Abstract

Mount Allison University is a small (2250 enrollment) primarily undergraduate university located in Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada. Mount Allison's reputation is based on excellence in teaching and learning as well as development of the whole student. Our reputation has also been helped by ten years of top rankings in Maclean's Magazine and by producing an impressive number of Rhodes Scholars per capita versus other institutions in The Commonwealth.

At Mount Allison, we have seen mixed results in the adoption of technology in teaching, and in institutional attitudes on its use. Some faculty members and teaching staff have done high-level work in implementing technology-based courses while others have been recalcitrant. There has been, in particular, a markedly slow adoption in the use of WebCT, a leading higher education course management system (CMS), at our school despite a strong support network in technology, infrastructure, and faculty development staff.

This report will address the challenges we face in promoting WebCT adoption at our institution. Our institutional progress in instructional technology will be charted against a timeline, measurement data will be provided where applicable and our plans for the future will be detailed. We will also include industry data that we have used to help form our direction on initiatives to support teaching and learning with technology at a small liberal arts institution.

This report will be of interest to institutions that are planning either new CMS implementations or expansions of existing programmes. The report will be of particular interest to attendees sharing these goals from small liberal arts institutions facing their endemic resource and political issues.

ìProgress requires order where there is change and change

where there is orderî - Alfred North Whitehead

Introduction

Mount Allison University has built its reputation on excellence in undergraduate teaching and learning, and our faculty members have won coveted awards for this (e.g., Association of Atlantic Universities (AAU) Distinguished Teacher Award, 3M Teaching Award). Despite institutional momentum in teaching excellence, our adoption of institutional instructional technology solutions to aid teaching has been slow, specifically in the use of WebCT, a leading higher education course management system (CMS). This has resulted in positive, but mainly localized progress in instructional technology adoption, or ìrandom acts of progressî (Graves 1998), on our campus versus the more desirable ìsystemic progressî (ibid.).

This report provides a timeline of our institutional progress in instructional technology adoption at our institution from the standpoint of promoting WebCT use on campus. This effort will be further examined from the standpoint of how a single department can take leadership roles in instructional technology adoption with a focus on implementing or expanding a course management system (CMS) use on campus.

Random Acts of Progress ñ A Brief History

Despite the fact that progress in instructional technology has been made at our institution, these efforts have been only loosely connected from an institutional standpoint. Instructional technology initiatives are often launched by our Computing Services Department. Many of these efforts are handled by a single full time employee, the ìEducational Technology Consultantî, a generalist who works with faculty and teaching staff on the use of technology in their teaching, providing training sessions on web authoring and WebCT use, and performing application and system administration tasks for our WebCT server.

Other progress in instructional technology at Mount Allison has been:

…         The introduction and standardization of WebCT as a CMS.

…         The establishment of a multimedia lab with bookable workstations for faculty and students.

…         Continued training opportunities for faculty and staff in web authoring and WebCT.

…         The increase in number of basic mediated classrooms (e.g., networked PCs, data projectors, VCRs).

…         The establishment of The Purdy Crawford Teaching Centre, a teaching and learning with technology (TLT) centre.

Each of these items has been positive for instructional technology adoption on campus yet they have not necessarily worked together in strategic ways to promote instructional technology adoption. Institutional progress has, therefore, been somewhat ìrandomî as summarized by the following timeline figure and table:

Year	Instructional Technology Milestones
1996	Educational Technology Consultant Position Created …         Computing Services Department creates a position to handle increasing faculty requests for assistance in instructional technology support. Centre for Learning Technologies (CLT) Established …         A joint university/industry centre with a complement of nine staff members established in order to handle internal and external projects involving learning technologies.
1997	Campus Multimedia Lab Established …         Bookable multimedia workstations made available for faculty and staff.
1998	WebCT Demonstration Version Available …         Demonstration instance of WebCT made available for evaluation by faculty and teaching staff.
1999	WebCT 3.5 Standard Edition Brought Online …         Installed and hosted locally on campus. Basic training sessions offered on its use held for faculty and staff. TLT Centre Established …         The Purdy Crawford Teaching Centre, a teaching and learning with technology (TLT) centre, is established.
2000	Expansion of Mediated Classrooms …         Number of basic mediated classrooms (e.g., networked PCs, data projector, VCR) increases significantly.
2001	Centre for Learning Technologies Closes …         Centre closes, as it is unable to self-sustain financially. Faculty-Student Collaborative Project Funding …         TLT begins funding of faculty-student collaborative projects employing various instructional technologies.
2002-2003	The WebCT ìDead Zoneî …         Server upgrades low priority and not performed, version remains at 3.6 Standard Edition. …         Little new activity in WebCT. Number of courses with a WebCT component is low and not increasing, despite continued availability of training opportunities.
2003	WebCT 4.1 Campus Edition Implemented Decision made to upgrade WebCT to version 4.1 Campus Edition and to continue licensing for three years. WebCT 4.1 rolled out with full upgrade, migration and communications plan. Training session on new features in WebCT 4.1 offered at 2003 Fall semester teaching workshops.

