Educational technology support: Issues and barriers at UNSW
Andrew LitchfieldCentre for Professional Development
Macquarie University
Educational technology support: Issues and barriers at UNSWAndrew LitchfieldCentre for Professional Development Macquarie University | |
This paper presents the experience of a pilot Educational Technology Support (ETS) service at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). Drawing on this experience, and an extensive round of interviews with academics and support staff, the paper then analyses the issues and current barriers to the use of educational technology (ET) at UNSW.The pilot ETS service ran from May 1996 to December 1997 and offered support to the planning and evaluation phases of the educational resource development cycle. The paper details the background and the support strategies developed by the ETS service.
The analysis of an extensive round of interviews of academic and support staff at UNSW about the issues and current barriers to the use of ET revealed the following concerns;
Any successful ETS service will need to positively address these concerns. However it is apparent that there is a considerable gap between information-age polemics and the daily reality of university work.
- lack of reliable teaching facilities and equipment
- lack of staff and student access to hardware and software
- lack of funding for teaching innovations, equipment and training
- lack of time
- lack of knowledge and skills
- need for administrative, technical and production support
- need for more recognition and rewards
In responding to the actual demands for support the ETS service's first objective was to establish a variety of appropriate support mechanisms and services.
Through the experience of providing assistance and support to UNSW staff, the second objective of the ETS service was to analyse the demand trends and support issues to inform decisions about ongoing ET support for UNSW staff.
The team combined a range of skills and experience crucial to the implementation of the ETS service; from skills in media production and instructional design, project and technical management, knowledge of teaching and learning principles and technologies, and computer programming and networking.
The range and blend of skills of the four members of the ETS team proved to be crucial to the ability of the service to sustain the range of support strategies that were offered.
| Strategy One Consultation on individual projects | The ETS service expanded the PDC's existing consultancy support. From May 1996 to March 1997 75 specific requests for support were received. These inquiries ranged from individuals with relatively simple questions, to requests for the entire design and development of flexibly delivered Masters Programs. Responses to these requests ranged from straightforward phone and e-mail communication to a series of meetings. One inquiry led to regular weekly meetings over a period of six months.
We provided what is best described as 'just-in-time' and 'on-demand' support. It was noted by a number of clients that the ETS service was very useful for testing out ideas - "a sounding board" - and for providing valuable information that removed barriers to the progress of their projects. Our aim was to offer realistic and pragmatic advice on project and technical management needs and requirements. Our advice often involved discussing issues of educational design and selecting the appropriate media for specific teaching contexts and for specific learning objectives. When relevant we ensured the client was made aware of the necessity for ongoing technical support to be available for the success of a specific project or initiative. We frequently suggested to our clients that there were advantages to adopting a learner-centred approach to their specific resource design. We suggested they consider the implications of student numbers, access to equipment, and prerequisite knowledge and skills. For the 75 inquiries received from May 1996 to March 1997:
An overwhelming majority of inquiries involved the development and use of digital media, that is, media produced and distributed via desktop computers. The interest in digital media included:
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| Strategy Two A referral service |
As the ETS project had no personnel or equipment to provide production services, we referred clients to other relevant UNSW production and development services. For a few cases we referred clients to potentially relevant services or consultants outside UNSW.
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| Strategy Three Development of the ETS website | In offering advice to staff we became aware of the need to demonstrate examples of World Wide Web (WWW) based teaching and learning resources. The WWW also makes accessible relevant support information on a range of ET topics. There was an obvious need to collect these WWW demonstrations and information into an easily accessible form.
To meet this need we developed the ETS website which is located on the PDC's Webserver. The ETS site's address is at: http://www.pdc.unsw.edu.au/interests/ets/ets.html The ETS website provides links to web-based demonstrations of educational resources and links to other support information about flexible delivery, interactivity and instructional design. The ETS website also contains information of specific relevance to UNSW staff. This information includes; a database of ET projects and participating staff at UNSW, contact details of potential UNSW sources of ET support and services, and information about email and email lists at UNSW.
The ETS website proved a most useful resource allowing us to direct staff to easily access relevant demonstrations and information about web-based resources and flexible delivery of teaching and learning. By March 1997 the ETS website and associated pages had registered a total of 7169 hits/visits. The ETS homepage had 1086 direct hits.
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| Strategy Four Presentation of workshops | The ETS service developed and presented a number of workshops that have been incorporated into the PDC's calendar of activities. Workshop topics included:
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| The various workshops developed and presented by the ETS service with assistance from other PDC staff have been considered valuable additions to the PDC's calendar of activities.
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| Strategy Five Presentations to Faculties, Schools and Units | The ETS service was asked to present focused presentations to staff of Schools and Departments. These presentations were usually initiated by the Head of School or Unit with the aim of increasing staff awareness of contemporary IT and ET issues and developments. The presentations were about the issues of using IT strategically, ET in teaching practice, and the required resources and some approaches to ET courseware development. In preparing the talks we were able to focus on the particular context and needs of the individual School or Department.
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| Strategy Six Convening user groups | Before the ETS service commenced, the PDC had established user groups focused on particular support needs of UNSW academic and general staff. The ETS service became responsible for convening and coordinating the user group meetings and activities.
