An Impending Pandemic = Suddenly We Care About Technology?

For years we have offered technology workshops to students, faculty, and staff. We publicize these workshops on the web, via email, in brochures that are sent campus wide. Even during a significant upgrade, like switching from Office 2003 to Office 2007, we were lucky to get five people attending each session. There simply has never been any push from the administrative level, or from department heads, for staff or instructors to advance their technology skills.

Our new teaching & learning center, formed to encourage professional development, does not address technology. There are no plans to employ an instructional technologist, even though instructors are struggling to integrate technology into their curriculum. They see technology as the domain of the IT department. This means that our people who understand assignment design and pedagogy don’t understand technology, and our technology people don’t understand assignment design or pedagogy. People who train others on technology, and who are sometimes invited to classrooms to teach technology, get caught in this conundrum.

The attitude here is that curriculum is one thing and technology is another, separate thing, and if instructors want to assign students to create a website or make a video, they just order up the technology training and have someone else teach and support it, and patch it into their syllabus like a band aid. The problem with this is, for many disciplines, there is no division between technology and curriculum. Take journalism for example. The instructor is the only person who can provide a meaningful context for the technology. As an IT person, I can teach the technology, but I cannot teach how a journalist or a market analyst or someone in another discipline would use the technology. It is the instructor who has the potential to blend the mechanics of the technology with the best practices of their particular discipline.

And this is where the anti-technology sentiment is most troubling to me. Instructors ask me to come to their classrooms and teach beginner students who are not computer science or information systems majors to design and develop websites, after receiving one short training session. We just provided two full weeks of instruction for three sections of a three credit course because the instructor can’t support his own technology-based assignment, but he is also unwilling to modify his assignment. Because departments are at risk of losing their accreditation because they haven’t incorporated technology into their curriculum and they are looking to me to fill that gap, rather than learning the technology themselves, even though that technology has become a core component of their discipline. We’re asked to teach old technology, advanced technology that isn’t appropriate for beginners, and things that seem pointless.

Integrating technology into curriculum is a struggle, an after thought, no one’s responsibility but that of the IT department, which just received almost three quarters of a million dollars worth of budget cuts.

But suddenly, now that this institution is worried about an impending flu pandemic, about the possibility of having to GIVE BACK TUITION MONEY, now they are concerned about instructors’ ability to maintain communication with students, and continue sharing course content in a pandemic situation. Because guess what this means??? That you’ve learned how to put your course content online. That you’ve learned to use email. That you know how to access your files from home. That perhaps you have even experimented with new, online tools for communicating with students, such as instant messaging, and an abundance of free online tools for holding virtual meetings. Above, all, that you've TAKEN OWNERSHIP of your skills and your ability to teach and learn and communicate in the highly virtual twenty first century.

Emails were even sent out from administration about using new “social distance” tools to keep courses running if your class can’t meet face to face—things like instant messaging and virtual meeting tools. I found this announcement to be extremely out of touch with the technology skills of instructors. Do administrators seriously think that, when stricken down by the swine flu, instructors will finally be motivated to learn to use new technology tools? That after we have cultivated an anti-technology attitude, now, when faced with a pandemic, people will suddenly be interested in advancing their technology skills?

Now, they are concerned about this.

Maybe if technology had been a priority all along, most of our course material would already be available online right now, instead of a small fraction of it.

I can see the official press release already: “We had a comprehensive pandemic preparedness plan in place and took systemic measures to provide training and support for these procedures.”

I wish I had no opinions about things. It would make things a lot easier. I would just go to work, complete tasks, not think about them, and leave. But I think it’s really sad that this is what it takes for people to care about technology.

Be an Advocate for Women’s Equity in Higher Education: Part 1

I am going to post in segments my article about higher education's use of “limited term” positions that keep women in low paying jobs with few benefits. Names are changed...


“Across Wisconsin, I see talented and tenacious women poised to lead this state's economic growth -- if only we clear obstacles from their path.”
-Lt. Governor Barbara Lawton

When Karen became the manager of a campus help desk and software training group, she quickly realized that her staff was comprised mostly of women who had worked five to ten years in “limited term” status with low wages, earning a minimum of 20% less than permanent workers in the same job classifications, with no vacation, sick time, personal or legal holidays, and in some cases, no health insurance.

I experienced these inequitable conditions. In 2003, with four years of professional work experience and a Master’s degree in progress, I was hired as the coordinator for Karen’s software training program—a position that had existed in limited term classification since 1995 and remained “limited term” for twelve years, until 2007. Almost three years into my employment, my mom suffered a massive stroke. As a limited term employee (LTE), I had no vacation, sick leave, personal or legal holidays. Fortunately, my co-workers showed their support by taking up a collection, which helped pay my bills while I took unpaid time off to be with my mom during her four-month hospital stay.

Karen became concerned about people she supervised working long term in “limited term” positions while studying the attributes of successful companies, as part of her MBA coursework. “Successful companies took care of their people, and then the people in turn worked hard,” Karen says.

Despite Karen’s concern, the status quo at this institution is to maintain “limited term” positions for many years. “I know people who worked here in various offices as LTEs for more than 20 years,” Karen says, now the Associate IT Director. “I do think this is a significant problem here and I believe it may even be worse statewide.”

While a common response among managers and administration is “this is the system we’re stuck with,” or “people have choices,” Karen challenged the status quo for her “limited term” employees...