Training vs. Deep Learning for Faculty

I want to ask a question: is faculty development in information technology the same as faculty development in general?
Here is the unnamed pachyderm: university faculty are not trained as educators. As Ken Bain wrote in his book, great educators do exist in higher ed, but they have found their own way there through instinct and hard work, often without much support.
What is it we do when we work with faculty in relation to technology? I find that most programs assume that faculty have more pedagogical knowledge than they do. I don’t find that much of ELI’s materials on faculty development go very deep. I looked at Virginia Tech’s award winning program and here is what I saw: in 2007 they offered 170 sessions for faculty. Of those, 46 were about teaching and technology (others were web development training, research and technology, etc.) OF those 46, 9 were Blackboard training, 4 were training on other VT systems. That leaves about 33 ( or less than 20%) that were on topics that I think of as faculty development , topics like “Motivating Your Students: Strategies for Design and Implementation.” So, about 80% were actually training, focussed on the tool and not on students and learning.

Training is a neccessary and good thing. It can be done poorly or well, and I think Tech does it very well. In fact, it is in the title of their group who does this important work:
Faculty Development Institute: Year-round technology training

But the issue is: how deep can you go with faculty when you are training them on a new system or software? It turns out, this is not the only placec on Tech’s campus where there is development for teaching. I had to search the site to find it, but indeed there is a traditional teaching center . I don’t know anything about how these two campus units relate to one another, but presumably, faculty on that campus do have a place to go to more in-depth formative work.

I just want to focus on what I mean by “in-depth formative work” and problematize ELI’s statement about the Tech program:

“Overall, this exemplary set of activities at Virginia Tech has expanded the university’s leadership role in the effective integration of instructional technology with pedagogy and enabled the university to serve as a model and a resource for other institutions across the state and the nation.”

I want to find out more about what exactly that means. How do they do integration of the two, especially if the faculty don’t bring much pedagogical background to the table?

Let me explain what I mean by “going deep.”

The way I work with faculty is a slow process. First, I have to develop a relationship with the faculty member so that she trusts me. Part of this is that I make clear that I am NOT going to tell her there is a right way to teach. Instead, my goal is to help the faculty member reflect on her own experiences and create her own goals. One way to do this is by taking the TGI Then we look at a syllabus and try to see where the syllabus matches her stated values and goals. This is a lightbulb opportunity and it is so cool to see! Then the teacher is ready: she wants to know how she can teach more in line with her values. I help her by showing her lots of options and opportunities that match up with her needs. In the process, I get her to think about the students: what are they learning? how do you know what they are learning? what do you want them to learn? This is a new way of considering the classroom for many in postsecondary ed. But I have seen the power of thinking of the classroom this way. It improves learning and it also makes for more satisfied faculty and students. (Anyone interested in learning more about this should check out Angelo and Cross’s outstanding text.)

The new area that I have been working in this year has been SOTL. I didn’t realize that it is a natural piece of this process, but it really can be. For SOTL, the teacher identifies a specific problem to study, lays out a change they want to make in their class as an experiment to see how it affects the “problem” and then gathers information about the results. This has two nice results: one is that it forces us to not try too many changes all at once, and this is crucial for successful classes. Second, it produces results that are ready to turn into something presentable or publishable. I believe that this raises the status of working on your teaching because this model of scholarship is something faculty understand and respect. Math and sciences and social sciences especially seem to respond to this. For Humanities people, the text-and-big-idea people, the reflection parts that we do early on are often the most satisfying pieces, and that can often be enough.

And here is, to me, the final piece in this puzzle: creating communities that support this. I now think that this doesn’t happen at an institutional level, but in the small group model of Faculty Learning Communities. I have come to realize that organizations are not moral or immoral, they just are about their goal of surviving. If part of the university’s survival is happy teachers, happy students, then I might be able to get institutional support for what I do. Creating rules and “Centers” is not the end in and of itself. The magic happens with human interaction, and that happens in small groups. It just does. There have to be relationships that make people feel secure enough to face change, and there has to be give and take participation, and there has to be the accountabilitiy that a group of peers can provide and still maintain a sense of saftey (as opposed to mandated workshops or departmental functions or the participation of anyone who controls your paycheck!)

So–organizations are not moral beings, but moral things– good, happy and life-giving things — can happen in them–IF the institution will let it happen. And institutions will only let it happen if it sees them as in the best interest of the survival of the institution.

I challenge my ELI friends, then: is this the same thing you mean when you talk about “faculty development”?