Faculty development is an important component of building and maintaining human capital, which in turn is part of the total capital assets of the university. Much like the supporting physical and technology infrastructures, intellectual capital should be planned and managed around broad institutional goals for the future.
Perhaps the place to begin thinking about a human infrastructure that is technologically adept is to consider the characteristics of and functions performed by traditional forms of physical infrastructures (buildings, roads, dams, railroads, telecommunications networks). One obvious thing about physical infrastructures is that they represent long-term investments for an organization or society. They lend a sense of permanence and stability to their intended purpose. Planning and funding for them also stretch over many years. Similarly, faculty development programs focused on technology should seek to become both part of the fabric of the institution and agents for transforming it. Such programs deserve careful planning, an institutionalized base, and long-term sources of support. They should be treated as "big projects," not one-time or sporadic events.
A second characteristic of physical infrastructures is the organizing function they perform for daily life. Campus buildings house the various disciplines and social and administrative activities of the institution. Highways and railroads help structure land use patterns for a region. Although such things may be "noticed" when new, over time they become part of daily routine. In a similar vein, faculty development should become as much a part of a faculty member's work as teaching and research, taken for granted rather than viewed as a special activity.
The sheer scale and volume of most forms of physical infrastructure are another defining feature. Highways are of little use if they are not able to handle massive amounts of traffic. Dams regulate huge water resources, and telecommunications networks are graded by the speed and volume of bits they transport. Too often, faculty development programs target only a few faculty: the interested early adopters, the senior members, the technically skilled, or some other subset. By contrast, a genuine infrastructure of human capital finds ways to accommodate large numbers of faculty over long periods of time (the multiplier effect), regardless of their age, interests, discipline or talents.
Many forms of physical infrastructures involve movement of people or materials from one place to another, resulting in dramatic decreases in the constraints of both space and time. Faculty development assumes change, movement and a value-added experience, whether in attitudes or skills. The important point is that neither space nor time should be permitted to interfere with the process; convenient and on-demand assistance must be hallmarks of any program of professional development.
Finally, infrastructure provides a means for managing critical resources, such as land, water or electricity. Human capital is the most important resource of any university. Accordingly, faculty development initiatives regarding technology should be treated as central components of the broader institutional plan. As such, they automatically become part of the overall institutional mission and vision, as well as strategic agents for organizational change and transformation.
Building a baseline
The foundation of the pyramid model on page 35 shows the various dimensions of a university infrastructure, including baseline network, hardware and software access, and user training and support. The notion of baseline usually refers to a minimum set of conditions or structural requirements necessary to perform critical functions or deliver services at a given level. But, unlike many physical baseline measures, a baseline technology infrastructure is an evolving or moving target, given the pace of current technological change.
Like most forms of physical infrastructure for a campus, the baseline level of human infrastructure supports the overall goal of student learning. The physical, technological and human infrastructures must be integrated and planned together. For example, it is not possible to provide training for anticipated technology. Seldom are faculty persuaded that they should learn about technology because someday they might need it. The ultimate goal is to make faculty themselves self-sufficient, just-in-time, life-long learners. Moreover, just as technology infrastructure is based on expected usage demands, the human infrastructure must be designed for integration with the strategic, curricular and growth issues facing the university.
Some of the criteria that might be used to establish and measure a baseline faculty development program for technology include: scaleability, functionality, sustainability, integration of existing resources, information competence, and access.
Faculty development models assume many forms, but the most useful ones can be easily applied in a variety of academic environments across a wide range of disciplines and faculty needs; scope and size equal scaleability. A related criterion, replicability, requires that others be able to reproduce the training without huge new investments; a model cannot be unique, or without value for others.
Sustainability requires that planning for faculty development programs deals effectively with the dynamic nature of both hardware and software changes; life cycle funding and early institutionalization are needed to prevent obsolescence. The integration of existing resources with the development of future ones requires a well-conceived academic plan to guide the life cycle development of hardware and software. Such integration should lead to a concomitant recognition of the life cycle needs attending faculty development.
Effective faculty development programs are not standalone, institutional efforts. Their intent and consequences serve a much broader academic and intellectual function - namely, information competency. That skill can be defined as the ability to access, retrieve, manipulate, relate, understand and evaluate information in a variety of formats from a variety of sources. Diffusion of that skill must be the underlying goal of such programs for the institution, the individual faculty member, and ultimately the students.
Finally, the development of a human infrastructure demands that faculty have access to hardware, software and network resources, and to the support and assistance needed to foster professional advancement. That access must be convenient, ubiquitous and affordable.
Strategic principles
It is not possible to arbitrarily define one baseline human infrastructure for all higher education institutions. However, guiding principles for the design and implementation of faculty development programs are needed. A recent meeting of Educom's National Learning Infrastructure Initiative targeted the value of faculty development in one of its discussion sessions. The following principles are, in part, an outgrowth of that session.
Two fundamental questions are: What are the long-term, strategic goals underlying a faculty training and support infrastructure, and what are the most effective means for reaching those goals? The following points address these issues.
1. Faculty development must be integrally related to the institutional mission. Faculty development for its own sake, i.e., on demand, is a luxury; the driver should be institutional academic goals and pedagogical improvements for student learning. Objectives underlying this principle might include a) focused innovation to promote greater student access, or b) increased efficiency and quality of interaction of faculty and students in large, core courses, leading to higher productivity by both.
2. Strategic faculty development initiatives should be based on empirical data linking technology to student learning outcomes. To achieve this goal, such programs should include an easily accessible method for identifying previous work on campus, or across a system, to leverage past successes. A user-friendly data base can serve as one tool to support this knowledge resource.
3. Strong faculty development strategies employ a collaborative model that draws on multiple segments of the campus and wider higher education community. As demonstrated by the efforts of the California State University system, faculty development programs using the "train-the-trainers" approach can provide a valuable multiplier effect. Recognition of needs of disparate groups of faculty is extremely important.
4. As technology transforms the teacher-learner relationship, faculty development programs must be seen as part of the infrastructure needed to serve students of the future as well as those presently enrolled. Underlying this idea is the assumption that future students will seek access at their time and location of choice. Attention must be paid to the needs of diverse student groups.
5. Assessment of success must be both measurable and ongoing with stated objectives such as: increases in the amount, speed and quality of learning outcomes; percent of faculty involvement; number of new students reached; increases in student-faculty interaction; and increases in student and faculty productivity. Such outcomes should be identified as the baseline plans are made and linked to formal evaluations. Plans should be revised as conditions change. Assessment is continual and integrated with other goals and activities on campus.
The bottom line
To be effective, a human infrastructure should be part of the total baseline institutional infrastructure. Just as technology is transforming the character of the physical infrastructure used to deliver instruction, so too the human infrastructure is inevitably altered. The student market is no longer the same, sources of information and means for accessing them are new, and the overall teaching-learning paradigm is different. Consequently, faculty development initiatives must be strategically planned and integrated with all other institutional initiatives. A strong human infrastructure is fundamental to the success of the technology-driven transformation of higher education.
Stephen L. Daigle is senior research associate in the Division of Information Resources and Technology of the California State University Chancellor's Office. steved@calstate.edu. Carolyn G. Jarmon is a 1996-97 Educom Fellow, on leave from SUNY Empire State College where she is the director of graduate studies. jarmon@educom.edu