I finally got to reading this about K-12 teachers and it seems that many of the points are relevant to higher ed instructors as well. From Doug’s original post:
1. Not backing up data.
5. Believing that one’s teaching style need not change to take full advantage of technology.
6. Ignoring the intrinsic interest of tech use in today’s kids.
7. Thinking technology will go away in schools.
For the higher ed instructor, I keep the same order but offer slightly different pointers as to why this is not the way to go.
On Backup – I can only hope that those instructors who are profs backup their research data, so why not their teaching data? And even at that, why is it backed up only in one place. Just about every institution out there has some manner of campus/department wide LMS (Moodle/WebCT/D2L), why not use this system to handle all your teaching data? This way, the support system that is responsible for that LMS will back up your data in some location that is not your lab/office. This way a fire or a spilled beverage that hits your main computer won’t take everything out. This is even more important for those sessional instructors who are not worth of space and drift like ghosts or nomands through the halls of the departments with all their data on their laptop.
On the rest of the list – Yes, higher ed changes slowly and the larger the campus the slower it is to make any changes. Profs tend to change even slower than the institution. But the kicker is that it no longer matters where a University is and if instructors don’t “plug-in” at least to some minimal amount, enrollment will drop and students will move their tuition to another location. It is no longer the case that the U of XYZ is the only game in town so the kids can take it or leave it. So unless you are teaching the keystone course in the top school of its kind on the planet, there is a chance that a student might be able to find the same course or even degree elsewhere. Even in those programs like Medicine, where students enroll in cohorts, students who have the opportunity to choose institutions will choose based on how classes are taught as well as other personal factors.
Thoughts?
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