Subjects: Group A
Group A, the Leaders, consisted of eight tenured and two untenured, tenure-tracked professors. The subjects in this group represented the health/medicine fields, the professional fields, science/technology/mathematics, the social sciences, the arts and the humanities. There were four women and six men in Group A. These faculty were included in Group A because they had been honored or awarded by their college or department, had been the recipient of technology grants, or had been recognized by an extra-university entity. These subjects were chosen non-randomly based on recommendations from information technology personnel or from associate deans of various colleges.
Elizabeth
Elizabeth, who identified as an Expert on the self assessment, but scored as a Delegator on the Grasha-Reichmann Teaching Style Inventory, is a tenured associate professor in the health/medicine disciplines. Elizabeth stated that she never intended to become a professor, or a teacher, but rather was recruited due to her experience in and her knowledge of her field. Her first and foremost commitment was to her health profession, not to teaching, but she said that she adjusted well to teaching because it allowed her to make a difference in people's lives, and this is the best part of her job.
What motivated me to come to teaching, I guess, was just wanting to make a difference because there were teachers who made a difference in me. So, I'm walking the path where I think some very distinguished human beings have walked.
She also views herself as a role model for students, like her own teachers who were a role model for her and who changed her life. "So what I hope I offer students is a life's work that shows evidence of education and scholarship and preparation." She believes that to be that role model for students puts her in a place of special responsibility.
I think teaching is, first of all, a sacred trust. It's a big responsibility, sometimes when you think of the importance of the task. Maybe the world doesn't see it as important, but I've always felt it is that pebble that you drop in the lake and the ripples go on a long way.
To achieve this trust, Elizabeth believes that a teacher must learn to listen rather than talk, and to attempt to view the world through the eyes of the students.
Do the best you can with what you are given. Try to use all their senses to involve them. Try to not think so much how you see the world, but how they see the world, and you do that more by listening then by talking.
Elizabeth received a university technology grant to work with technology in her discipline, and has found the use of technology to be highly beneficial because technology allows the teacher to engage the student.
If you can engage them in the process then you can cause more attentiveness, and that's the whole goal. If I have your attention, then I have a chance to make an impact. Engagement, that's what technology gives me. An engagement I can't get from the auditorial [sic] or visual format in another way.
Catherine
Catherine, who self-identified and scored as a Delegator, is a tenured full professor in science/technology/mathematics, and came from a background of teaching. She began her career teaching in the public school system, and then continued her graduate studies, and like Elizabeth, was recruited into higher education because of her practical experience. Catherine likes working with the students best about her job and, like Elizabeth, tries to engage the students, particularly her online students. She feels that, like the population of today's student has changed and become more non-traditional, the definition of teaching has changed.
Most of us didn't come into teaching in order to lecture. And yet somehow in our culture, teaching and entertaining, and preaching all sort of got mixed up in the same model. But if you think about the original concept of teacher, it meant guide, and in a lot of cultures teacher means 'to be with.' And so it's just changed.
For her, teaching is not about her teaching the students, but rather guiding the students to teach themselves in an active manner.
I try to explain to them that learning is something that they do. Doesn't have a lot to do sometimes with me teaching. It has to do with me providing some things but, I think a lot of them would say, I would hope they would say, 'I really liked her, but we didn't, she didn't teach . . .'.
Catherine, who teaches all of her courses fully online, believes that technology has the ability to reach a changing type of learner, and she believes that times and learners have changed.
I personally don't think students are going to continue to stand for time and attendance. They are older, they're paying more money, they have more pressures. I think there are going to be a lot of converging forces that will bring people to embrace us.
She also believes that she would not be able to teach effectively if she did not have the tool of technology.
Most of them [other faculty members] think of the instructional technology as, "Adding it to what I do." They don't have a clue that if they really buy into it, if I had to teach, let's say, [the chief academic officer's name omitted] said to me, "You have to teach a freshmen seminar." I would put it all on the web and then if I had to go I'd use that to talk about what's happening with you, to talk about issues, to challenge, to debate. I could not teach without that technology component, I wouldn't even want to try because I just don't think of learning as happening within the confines of that certain set of time.
Larry
A tenured associate professor in the professional fields, Larry self-identified as an Expert and tested as a Formal Authority. He chose an academic career because of the influence of an admired college professor. His favorite part of his job is seeing the "light bulb factor" in his students' eyes when they understand a concept that they did not understand before. Larry hopes that through his teaching he can give the students knowledge and experience that only a professor could provide.
I would hope that the teaching I provide them is something that they can't get on their own, you know. So, I try to provide something to them that I've learned over my time in school and since then, my own sort of scholarship. And to provide to them information that they couldn't normally get even just from reading books or whatever. That the format of my classes blending together lecture, discussion, reading, film viewing. That those things combine to provide an educational experience that they couldn't get from one of those alone.
After being a self-professed technophobe, Larry became interested in technology because technology could help him improve parts of his personal and professional life. His interest in teaching with technology came later. Although he talks about technology in terms of mechanics, for example being able to write lecture notes directly into Word as he is lecturing or being able to pause a VCR to discuss a particular issue, his use of technology is integrated into his teaching methodology. For example, Larry explained part of his teaching methodology. "So, the--in the lecture sessions there's not much, there's no discussion, it's just me presenting information always using computer, usually with examples up on the web that I refer to, frame grabs, or things like that, clips."