CAUSE/EFFECT

Copyright 1998 EDUCAUSE. From CAUSE/EFFECT Volume 21, Number 2, 1998, pp.54-58. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage, the EDUCAUSE copyright and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of EDUCAUSE. To disseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission. For further information, contact Jim Roche at EDUCAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301 USA; 303-939-0308; e-mail: jroche@educause.edu

Taking Instruction to Where It Will Be Used: Tutoring Faculty in Their Offices
by Eugene A. Engeldinger and Michael G. Love

If college faculty are to keep pace with the rapid changes in the technology available for teaching and learning, academic support services departments must be prepared to provide training and faculty development opportunities. This article reports on the experience of one small, private college and the practical and philosophical considerations behind the decision to tutor faculty and staff in their offices.

Introduction

One of the most difficult issues facing higher education is the quick pace of change, particularly in the type and amount of new technology available for teaching and learning. With these changes comes some frustration among faculty, who find themselves unable to keep pace with what’s new and incorporate more instructional technology into their classroom repertoires. As a result, some faculty members have become insecure and defensive about the value of their current teaching methods. Thus, they withdraw from opportunities to learn more about instructional technologies and even deny that the new technologies might be preferable to what they are doing in the classroom now.

Smart institutions address those faculty concerns with training. Classroom instructors need and desire help in learning how to use new technologies and how to incorporate them into classroom instruction.

An institution can provide the necessary training in a variety of ways, but a central element of success on all campuses must be the enthusiastic involvement of campus support services, including the library, media services, and the computer center. This is the route taken by Carthage College.

Carthage is a four-year, liberal arts college affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, with an enrollment of 1,688 FTE and about ninety faculty. The college has a campuswide network, with a fiber backbone and twisted pair to the desktop. All faculty offices are completely networked, as are all student residence hall rooms, student computer labs, and most classrooms. The college supports both PCs and Macintosh platforms through a client/server, token ring architecture with a Banyan network operating system. In early 1993, the computer center was merged with the library, thereby creating Academic Information Services (AIS), headed by a newly created vice presidential position reporting to the president of the college. The following year, Media Services was added to AIS.

Because of the strong belief in the electronic teaching library concept, and a belief that the network is the library, a holistic computing philosophy prevails. This means, in essence, that virtually all staff and public access computers should be networked, and that, as much as possible, all information and general applications should be accessible from anywhere on campus. As we all know, distributing this much access capability to all desktops is one thing, but ensuring that it can be put to most efficient use by the college community can be quite another. In our case, it soon became apparent that increases in user services and training were imperative. Some positive action was required to increase computer literacy among the campus community.

Traditional approaches and their deficiencies

Carthage, like many colleges, uses several traditional approaches to teach our faculty how to use new hardware, software, databases, and information resources:

The traditional approaches provide much-needed assistance to many faculty members, but not enough. In-service sessions and workshops are usually held in the library, in computer labs, and in our electronic classrooms. In many cases, these locations house equipment with which our faculty is not familiar. The workshops and demonstrations usually are attended by individuals who are at different levels of proficiency with technology and who, in all likelihood, learn at different rates. For a few, the pace of instruction will be too fast, but for others, it’s too slow. For some, the examples demonstrated will be helpful, while for others they are irrelevant, and perhaps even a barrier to their learning. In some cases, the workshops take too much time, given the limited benefit some attendees feel they reap. And the timing of the workshop might not be most conducive to the person’s learning readiness. The workshops were often scheduled with the convenience of AIS staff in mind, rather than at times better suited to faculty and staff schedules. And the hands-on training tends to be clumsy because of the lack of uniform computing skills among the participants. Indeed, the participants in these workshops (whether students or faculty) rarely constitute a homogeneous group. The level of computer skills is too diverse for instruction to satisfy all participants equally. For these reasons, many individuals failed to take advantage of the sessions offered.

The real solution, it seems, was there all along. As we observed our staff assisting students in the library and computer labs, we came to realize that one of the reasons reference librarians and lab assistants are successful is that we are tutoring students at their greatest readiness to learn. We are helping students when they have assignments due; thus they are highly motivated to assimilate the skills we impart. Applying these lessons to training faculty (whose workshops also are sparsely attended) seemed a logical step.

