This post is not intended to be a whinge session, or a critical indictment of the sector I work in, or indeed the university I work at. It’s meant to be a thinking exercise for me to try and find a way around a stalemate, and answer the question posed by a colleague recently: ”Why have you stopped blogging, Mike?!”
A Moral Dilemma
“Moral Dilemma” is the phrase I used to describe the stalemate. I work more or less at the coal face, interacting with academics and courses who use – or perhaps more accurately don’t use – educational technology. This has allowed for some really interesting insight into the realities of what it’s like to be a course convener, and has presented some stark realities for one whose job it is to encourage technological innovation in learning and teaching practice.
The more I see, the more gobsmacked I am about the demands they face. Ever increasing teaching loads, initiatives for “smarter assessment,” and yet constant pressure for quality research output. And despite all the statements from Senior Executives to suggest that teaching is seen as a core activity of the university – on par with research – when it comes to career advancement and recognition, it’s clear that one activity trumps the other.
One early career teacher I know was advised “If you have to choose between getting a publication in on time, or being prepared for your lecture, you get the publication in on time,” while another deemed research into learning and teaching to be “career suicide.”
Such is the view of learning and teaching versus research that I am seeing time and time again.
I know at least a few innovative teachers who have been deemed “research inactive” – an academic scarlet letter if ever there was one – by virtue of the amounts of time they have invested exploring meaningful use of educational technology.
Conflicts of Interest
So where does that leave the educational technologist, tasked with the responsibility of encouraging and empowering academics to be innovative in their practice; to push the boundaries of what has been done traditionally, and explore new territories – perhaps even disrupt the system.
It presents them with a moral dilemma. Propose new ideas, and risk jeopardizing the career prospects of your colleagues and friends; or instead facilitate traditional approaches to technology in education – eAdmin over eLearning – knowing full well that technology could be use more effectively to support learning and teaching. Or perhaps suggest new ideas, knowing full well that you will see no interest in them whatsoever; understanding all too well why there is no interest.
It is important to note here, I think, to recognise I’ve made no mention of the needs or wants of students – this is another critical component in this discussion, and a topic that I’ve never completely resolved. Namely: what is the relationship between educational technologist and student. The best answer I’ve come up with so far is they help the students by helping the teachers, though I must admit I don’t find it entirely satisfactory.
Bureaucracy
Complicating the issues further are the traditional layers of bureaucracy you see in large institutions. To even start to explore a new “supported” system you frequently need to apply for the chance – formally submit an Expression of Interest – and agree to additional responsibilities that really don’t benefit you.
In effect, the people who are willing to take the chance – the ones we really need to support as early adopters – are being forced to jump through hoops and make a case for why they should be given the opportunity.
Or, on the other hand, you can circumvent formally supported systems and adopt technologies on the open web, meaning you must also act as technical support for students as well as convener, and researcher. Needless to say, few ever go down that road.
I’ve always approached my work with a service oriented view – and this is becoming ever more the case recently. I’ll happily talk with people about the amazing opportunities that exist, but those opportunities are few and far between.
More commonly I battle with questions about why Blackboard doesn’t work, or why it’s so difficult to navigate the web of bureaucracy wrought by central units.
I see I’ve done little to internally resolve this conundrum, instead turning this post into the whinge session I’d so hoped to avoid. You can see why I’m not blogging much anymore…
Mike you are to be applauded for actually recognising the plight of the teaching academics. Too many folk I know – mainly in IT rather than ed tech within universities – blame the academics without understanding their context.
The one strategy that I’ve seen work in this situation is for a small team to identify bug-bears common to many academics and design solutions that address those bug-bears. Often these are workarounds to central systems and are focused mostly on saving academic time. It’s slow going but it adds up over time.
I think there is a second, related moral dilemma faced by the instructional designers/ed tech folk that work within central units. The central units report to managers with KPIs. Increasingly the designers/ed techs are expected to place the achievement of specific KPIs or projects ahead of what is considered good or appropriate for the context. Let alone what’s good for the teaching academics.
Agreed. Moving from a central unit (where I’d been for about 8 years) to a faculty role has been extremely eye opening. There isn’t anywhere else in the uni than I’d rather be, really, and yet the assortment of different priorities, agendas, and metrics across the university – as you alluded – sometimes makes it extremely complicated to figure out a productive way forward.
There’s definitely a friction between IT and academia in that sense. Our central IT maintains itself as a more corporate-style approach, which doesn’t always mesh that well with the academic side of things. So miscommunication is fairly common.
I recognise the logic in both models, it’s just they don’t always understand each other
Perhaps not surprising that so much of an edtech’s job (at least in my experience) is acting as an interpreter or conduit between the two realms.
As far as your suggestion to formulating a small team is concerned, that’s a wonderful idea. There is a fair amount communication happening between me and my peers in other faculties regarding common issues, so there may be ways we can all help each other. Not unlike what we all do in the Twitterverse for that matter.
Other than that, ensuring the “change agents” get as much support as they need is another key activity. There aren’t always that many of them, so it’s important to put our weight behind.
Thanks for the suggestions
Hey Mike
Your thoughtfulness and eloquence on the dilemmas you face are impressive, and I’m sure ring true with many of us supporting teaching in higher ed. My personal feeling about academic uptake of technologies for learning is that academics need to be convinced of the value of technologies by finding that value in their own lives – personal, research, whatever – before they can conceptualise how it might enrich their teaching experience, and their students’ learning experience. Students are largely ahead of them in this (albeit as consumers not ‘prod-users’), fueling feelings of inadequacy in technology literacy. And there is the ‘I just don’t have time for this’ factor, meaning ‘this just is not a top priority among all my competing priorities’.
I am aware that being located in a central unit distances me from everyday academic experience, and my role seems to be more and more separated from the coalface as I work on those KPI related ‘strategic’ projects, rather then with individual academics and individual courses. This perhaps accounts for some of my long-term optimism:
1. Generational change in academia is beginning to happen. Young academics seem generally more digitally literate (has anyone collected evidence of this?).
2. Students are being exposed to some good models of blended learning that raise their expectations and will affect course feedback surveys. Students who have been given laptops for their high school studies are about to start entering university, and will have higher expectations of a ‘blended’ experience.
3. Digital literacy is an expected graduate outcome (alongside communications skills, information literacy, independent learning skills), and there will be an increasing requirement to show how such outcomes are taught and assessed.
4. Research-focused institutions such as ours are finally realising that by sidelining educational technologies they are becoming globally uncompetitive – they need to catch up, and soon.
Thanks for the post. It didn’t really explain why you’ve given up – and I hope you don’t. You’re a model for us all
cheers
Belinda