Our road to institutional progress in instructional technology will be a long one, and will necessarily involve constituents and groups outside of our department including senior administration. However, taking leadership in certain IT initiatives can lay the groundwork for institutional change, as observed by John McCreadie in a recent EDUCAUSE article. McCreadie indicates that departments should move ahead on certain strategic endeavours ìeven if your parent organization has no strategic plan or processî for the endeavour (McCreadie 2000) with the strong caveat that the other groups ìneed to be included and involved in a planning process for information technology that supports the essential values of the parent organizationî (ibid.). We followed this advice closely when deciding to improve our WebCT support programme as one aspect of approaching institutional instructional technology adoption.

Problem Analysis ñ ìThe WebCT Dead Zoneî

Even though WebCT use is only one aspect of our instructional technology strategy at Mount Allison, evidence of a plateau in its adoption rate provided a data point for a potential lull in the growth of technology-enhanced teaching on our campus.

We began to analyze our institution's results in instructional technology adoption by considering the experiences of other schools of our type in North America. We found a close match with Hollins University, a small liberal arts school in Roanoke, VA. Their faculty development professional reported that the main obstacles they were facing in technology adoption by their faculty were ì'lack of a clear vision', 'lack of leadership', 'lack of a critical mass', 'lack of incentive', and 'lack of faculty participation'î (Spodark 2003) exactly paralleling our current situation with WebCT. We realize that there are limitations to what one department can do to mitigate these problems, but we have aimed to solve some of these within our reach and influence those who can help us with any remaining barriers, specifically senior administrators.

Additionally, a recent study from the EDUCAUSE Centre for Applied Research (ECAR) on why faculty tend to use or not use a CMS was considered. The study found that the top motivators for faculty adopting CMS use were to ìsolve a pedagogical problem or challengeî, ìtraining from a campus technology centreî and ìrecommendations from peersî (Morgan 2003). The least motivating factors were ìdepartmental or administrative pressure/persuasionî and ìrequests from studentsî (ibid.). All survey respondents indicated ìtheir use of course management systems would grow if the software were easier to use and if training ñ for themselves and their students ñ were made availableî (ibid.). This set of findings, along with another EDUCAUSE report indicating that ìfaculty provided with instructional technologies use them extensivelyî (Wilson 2003), served to reinforce our belief that we should continue frequent training sessions and attempt to establish a greater critical mass for WebCT use.

Escaping ìThe Dead Zoneî

During 2003, we have made renewed efforts to spark the use of technology in teaching by bolstering our support for WebCT. Our effort can be summarized as follows:

Implement Newest Version of WebCT (WebCT 4.1 Campus Edition)

Faculty dissatisfaction was noted during the use of the WebCT 3.6 Standard Edition product. For example, our Computer Science faculty refused to use the product as WebCT 3.6 would not support filenames that contained spaces or that were so-called ìlong filenamesî. Many faculty members complained about the ìunnecessarily complicated interfaceî, with the common (and quite justifiable) complaint: ìWhy does it take 8 clicks to get my syllabus online?î

The WebCT 4.1 Campus Edition product was chosen as it resolved these issues and provided new elements of support that are strategic to our campus from an IT perspective (for example, out-of-the-box integration with our LDAP authentication system, future integration possibilities with our Datatel student information system (SIS)). The product has also been subjected to a rigorous user interface (UI) redesign, providing better functionality to both the experienced and novice user. Authoring ìwizardsî have been added to help new users with common WebCT tasks and an embedded HTML editor allows faster content updates directly on the server.

In addition, we hoped to attract more users from our pure science departments with the functionality of the embedded WebCT equation editor available for designers and students. The equation editor also allows equations to be exported in a MathML format for use in other scientific applications.