Based on these observations, we concluded that many faculty and staff could benefit from the same kind of personal attention that we make available to students and others who use the labs. But at least two things militate against it: The labs are not as easy for faculty to access as their office equipment, and the labs are not as private as their own offices. In their offices, it would be more acceptable to have help, because no one (especially students) would observe the tutoring. And, of course, office tutors would be regular staff and not the students who routinely staff the labs--which could make faculty more responsive to the idea of tutoring.

It had seemed to us that we could provide the type of instruction that suits the learning style of the individual, on equipment with which the learner is familiar and at a time that is most opportune, that is, close to the time of actual need. With this in mind, we initiated our Faculty/Staff Tutoring Program.

Implementing the program

The possibility of implementing such a program was raised first at a weekly meeting of the AIS unit heads. As might be expected, there was some initial concern regarding the ability of the unit to assume another service, particularly one that was potentially so labor intensive. Later, the idea was raised at a meeting of the AIS Advisory Group, the faculty group that advises us. The early ambivalence of both groups to the program was not because the idea lacked merit, nor was it thought to be unnecessary. Rather, both groups were concerned that staff resources might not be adequate, and we might be stretching ourselves too thin. Still, the AIS Advisory Group endorsed the plan.

To get the program off the ground, wild card e-mail messages were sent to all faculty and staff, explaining the program and providing examples of what might be reasonable tutoring projects. Fliers were created and distributed to all mailboxes, and a short announcement was published in the campus electronic newsletter, Reality Bytes. Again, the idea was praised, but concerns were raised about our limited staff resources. Nonetheless, we moved forward with the plan, and within weeks the program was in operation.

As might be expected, the tutoring sessions go beyond learning a few computer software packages; faculty are sampling various instructional technologies, ranging from basic computing to communications between computers and data services to delivery and storage of digital, audio, and video information. Because of the breadth of topics, assistance from all AIS units would be required to make this program work. Computer staff, media specialists, and librarians all would participate and act as tutors.

The Media Services Coordinator assumed the role of tutoring coordinator and became the point person for communication by faculty and staff regarding tutorial needs. This is the person whom faculty are to contact to schedule an appointment. The Media Services Coordinator conducts an interview to determine the technology needs of the requester and to estimate the amount of time necessary to conduct the session. Usually between fifteen minutes and an hour is scheduled at the mutual convenience of learner and tutor.

Benefits to the faculty

An obvious benefit of such a program is the positive relationship developed between the faculty and the AIS staff. In the first place, just implementing the program shows that AIS staff members care and are sensitive to faculty needs.

The majority of the tutoring is done on the faculty desktop, because that is the equipment the person will use most often. A few tutoring sessions are being done on specialty equipment, that is, equipment that is not likely to reside in any particular office, but rather is housed at a central location. Examples of this are CD-ROM burning and video editing in the Media Center, scanning documents in the computer center and library, and creating electronic portfolios in the curriculum library. Thus, anything mounted on the campus network and available in faculty or staff offices would be tutored in an office. If the equipment is not accessible in an office, tutoring would be done elsewhere, usually in an AIS work area.

Pedagogically, the program meets the needs and proclivities of our users better than other faculty development efforts.

One important benefit is that the trainer uses the equipment that the learners are actually going to use when doing their real projects. The faculty are already familiar with the equipment on their desks. Tutoring in offices ensures that the learners are not watching demos or doing hands-on workshops with AIS staff using PowerMacs when they have PCs on their own desks. Nor will faculty be subjected to a demo using Windows 95 when the office equipment operates under Windows 3.1. While these might seem like minor issues to some of us, we should remember that the best learning takes place when learners have some knowledge onto which they can attach new information. The more information the learner confronts in an unfamiliar situation, the less likely it will be that learning will take place. In addition, it is unlikely that the office desktop machines are configured exactly like those in the labs or the electronic classrooms. Indeed, it’s not even likely that all faculty have the same brands and models of equipment, because equipment normally is purchased in different years from different vendors and often from different departmental budgets with different specifications. Thus, lack of uniform configuration or equipment can be a learning barrier for the novice. However, if the tutoring takes place on the faculty office equipment, none of the configuration irregularities or platform differences will present a problem.

The timing of the instruction is extremely important. The closer the instruction is to the time it actually will be used, the more effective the learning experience will be. In addition, with this tutoring program, the learning will take place with a real project. The learner might be operating under a schedule to accomplish the task within a particular time frame. Strong motivation prompted by time restraints and actual projects will increase the probability that the procedures will be learned and that the experience will be a success.

