PLAN FOR CTEL WEBSITE REORGANIZATION:

A BLUEPRINT FOR ACTION

Submitted to Mike Kelly

CTEL Director

22 December 2000

By

Casey Machula, PhD

Support Systems Analyst

Northern Arizona University

THE PROPOSAL

The Center for Technology Enhanced Learning (CTEL), which has recently assumed responsibility for services previously provided by the Office for Teaching and Learning Effectiveness (OTLE), would like to create a centralized location for all Web-based courses (previously developed under the auspices of OTLE) within CTEL’s /home directory (/home/d-ctel), and move all such courses from their current locations in individual faculty members’ /home directories, to the new site. This will serve as CTEL’s “production” site. The other half of the proposal, which is the biggest part, is the proposed establishment of an internal “development” site here at CTEL, where faculty members, and CTEL workers alike, will create and test course materials. The design of the development site will be based upon the needs of NAU faculty as derived from surveys, CTEL’s newly appointed instructional designer, and the best available empirical research on web-course management systems.

THE OBJECTIVE

The primary purpose of the proposed reorganization is to simplify and more clearly delineate CTEL’s faculty support services, while simultaneously assuring both the timeliness and quality of materials produced.

By creating and hosting a centralized location on jan, where CTEL will post and maintain web-delivered course materials, the production process will become easier to manage. The “production” site will have the administrative advantage of being immediately accessible by all authorized CTEL employees, eliminating the need for CTEL workers to have access to faculty logons and passwords, which is an unnecessary security risk. Further, this centralized location will ensure that the educational materials produced by university employees are easily transferable from one faculty member to the next: the course remains, even if the professor does not. (Since those who developed the courses have received money from the university for their production, these materials are the intellectual property of NAU, and should be treated as such.)

CTEL’s “development” site, on the other hand, will be administered and maintained locally, and will serve as the staging ground for NAU faculty, to whom CTEL will provide assistance in the creation of web-delivered materials. Created as a mirror image of the production site, the “development” site will add a level of redundancy to the creative process of designing pedagogically effective course materials, which is critically important for any venture of a highly technical nature. Most importantly, the development server, configured by a Webmaster as guided by an instructional designer, will ensure that output will flow in alignment with the underlying currents of sound pedagogical principles. If the services on the “development” server are carefully constructed, designing a pedagogically effective course will most likely follow as a matter of course. Thus by enforcing a thorough test of course materials, from startup to final publication on jan, quality and reliability will be assured. This will ease the burden onfaculty members, who can not reasonably be expected to know the intricacies of the technologies involved. (I use the term “technology” in its broadest sense -- as either a set of rules and procedures, or as an artifiact, or both. Computer technologies are intensely both rule/procedure and artifact based.) It will encourage campus-wide faculty presence in at least one of three levels of Internet instruction.[1] It will force faculty to become more reflective and self-aware in terms of their own pedagogical style, and promote a fully conscious choice of one of the five current models of Internet instruction.[2]

PROBLEMS AND TASKS TO BE ENCOUNTERED

  1. The biggest potential problem will most likely be faculty resistance: one might expect a certain number of people to view this transition as a threat to the personal control of their course materials. Some will, incorrectly, view the transference of local directories and files from their /home directory, to a site not under their direct control, as a theft of their intellectual property. Still others, who are accustomed to the current organizational procedures of OTLE, who have a history of warm and cordial relations with OTLE staffers, could view this as an unnecessary change. And since faculty service is CTEL’s raison d’etre, the potential for faculty opposition is the only non-technical issue which could potentially scuttle the project.
  2. The next hurdle will be the actual task of setting up both the production and the development sites. The first of the two is not a big problem: I can transfer an entire course and remove the old one in an hour’s time. Links can be fixed both on individual servers (sapphire, jan, www3, etc) and in ITSPRD’s database without too much trouble. As mentioned in the “OBJECTIVES” section above, however, setting up a local CTEL server for the initial creation of web-course materials should be a very carefully considered task. This will need to be a very thorough collaborative process, requiring the input of faculty members, whose needs and desires must be taken into consideration, together with administrators and CTEL’s new instructional designer.[3] And a likely outcome of this type of collaboration is that CTEL will be asked to offer as many services, as broad a variety, as is practically possible, which, empirically (I base this statement upon the University of Nebraska’s very comprehensive study of web-course management systems), is the most effective of all possible arrangements.
  3. Given a reorganization and expansion of CTEL’s pedagogical services, it will be absolutely necessary to establish well-defined set of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), either hosted on a local CTEL website, or, as with Motorola’s fine-tuned system, with Lotus Notes.[4] The reorganization and future expansion of faculty services requires an administrative framework unlike anything that previously existed at OTLE, which was, by all accounts, very loosely organized, which allowed for dynamic change and responsiveness, and yet was also much too centrally organized around dominating personalities, always a source of potential conflict and infighting. “Organic” systems of this kind are very volatile. They are a serious liability in this line of work; therefore, CTEL must have clearly specified procedures for the training of student workers, the process of assessing the needs of faculty and faculty support, the presentation of workshops and training seminars, the evaluation of new technologies, the evaluation of employees – anything that falls under the penumbra of CTEL’s mission.
  4. If faculty resistance is not an issue, and CTEL is able to articulate the organizational standards and principles upon which it will function, the next hurdle will be that of training faculty in the use of CTEL’s “development” site, which, for all practical purposes, will likely be a continuation of current services (webTools, WebCT, etc).[5] This process needs to be broken down systematized as much as the internal structure of CTEL itself.