Adopt New Approaches to Faculty Development

In higher education technology management, the support of instructional technology for faculty and teaching staff is generally referred to as ìfaculty developmentî. Faculty development re: technology is a difficult service to offer via a computing services department as it is not, by definition, a historical competency of such a department. Yet this is where the responsibly often lies in higher education and it is one of increasing concern to IT Directors and CIOs.

The issue of faculty development from an IT perspective is a growth issue in higher education as evidenced by the ìFourth Annual EDUCAUSE Surveyî identifying current IT issues (Crawford et. al. 2003). Their survey found that faculty development from an IT perspective in 2003 has grown since 2002 in its ìpotential to become more significantî and from a CMS support point of view of ìexpenditure of most institutional resourcesî (most likely due to increases in licensing fees from WebCT and Blackboard). Also, relating to CMS support, the Campus Computing Project led by Kenneth Green has reported that ìinstitutions increasingly identify CMSes as 'very important' in their institutional IT planningî, ìapproximately 75% of institutions have established a 'single product' standard for CMSesî and ìapproximately one-fifth of all college courses now use course management tools.î The same survey reports that ìassisting faculty integrate technology into instructionî is the ìsingle most important IT issue confronting their campuses.î (The Campus Computing Project, 2001).

We have adopted new approaches to faculty development based on the following tenets:

Attempt to Win One Faculty Member at a Time

At a school of our size, we will approach faculty development in a one-on-one or small cohort training scenario (cohorts of six or less for technology sessions). We have approximately 140 full and part-time teachers, and we believe that this is a reasonable goal given the current critical mass of instructional technology use.

Syllabus-based Approach to Introducing WebCT

Past WebCT training sessions covered too many topics for one session. By focusing on small representative WebCT tasks (for example, using the ìsyllabus toolî) we can give faculty members a positive starting point with a useful functional element for students from which to build from.

Develop WebCT Courses as Technology-Enhanced, not Standalone, Materials

It is important that we encourage WebCT use as a complement, rather than a replacement, to classroom-based teaching in order to fit our institutional culture and protect our reputation in teaching and learning.

ìFill Potholesî Before ìBuilding Skyscrapersî

Some training sessions in WebCT use have demonstrated exemplary WebCT courses developed by faculty members. While motivating to some session attendees, this approach can be intimidating to newer users of the system or those with less background in computer use. Our approach will be to cast the net wider to focus on increasing a minimum standard (ìroad repairî) while creating exemplary courses (ìskyscrapersî) where possible.

Improve Training Materials, Training Approach, and Supporting Materials

Past training sessions attempted to cover too many aspects of the WebCT system. Also, training materials were not made available to attendees as documents, either in electronic or print formats.

We created new materials and changed our approach to focus on representative WebCT tasks (e.g. develop a WebCT syllabus) to address these problems. We have also developed these materials in such a way as to allow users to accomplish self-directed learning, a commonly employed adult learning style.

Reduce Length of Training Sessions

Training sessions in the past were half-day sessions. Individual feedback indicated that this is too long, especially at critical junctures in the semester (start-of-term, end-of-term). We have reduced sessions to no more than 1.5h in length and consider the possibility of lunch-and-learn sessions.

Provide Excellence in Campus-based WebCT Support

We have taken the issue of WebCT support very seriously, minimizing procedural problems in WebCT for course and enrollment management. We have set a goal of 24h to solve ANY WebCT issue that may be presented to our helpdesk and we have generally resolved WebCT issues during business hours in less than 2h and outside of business hours in less than 8h based on anecdotal evidence.

Measurement

It is our belief that our efforts in instructional technology support cannot be assessed without some degree of measurement. We have either implemented or plan to implement the measurement of the following basic aspects of our instructional technology support at Mount Allison.

Prevalence of WebCT Use

We will measure departmental adoption of WebCT and approach those departments that are underrepresented on the server. We have already seen very encouraging results from our 2003 initiatives, as the number of WebCT courses being used has increased 75% from the same point last year.

Training Session Efficacy

We have started soliciting a basic feedback from session attendees in order to help us tailor our approaches and training offerings to faculty.

Needs Analysis ñ Faculty Development

We have been rolling out technical and training initiatives in instructional technology without formally asking faculty and teaching staff what it is that they would find most useful. We will attempt to perform this assessment with the assistance of our campus TLT centre.

Issue Resolution Times and Efficacy

In future, as we develop more robust systems for tracking helpdesk issues (ìticketsî), we will measure average times to resolution of WebCT issues and ensure that issues that are reported as being resolved ìstay resolvedî.