Privacy of the instructional session is important for many faculty, but not for all. In the privacy of an office, with only the AIS staff member observing and coaching, the learner is free to make mistakes that nobody else will see. Additionally, it is convenient for the learners to ask basic questions of the tutor and expose their ignorance in ways that many might not be willing to do in a group instructional session.

There is little doubt that faculty who adopt new technologies and use them well can gain in status. Self confidence frequently is buoyed, and the technologically adept faculty are sought out to provide help and advice to colleagues.

Benefits to the AIS staff

In addition to the benefits accruing to faculty, the program has advantages for the college support team. At the very least, this service exhibits unquestionable proof that the AIS staff are committed to technical training that is relevant and individualized.

A major benefit for AIS staff is that the program provides a structure for delivering services that must be offered anyway. This program returns control of work priorities to AIS staff, as tutoring sessions can be scheduled at mutually beneficial times. The staff need not feel they must lay projects aside and immediately attend to a request for help, nor feel guilty if they can not handle a situation immediately. Because a tutoring time can be scheduled, the AIS staff can continue with their projects, and the faculty member will know when help will be available. In large measure, the crisis-management approach, so common in many computing operations, can be reduced.

These tutoring sessions allow AIS staff a chance to work more closely with individual faculty on their projects. AIS staff learn first-hand the faculty members’ needs, as well as their technological strengths and weaknesses. When AIS staff know these things, they are able to identify and recommend hardware and software that might benefit the faculty member.

Sessions in the individual offices give AIS staff a better sense of what kinds of hardware and software are in use by individuals throughout campus. Other useful bits of information include condition of the equipment being used, and whether there is a mismatch between resources that are in the office and a faculty member’s computing needs, skills, and technological aspirations. If there is a mismatch, more appropriate equipment can be installed. Or at least, recommendations for upgrades can be made to the appropriate individuals or offices on campus.

Another benefit is the realization that not all machines are configured in consistent ways, or in ways that best serve the user. Undoubtedly, there will be little uniformity of machine set-ups--or uniformity of equipment, for that matter--among the faculty. This in itself is a major reason why instruction in groups using lab equipment is less successful than it could be. Tutoring sessions provide AIS staff with insight into more general problems faced by the faculty as a whole. If only a simple fix is required (restoration of an icon, for example), this might be done during the tutoring session. If the reconfiguration requires more time, another appointment can be made to correct the difficulty. During the tutoring session, the faculty member’s level of technical competence will become more obvious. This will be detected merely by watching the faculty member work, and through conversation about the project under way. Awareness of general faculty technical readiness is very useful for planning other workshops and for planning campuswide technology upgrades.

In addition to their own technology needs, faculty expectations of their students may become obvious as the tutor and faculty member work together on the project. This knowledge provides insights into student needs and affects the way we configure resources in student computer labs, the workshops we give to students and faculty, and the training given to our lab assistants.

Conclusions

Our experience so far suggests that our earliest fears regarding our ability to meet the demands were unfounded. We have had a number of requests for service, but as it happens, we were not inundated. Indeed, we have found that tutoring in the offices has not created as great a drain on our staff resources as we originally feared it would. Perhaps that is because the tutoring service is not the only service program, nor is it the primary one. Because we also hold workshops and special events, and most importantly, maintain a help desk, the tutoring sessions are easy to incorporate into our workflow. In fact, some tutoring results directly from queries originally directed to the help desk. Because much of the assistance needed by our faculty proved to be manageable over the phone, it was not always necessary to schedule time in their offices.

The major lesson learned so far is that our users, being such a diverse group with different learning styles, need different training options. The tutoring program takes a very personalized approach, and so it is much appreciated. Even better, offered in conjunction with other training, this pedagogical approach provides an alternative for those who do not learn as well in groups with more generalized instruction. Last, but certainly not least, brush fires and individual user crises are handled in a fashion that allows better utilization of staff time, while providing a valued service to our users. Adding tutoring services in the offices to the other training activities, while originally a daunting idea, did turn out to be a wise decision.

Eugene A. Engeldinger (eng@carthage.edu) is vice president for Academic Information Services at Carthage College. Michael J. Love (love@carthage.edu) is media services coordinator at Carthage College.

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