770. The Challenges and Opportunities of Technology in Higher Education
January 19, 2007
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"Most organizations in today's rapidly transforming global environment find it difficult to obtain the necessary resources to maintain the constant innovation and change required to survive and thrive. Higher education is in an even more difficult environment, with shrinking appropriations for public institutions and rising costs and tuition for private entities. In this environment, successful and efficient administrative financial planning, implementation, and decision provide faculty/staff incentives to encourage faculty involvement in technologically transforming courses and programs."
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Posted by markep on January 19, 2007
770. The Challenges and Opportunities of Technology in Higher Education
January 19, 2007
Folks:
The posting below looks at staff incentives to encourage faculty involvement in technologically transforming courses and programs. It contains the executive summary and an excerpt on Technology Supporting Administrative Functions and Processes, from The Challenges and Opportunities of Technology in Higher Education by Donald E. Hanna and Michael J. Johnson in the monthly series Effective Practices for Academic Leaders. The series is available in an electronic publication that can be networked on a campus system to enable everyone on a campus to access the briefings at their desks when needed, for use both as guidance for administrators and as a development materials for faculty and others. The electronic license allows individual copying without need for permission, thus the individual briefings lend themselves to use in workshops ands seminars. For online subscription information go to:
Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: New Ways of Framing Pedagogy
The Challenges and Opportunities of Technology in Higher Education
by Donald E. Hanna and Michael J. Johnson
Executive Summary
Universities and colleges face a growing crisis of relevance in the twenty first century, and academic departments and disciplines will not be immune or protected. Department chairs and other academic leaders need to provide leadership in this new complex, competitive, technologically advanced, communications-dependent, and consumer-oriented society. In doing so, they need an informed voice, as well as support and even advocacy for faculty members, who are the heart and soul of academic innovation. Academic leaders need to understand the changing contexts in which universities are operating, including evolving learner expectations, culture, challenges, and opportunities. New technologies are changing the nature of learning and teaching, and powerful competitors, who are seeking to meet the educational needs of adult workers and other nontraditional students, have emerged. The department chair is at the center of effective leadership, helping faculty and staff to use technological developments wisely, effectively, and efficiently. While the department chair will provide leadership in changing technical and procedural processes (first order changes), the more important changes will be at a fundamental level that will involve substantial shifts in philosophy, values, goals, and core processes (second-order changes). This briefing explores both opportunities and challenges for exercising leadership in exploring new uses for technology in department settings. It offers specific ideas for chairs to consider in promoting technological changes as they develop approaches and strategies for program development, department administration, faculty development and mentoring, and overall departmental leadership.
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Technology Supporting Administrative Functions and Processes
Most organizations in today's rapidly transforming global environment find it difficult to obtain the necessary resources to maintain the constant innovation and change required to survive and thrive. Higher education is in an even more difficult environment, with shrinking appropriations for public institutions and rising costs and tuition for private entities. In this environment, successful and efficient administrative financial planning, implementation, and decision provide faculty/staff incentives to encourage faculty involvement in technologically transforming courses and programs; for example:
* Credit for service/creative activity on promotion and tenure evaluations.
* Travel to conferences to present papers related to technological innovation.
* Being first on the list to receive technology upgrades: new computers, programs, and other technologies.
* Nomination for campus wide and/or other regional/national recognition programs. Provide appropriate and ongoing access to and support for emerging technologies as an incentive for technologically advanced faculty.
* Faculty members who are interested in technology can be motivated to keep innovating when they know they will receive new software and hardware regularly. Establish a reserve fund for purchasing and testing new technologies and software that could improve faculty/staff and program effectiveness.
* Technology innovators on the faculty/staff will usually find such opportunities and are good candidates to receive and test "the next best thing." Assuming that additional faculty time and compensation resources are not needed to innovate with technology.
* Converting a traditional course to an online course involves a great deal of effort. Many "managers" in higher education do not understand what this process requires: rethinking how to present information, how to measure student understanding, and even how to collect and correct digital homework and papers.
* Incorporating new learning strategies and enhancements that take advantage of the online environment requires additional work. Assuming that the innovations made recently will remain viable and meet departmental needs for several more years.
* New technologies and software that provide significant improvements over previous innovations are developed every day. Just keeping up with software enhancements to traditional computer programs (operating systems, Microsoft®Office, and so forth) is daunting. Assuming that the next best thing is the next thing the department needs to purchase.
* "The next best thing" often isn't. Having someone test the got-to-have "next best thing" is important when time, energy, and resources are scarce.
* Careful, systematic decision making is essential to prevent wasting valuable time and money. Table 6. Challenges in Leading Faculty Mentoring and Development Challenge 1: Providing Faculty Incentives Better/Best Practice Traps to Avoid Innovate with technology to develop an academic environment that is adaptive and responsive to changing demands; external forces; and the diverse needs of students, faculty, administrators, and other key stakeholders.