STRATEGIES AND SOLUTIONS

1. The best way to deal with faculty resistance is, of course, by removing the reasons for faculty discontent from the outset, before a single course directory is moved; and the best way of doing this is by bringing academics into the process with a sense of ownership. As Professor Ansorge of the University of Nebraska put it, “the more people that are involved, the greater the chances that there will be success.”[6] Nancy Cooley, Dean of Education at Ferris State University, Michigan, noted that institutions with successful and widespread online instruction can attribute their success to the creation of teams, which consist of administrators, technical specialists, and faculty.[7] Kent Hendrickson, Assistant Vice Chancellor of Information Services at the University of Nebraska, echoes this observation most strongly: “Too often, the administrators, the faculty, and the technologists on the campus are three different groups and don’t talk together enough.”[8]

Thus, if CTEL follows the advice of Ansorge and Hendrickson, the implementation of the “development” server should “start with faculty needs.”[9]

While it’s not possible to accurately forecast or anticipate the emerging profile of faculty needs at NAU prior to conducting a formal survey of some type, the experience of others who have gone before us assures us of one thing: faculty acceptance of a new technology (again, we’re talking about two inextricable things: one, the processes and procedures of a new technology -- what Margaret Mead referred to as the “technical rationality” of its development and use—and, two, the artifact or group of artifacts) depends on “how well it supports teacher control, and how conveniently accessible it is to them, as well as how pedagogically flexible it is.”[10] Moreover, it is abundantly clear from the experience of other institutions that, when a new procedure or product is adopted, “it’s very important that it simply is not installed on a server somewhere, but that there is a provision for opportunities for faculty, and there should be lots of different options that are available for faculty. Faculty should be able to learn in groups, perhaps where the faculty are grouped by ability, those that have the greater degree of technical expertise, maybe they can be grouped together, and then another group where there is less technical expertise, they could be grouped together. There should be opportunities for individuals to work one-on-one with someone.”[11]

To be successful in this venture, we must support two potentially conflicting outcomes: one, faculty control of the development process; two, incremental, pedagogically sound training of faculty based on the individual needs and abilities of each particular instructor.[12] Basically, they will want CTEL to give them the tools to do the job themselves, assistance along the way when requested; and then they want us to get the hell out of the way. We can do that. Given the fact that CTEL’s mission is faculty support, that the involvement of professors in the decision-making process with a sense of ownership and control is essential to their satisfaction and productivity, I recommend the following:

