative or
maintenance tasks. If the IT support group doesn't buy-in, the technology
may sit in the box unopened, or may be only partially installed (e.g., with
no student accounts created, or with the server installed, but no clients
available to students) and thus rendered unusable. I have personally seen
this happen at one university and one military research lab.
Advantages:
1. Faculty and other end-users are much more likely to use the technology
effectively than with the Push Model. This model tends to offer better
overall pedagogy. Students get exposed to new technologies appropriate to
their discipline selected by someone familiar with the discipline, and
familiar with the classroom environment.
Disadvantages.
1. Faculty and other end-users have no expertise in the evaluation of
technology. Often, they will try to adopt a technology because it looks good
at the technology fair, then find that doesn't really augment their teaching
when they get it into the classroom.
2. No economies of scale as to purchasing, maintenance, training, or
support. While it is not difficult, under this model, to ensure that the
purchasing budget is not exceeded, the maintenance, training, and support
costs for the resultant heterogeneous salmagundi of technology will be both
excessive and, even worse from a management perspective, totally
unpredictable.
3. There is often nothing impressive to show parents, stakeholders and other
bill-payers unless the individual faculty member is present, and probably
not even then, since the sorts of things that are effective in the
day-to-day teaching environment are often not very impressive in a purely
demo mode. Thus it may be hard to justify the technology expenditures to the
people who need to see the justification.
Overall Assessment: -2
III. Winner: Push Model.
Corollary: The fact that faculty refuse to use technology under the Push
Model should be seen as an advantage, rather than a problem, since it saves
wear and tear on the technology and reduces maintenance and support costs.