* Department Web pages provide an efficient and timely way to distribute information to potential and current students.* New Internet phenomena, such as blogs, can provide student interaction and answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and immediate problems. Improve internal departmental information systems for successful management of resources and programs, especially in program planning and innovation.
* Successful leadership now requires having as much information as possible about the program, students, budgets, expenditures, and everything else. The higher education world is changing so fast that yesterday's processes will not provide enough information to effectively manage the department today, let alone tomorrow. Requirements for more departmental financial, assessment, and planning information demand more involvement between the department chair and staff and the university information and planning services personnel, especially regarding the use of management information systems, tools, and software.
* Spending time with and learning from system wide financial and data personnel can provide new ways of accessing information for department personnel, thus avoiding the development of costly (time, money, and resources) in-house new data collections. Assuming that the way we have done things for the past few years or even the past two years will continue to work effectively.
* Technology and the higher-education environment require constant innovation in the transition from a print-based, face-toface-based world to the digital information virtual world (literally all information, print, music, pictures, video/movies; in other words, everything, even money). Assuming that the information we have today about our students, our program, and our competitors meets our needs.
* Department leaders should consistently collect and monitor student demographic characteristics to avoid missing key indicators that will seriously impact programs soon. For example, if the student population has changed from more traditional 18- to 22-year-olds to older students who are changing professions, the way classes are scheduled and delivered may be out of step with student needs. Assuming that management of the department will remain essentially the same.
* Increased competition and increased focus on the cost of higher education and cost reduction at every level means that department leaders must know how to collect and use internal university information tools and systems. Table 7. Opportunities in Supporting Administrative Functions and Processes Better/Best Practice Traps to Avoid making are essential. At the same time, administrative departmental functions (providing student information and forms, advising, and so forth) must be digitized and provided on the Web for easy access by students, especially for students in hybrid and distance courses. Technological administrative innovation at the department level is therefore also critical to the department's success and growth. Tables 7 and 8 chart the opportunities and challenges for supporting administrative functions and practices.
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Professor Universitario
By Eduardo Marcelo Cocca (*)
We must have in sure if we want an artisan university education, amateur, or an education into the hands of true professionals in fact and of right, as it corresponds and we deserve ourselves, and mainly in a serious country in, where it must reign over all the State of Right, to all we must prohang so that its exercise, is not an expression of desires, but a reality, to which all without no doubt we aspired.
The habitual thing, as much in universities you publish like private and with the consent of its authorities, Professors Universitarios, they are only in fact, they hold a degree race as much and they as the authorities, consider sufficient merit to qualify them like professors, in open contradiction with the laws that regulate the exercise of the profession, L.E.S. Art. 36, Penal Code, etc.
From a strictly legal point of view we are as opposed to a flagrant violation of the law, penal crimes including, I believe that it is not necessary to remember that all citizen has obligation to know the law, nor that to say if he is lawyers.
Displeased and gladly as much you participate necessary, like authorities that they name in these positions, are incursas in crime, to remember CP, when it says that that it designates to us somebody without I title sufficient, we can close the eyes or to watch for another side, as we have done until now, but later nonos we complain the results or we look for expiatorios chivos in the secondary school, when the true problem, nucleus of this question is the same university, that sure handled by amateurs and nontrue professionals, titleholders the results cannot be other that those that they are exhibited, lamentably.
The National State, through Ministry of Education grants as it corresponds, authorization to different universities you publish and private, the permission for the postgraduate of Professor Universitario and later granting of I title corresponding, after attended and approved curricula it specifies of the race.
However, the great majority of the professionals who exert like educational college students, except for rare exceptions, lacks I title of Professor Universitario.
Professor Universitario, when this in class in front of the pupils, not this in quality of lawyer, judge, doctor, engineer, etc., but acting as and carrying out the roll of Professor Universitario, and for which and he falls of mature which its race of degree is not sufficient for the professional exercise like Professor Universitario, as marks to the common sense and the regulations to it of the laws.
Prime facie, these professionals, without I title of Professor Universitario, would be reached about the Art. 246. - inc.1. - Usurpation of Titles. - of the Penal Code, that says: the one that exerted or will assume functions you publish without I title. - Art., 247. - According to law 24527. - Usurpation of Titles, - Penal Code. - that says: the one that it will exert own acts of a profession ......, without having I title ...... and soon it says: the one that arrogare academic degrees, professional titles or honors that will not correspond to him. The law of Superior Education N* 24521, Art. 36, say to us: the educational ones of all the categories must have I title equal college student of or superior level to that in which they exert teaching ........., that is that if they exert like Professor Universitario, as taxativamente marks the law to it, must have I title of Professor Universitario, in addition to I title of the degree race that qualifies it in the specialty.