  • I suggest that CTEL hold regular forums or colloquia, open to all faculty and staff of Academic Computing, to discuss proposals, and to solicit feedback. Minutes of the meetings should be published at CTEL’s website, along with announcements and a summary of CTEL’s services.
  • I believe that CTEL should aggressively confront the issue of faculty training and education, both in terms of online pedagogy, and in terms of using the web course management systems that we support, which are only webTools and WebCT at present.
  • I think that CTEL needs to systematize faculty training based upon the following matrix: the X coordinate represents an individual faculty members current level of technical skill, as determined by a simple questionnaire of some kind, while the Y coordinate represents the three levels of desired web-presence, as noted in footnote number 1 above. The simplest problem, of course, would be the highly skilled faculty member, who only wants a minimal web-presence: CTEL might solve this problem simply by offering the use of one of our floating Dreamweaver licenses, and maybe a perfunctory introduction to the software; the highest level of difficulty, on the other hand, will be the unskilled faculty member who wants to put up a fully web-integrated course, which will require a series of sessions with the instructional designer, individual and group (ie. Classroom) training in everything from Dreamweaver to one of the web-course management systems, and a great deal of patience and understanding. CTEL should be ready to handle both extremes, and everything in between.
  • CTEL would do well to set up a chat room for faculty which is specifically dedicated to pedagogy, online instruction, and web-course management systems – anything which falls within the purview of the organization. CTEL workers would be encouraged to check questions and comments regularly, and to provide as much assistance as possible; or, it might be a formal part of the Webmaster’s, as at Ferris State University, to serve as a readily available “answer man.”
  • With respect to the CTEL “production” site, I anticipate few problems. Most faculty, I would think, don’t care where the course materials are placed, so long as they have access to them. Professor Sherry Markel, of the Department of Sociology, is probably typical: she informs me that she doesn’t care where it’s placed, as long as she has access to her files. And faculty access can be handled simply and efficiently by creating a Samba mount for a faculty member’s course directory.[13] Even so, we should make every effort to teach instructors how to directly access their course files through their Network Neighborhood, or their Macintosh Chooser. With direct access to their course files on jan, ownership, and threat to loss of intellectual property, is not an issue. Indeed, most faculty will perceive several personal advantages of this arrangement.[14]
  1. The problem of setting up both the “production” and the “development” sites is twofold: first, there’s the problem of reaching a consensus on the actual services to be provided; second, there’s the purely technical problems of setting something up. With respect to the first of the two, this will have to come out in the wash, as it were, after having received input from all concerned, as discussed in the sections above. The second part should not be difficult for qualified as a Webmaster. I would suggest getting the best possible server possible, such as a Sun system. But, if there are no funds for a really fine server like a Sun box, one could go with a standard off-the-shelf Dell server, preferably one with at least a 40-50 gig storage capacity, and a RAID array or a tape backup device. A Linux server installation would work most efficiently. This wouldn’t cost more that about 5K.

3. Luther’s famous statement about the history of mankind being like a drunken man who fell off one side of his horse, and then got back on and fell off the other, is very relevant to CTEL’s current position: there is the danger of overreacting to the extreme disorganization of OTLE’s recent past by extreme over-regulation and micromanagement of all petty details.

The process of Establishing in-house logistical procedures for working with faculty members, which will include procedures for responding to faculty requests, guidelines for doing qa work, and so on, will have to be broadly organized in general terms at the outset, with the operational details sketched out and refined and systematized over time: there just isn’t any way to accurately anticipate all the potential problems that may arise. We will have to adopt a very flexible attitude at the outset to accommodate a smooth transition. I hasten to add that formal SOPs, done properly, will not necessarily create a rigid and inflexible structure; on the contrary, they serve to confine and direct communication within the bounds of the departmental mission. An added benefit is that documentation of this kind will make it easier for CTEL to ask the administration for additional employees to meet demand.

  1. I have already discussed faculty training above. The particulars of teaching instructors to use web-course management systems is beyond the scope of this paper, except to point out that this should be the responsibility of a particular CTEL employee. It will be a big job. One might also assign the task of presenting Dreamweaver seminars to the same person.

[1]See Henryk R. Marcinkiewicz and Eva Ross, “Planning for Web-Based Course Management,” p. 2. Basically, there are three degrees of web-based instruction:

  1. Web-Presence has no interaction, and the content is stable; for example, course syllabi or periodic table of elements.
  2. Web-Enabled has interaction, dynamic content, and is a component of instruction. An example is a classroom exercise requiring the identification of parts of the human anatomy.
  3. Web-Integrated has interaction, dynamic content, and is independent. An example is an electronic discussion group solving a problem from their homes as their instruction.

[2]See Nancy Bowers and David Moore, “Models of Online Learning,” pp 1-5. The five models are:

  1. Deliver and Test: The instructor is in control of the knowledge delivered to students. Concepts are presented, practice may be provided, and the students are evaluated.
  2. Deliver, Engage and Test: Same as Deliver and Test, except that learning activities are provided that allow students to participate in the learning process.
  3. Discover, Engage and Test: The instructor designs activities that lead the students to discover the necessary information.
  4. Problem-Based: This method challenges students to “learn to learn,” wherein a problem drives the learning by engaging the learner’s curiosity.
  5. Self-Directed: The instructor presents an array of topics and the student decides what it is he wants to learn depending on what his needs are, rather than being told what it is he needs to learn.

[3] See Charles Ansorge and Nancy Cooley, “Web-Course Management Systems,” April 2000. Both the anecdotal and the empirical research evidence show that all three groups must be involved in the decision-making process.