Future Plans

We intend to stay our present course with the following additions:

Continued Measurement

We will need to continue our measurement of our WebCT deployment in order to proactively ensure continued financial support for the CMS and its related initiatives.

Approach Incoming Faculty and Teaching Staff

With incoming faculty and teaching staff comes a new opportunity to become involved with their new faculty orientation. We have added information to the ìfaculty handbookî on our support services re: instructional technology and intend to target new staff in such a way that they will wish to come to use our support services in instructional technology.

Blended Training Sessions

We currently offer separate training sessions on WebCT and Dreamweaver and they are conducted by separate individuals. This creates the problem where a faculty member could learn how to ìcreate great web contentî as well as ìhow to use WebCTî but not necessarily ìhow to create great web content and then put it in WebCTî. We hope to offer blended training sessions to encourage a systems approach to web content creation and publishing to our CMS.

Develop and Distribute Service-Level Agreement (SLA) for CMS Support

It is unclear to faculty, staff, and students how we support WebCT and what the turnaround times are for representative tasks (e.g. course shell creation, account creation). Since our turnaround times are excellent, it is wise for us to advertise this through a basic service-level agreement (SLA).

Faculty Incentives

There are currently no clearly defined incentives for tenure-track faculty to engage in use of or development of technology-enhanced learning materials. As a result, busy faculty members could be unwilling to sacrifice tenure-track activity (e.g. research, publications) to work on technology integration in their teaching. We are working with our administration to modify this.

Conclusion

As higher education technology professionals in small institutions, we are often placed in positions of effecting institutional change in environments of complicated politics and financial pressures. Although occasionally frustrating, it is perhaps better to view this as a positive aspect of life within the small institution as, given the right circumstances, we may be able to more readily effect institutional change than in larger institutions. By looking beyond our assigned roles, we can occasionally provide the leadership required to ensure that key initiatives happen, and one such example is the area of faculty development and instructional technology adoption.

Faculty development provides an interesting and novel challenge to the technology professional. This is because the requirements for success do not necessarily match our primary strengths that may have originally pushed us into the technical domain. The largest issues governing success or failure are cultural in nature. In a competition between ìtechnical specificationsî versus ìfaculty cultureî, the ìfaculty cultureî will always win in the small institution. Victories realized in faculty development are often small ones. However, the ìchip-awayî strategy of faculty development can be effective if it aligns with your institution's strategic plan and timeline.

We were able to realize significant progress in WebCT adoption in a relatively short time by analyzing our problem against industry data and focusing our limited resources to achieve the goal. We will have to think strategically in order to make institutional progress happen with limited influence in the institution. We will need further buy-in from senior administration and other groups. To obtain this, we will have to better understand what motivates these individuals and groups, and our plan must relate directly to our institutions' goals and challenges. Our message must be consistently clear and devoid of ìtechno-speakî. The selected use of industry data and institutional data may be helpful in this regard, and measurement may just provide the momentum we need to be successful.

References

The Campus Computing Project. 2001, October, ìThe 2001 National Survey of Information Technology in U.S. Higher Education: eCommerce Comes Slowly to the Campusî Online:http://www.campuscomputing.net/summaries/2001/

Crawford, G., Rudy, J.A., EDUCAUSE Current Issues Committee 2003, ìFourth Annual EDUCAUSE Survey Identifies Current IT Issuesî EDUCAUSE Quarterly, Volume 26, Number 2. Online: http://www.educause.edu/pub/eq/eqm03/eqm032.asp

Graves, W. 1998, ìOn the Emerging Knowledge Economyî Educom Review, Volume 33, Number 6. Online: http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/html/erm9867.html

McCredie, J.W. 2000, ìPlanning for IT in Higher Education: It's Not an Oxymoronî EDUCAUSE Quarterly, Volume 23, Number 4. Online: http://www.educause.edu/pub/eq/eqm00/eqm004.html

Morgan, G. 2003, ìFaculty Use of Course Management Systemsî, EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR), May 2003, Online: http://www.educause.edu/ecar/

Spodark, E. 2003, ìTechnological Horizons in Education Journal Online, Five Obstacles to Technology Integration at a Small Liberal Arts Universityî T.H.E. (Technological Horizons in Education) Journal. Online: http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/articleprintversion.cfm?aid=4344

Wilson, W. 2003, ìFaculty Perceptions and Uses of Instructional Technologyî EDUCAUSE Quarterly, Volume 26, Number 2. Online: http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eqm0329.pdf