The universities grant I title of Professor Titular, Associate, Associate or Head of Practical Works. Him memory although seems a truth of Perogrullo, to accede to I title of Professor Universitario, is necessary to attend and to approve certain curricula. The law of Superior Education, that the one that norm, contains and gives legal frame to the universities, nor even in the paragraph referred to the university autonomy, says nowhere that these can name any professional with I title insufficient like Professor Universitario.
From the point of view of the Right, we suppose that somebody that exerts the profession of Lawyer, but does not know that it is the Civil Code, nor that it was Vélez Sarsfield, with complete certainty no lawyer would accept this situation, nevertheless most of Professors Universitarios (in fact), they do not know whom was Amos Comenius, nor whom to say of its “Magna Didactics”, or even but in our days, the colleague Abogado and Pedagogo Paulo Freire, perhaps but the important one in the history of the Latin American education, with his text celebrates” the Pedagogía of the Pressed one ".
Professor Universitario, has the prevailing obligation to know, perfectly and deeply, didactic currents, so that in agreement with his loyal one to know and to understand, and after all the pertinent analyses, they will enlist themselves in the conductista current, humanist, mixed constructivista or, or even some personal elaboration based on knowledge that the specialists elaborated day to day, for those to which really he concerns the university education to us we water.
The same he happens to as it is the education methodology, which we will apply with the pupils, will be linear, concentric or espiralada, the handling of anyone of these techniques, must be something so habitual for the true professional, who fulfills the roll of Professor Universitario, like speaking or writing for anyone of us.
The exposed thing until here, does not get to be nor the end of iceberg.
Then gentlemen of once `by all to arrived moment to put us trousers long, and that we assume like cannot be of another way, that cannot be exerted a profession, nor to be a professional of the same one without I title habilitarte.
Like colofón and to leave obviously demonstrated all the exposed one up to here, we say that every month we received alms, to which the universities call pays, and the remunerations are for Junior instructor, jtp, associate, associated or to title, I insist to anyone of these categories arrived by a magical varita that inmerecidamente I inmerecidamente designate them against of all the laws of the sector I even reiterate the Penal Code, that in this case do not act its as preventive like would have and all we are waiting for the unrestricted fulfillment of the norm Would be desirable, that the competent authorities and giving a term of 24 or 36 months, so that present Professors Universitarios in fact, become Professors Universitarios in fact and of right, for own pride and of all the educative community.
Subjects to debate Professors Right Universitarios in fact or in fact and of Professors Professional Universitarios of the education or amateurs of the university education
Bibliography Law of Superior Education Nro. 24521 Argentine Penal Code
(*) Solicitor, Lawyer and Professor Universitario.Docente with the position of Head of Practical Works, during 24 months, in the Faculty of Right of the Hill University of Zamora, in chair the Social and Right Latin American Reality. Educational in the Faculty of Right, the Maimonides University, in the chair of Enterprise Right (Straight Constitutional direction). Educational in charge of the chairs “Economy and Legislation “and Exercise and Pharmaceutical Administration” in the University Kennedy. Educational of Legislation and Customs Practice in the University Kennedy. Educational of Administrative Right in the University Kennedy. Professor Adjunto, of Political Economy, in the race of Law of the Inter-American Open University. Professor of Legal Aspects of Computer science, the Lic. in Computer science Systems, the University Kennedy. Professor Universitario, withdrawn like so, of the University Teaching staff of the Maimonides University. Colegiado, registered in the School I publish of Lawyers of the Federal Capital (Volume 74; Folio 0976) and in the Federal Camera De Apelaciones of the Silver (Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation), (Volume 201; Folio 795)
Personal page Prof. Cocca
envoy by Eduardo Marcelo Cocca
Posted by: EDUARDO COCCA on January 22, 2007 05:22 PM
Universities would be wise to monitor closely the "powerful competitors" that your article suggests are emerging to meet the educational needs of adult and nontraditional learners, i.e. online classes. However, I believe that "traditional" learners are also entering the universities with an expectation of using technology to enhance their learning. For this reason, it is even more important that department chairs provide leadership to their faculty as they explore ways to effectively enhance student learning by including technology in their courses. Your list of suggestions is a great place to start.
Posted by: Colleen on January 24, 2007 06:12 PM
Universities would be wise to monitor closely the "powerful competitors" that your article suggests are emerging to meet the educational needs of adult and nontraditional learners, i.e. online classes. However, I believe that "traditional" learners are also entering the universities with an expectation of using technology to enhance their learning. For this reason, it is even more important that department chairs provide leadership to their faculty as they explore ways to effectively enhance student learning by including technology in their courses. Your list of suggestions is a great place to start.
Posted by: Colleen on January 24, 2007 06:14 PM