The purpose of the user groups is to raise awareness and develop a self-help network for group members with a particular interest or need in a specific area. Members generally attend a one or two hour monthly meeting to solve minor problems, to focus on an aspect of interest to the group, ask or answer questions arising since the last session and to plan future topics and activities. Members are asked to bring any pressing problems and any favourite tips. These user groups enable the members to take an active role in seeking support and/or providing support in the various focus areas. The user groups supported by the PDC and ETS are: World Wide Web User Group | |
The uses of IT to facilitate teacher/student communication or interaction between students are again relatively uncommon at UNSW. Student access to email is only a recent development and students' ability to get to a computer linked to the Campus Wide Network is still a problem for many.
Overall there is little use of educational IT to change teaching practice, particularly at undergraduate level. Why is this so?
They criticised the lack of support staff to trouble-shoot or assist when things go wrong and they criticised the lack of maintenance. Many stories were told of disastrous failures of the technology; students travel for long distances to attend a videoconference and the system fails, email is down at the time students are supposed to submit work, etc.
In early 1997 students were given email access but computer labs are over-crowded and are often required for conducting classes so individuals' access to equipment is limited. Security is a difficult issue and also limits access for students to times when labs are staffed. The computer labs need to be more sympathetic and better designed to facilitate group work with better ergonomics and work environment.
Staff wanting to increase their use of educational technologies have few 'off-the-shelf' tools from which to choose when designing their programs. This means that many projects start with an effective clean slate that places a major demand on time and resources. It is important that a range of teaching tools that staff can use as building blocks to support teaching are made available to the university community.
Most budgets are not adequate for cyclical replacement of equipment and the establishment of new facilities is even more difficult. Training people, both academic and general staff, to use new technologies is rarely funded and only occurs through individual effort. Some commercially produced resources for teaching are extremely expensive and the funds do not exist for their purchase. Software maintenance is a cost problem and there are insufficient funds to provide costly specialised software, eg. CAD-CAM.
Funding models such as University Development Grants and some Faculty programs which allocate grants 'up-front' do not encourage the adoption of effective project management or evaluation strategies, resulting in a waste of resources, and lack of quality. Staged funding, based on business plans to encourage effective project management processes and to emphasise sustainability, integration, ease of use/adoption, adaptability and scope would assist the cause of careful planning. Funding could be released to projects on the completion of identified milestones.
Those who are not enthusiast's report that they have no time even to discover possibilities much less to develop the skills necessary to implement change. They speak of conflicting priorities, including research - citing increasing demands for performance to feed the research quantum, teaching - citing increased student numbers and decreased staffing, administration - citing decreases in support staff which increase academic workloads, and being entrepreneurial - citing pressure to bring in new money from any possible source.
Many staff lack basic skills needed to innovate in the use of ET, and perhaps more critically, lack an awareness of what the technologies can do, and are doing, for teaching in their disciplines here and elsewhere. We suggest that the skill base of staff needs to be raised. A range of core skills should be identified and programs to facilitate their acquisition put in place.
Many staff were unaware of the range of services and facilities which could assist their projects, or of the existence of others working in similar areas. Greater use of email and better and more interactive on-line information services would make access to information about services etc. more readily available. The formation and operation of staff networks, using email and the Web as communication media, could enhance collaboration and information sharing among staff and feedback to service units.
Existing policies on enrolment, curriculum, instructional design, information and computer literacy, assessment and access to courses rarely mention or allow for the issues raised by flexible and distance delivery. Flexible delivery needs to be well integrated into the curriculum if it is to be successful and this integration should be supported by appropriate policies and quality assurance mechanisms.
Consequently, some feel it is not worthwhile to learn new teaching techniques. Staff believes teaching is not valued as highly as research and that promotion cases based on teaching are not likely to succeed.
However from a broader organisational perspective the qualitative data collected by interview of UNSW staff highlight the many issues and barriers to the realisation of the potential of ET to provide relevant and indeed improved teaching and learning experiences. Any successful ETS service will need to positively address these issues and barriers.
There is a considerable gap between information-age polemics and the daily reality of university work. The very real barriers to change and the lack of organisational support for change is startling. The obvious implication of these findings is that considerable and well-resourced organisational efforts and staff development strategies are required to support the increased use and the effectiveness of educational technologies.
The dilemma to be discussed at EdTech'98 is, given these barriers to change, how to best provide educational technology support in higher education organisations.
Professional Development Centre UNSW Staff (1997). UNSW 2000 and Educational Technology 1997. An internal report to the Working Party on Educational Technology. http://www.pdc.unsw.edu.au/special/eti/
| Author: Andrew Litchfield Lecturer Technology in Learning and Teaching Centre for Professional Development Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia Email: andrew.litchfield@mq.edu.au or: alitchfi@ocs1.ocs.mq.edu.au Please cite as: Litchfield, A. (1998). Educational technology support: Issues and barriers at UNSW. In C. McBeath and R. Atkinson (Eds), Planning for Progress, Partnership and Profit. Proceedings EdTech'98. Perth: Australian Society for Educational Technology. http://www.aset.org.au/confs/edtech98/pubs/articles/litchfield2.html |