Warning! Technology Can Be Dangerous to Your Health: A Case Study from the Trenches

When I arrived on campus in 1967, the teaching technology was crude and hard to use. I believed then and continue to believe today that illustrative materials such as photographs, charts, maps, music, and video enhance the learning process. For the first twenty-five years of my teaching I was forced to use slide, opaque, transparency, and film projectors, videocassette recorders, and any other machine I could find to project the sounds and images I wanted to use. Finding these materials and putting them into a format I could use in the classroom was a real challenge. We did have a center that transferred photos to slides at no charge to the department. As a result I developed a massive slide collection. Although several others in the department used slides and 16mm films, no one else was interested in multimedia.

Over the years I was the butt of many snide remarks in a very traditional, lecture-oriented department as if, somehow, using illustrative material watered down the subject matter. When I received a small grant to transform one of our rooms into a multimedia classroom modeled after a state of the art facility I had seen at Fort Belvoir, faculty members grumbled about the inconvenience of having all that equipment in the back of the room and the control center built into the lectern at the front. My philosophy was that if I could make multimedia materials available to my colleagues and provide the equipment so it would be relatively easy to use, I could hook them on technology. It frankly never worked.

One of the reasons I had the luxury to pursue this passion revolved around the expectations for faculty at Southeast during the sixties and seventies. Travel, publication and professional presentations were applauded but not really expected or supported. The fact that I was spending massive amounts of time developing teaching materials instead of pursuing more traditional faculty development pursuits was not a problem. Faculty members were often promoted to full professor with minimal publication records. Once promoted there was little pressure to continue scholarly activities.

That certainly began to change by the mid-1980s with the development of more rigorous standards for promotion and tenure. A merit system was imposed to pressure faculty to continue developing professionally. At that point, those of us who were spending large blocks of time on teaching were forced to make difficult choices about how we spent our time. For younger faculty the problem was exacerbated by the need to gain tenure and then promotion.

I still dreamed of being able to use the perfect multimedia platform, perhaps somehow tied to a computer. That did not really become a viable reality until the early 1990s. I tried to use one of those early Kodak LCD panels, but the resolution was so poor I went back to slides and transparencies. Around the time Steven Hoffman arrived on the scene I was finally able to purchase an early In-Focus projector, laptop, and scanner using grant money from outside the department. After hours of discussion, and seeing what the new technology could do, by the end of his second year here, Hoffman was hooked and our collaboration took effect the next fall. That next semester, Hoffman regularly sat in on my American History II class, which by that time featured computer-mediated presentations. By the end of the semester there was no turning back.

At the time all he could see was that it was an effective way to teach and he liked the flexibility it gave him in the classroom. I think Hoffman came into the department at an especially good time. Our department chairperson was very supportive, the Center for Scholarship in Teaching and earning (CSTL) was diving into the technology of teaching in a big way, and we had enlightened leadership in the provost's office. This leadership was demonstrated not only by support for the CSTL and purchase of computer equipment, but also through substantive support of pedagogical research.

With Hoffman's successful promotion, the future seemed secured. We had proven that if faculty took the time to enhance their teaching by using technology, opportunities existed to pursue legitimate scholarship that would help bolster a junior faculty member's bid for tenure and promotion. The situation in the department was good, and seemed likely to only improve. Four retirements from among the ranks of the most resistant seemed to augur a new age.

2. Refereed articles published in national or international journals. Articles about pedagogical research may be included here, but also may be more appropriately considered in evaluating teaching effectiveness instead.

2. Articles in journals and chapters in books. Articles and chapters which have not had the benefit of rigorous peer review are not appropriate to this category.

a. Articles and chapters resulting from the process of historical research. b. Articles and chapters resulting from scholarship consistent with the teacher-scholar model embraced by the university, including articles on teaching, service, outreach and/or historic preservation/public history. Candidates should be cautioned that although we embrace a broad definition of scholarship consistent with the teacher-scholar model and assert that scholarship in keeping with this model will be recognized and rewarded, a recommendation for promotion will not normally be made in the absence of publication resulting from research using the historical method, category A2a listed above.

As the untenured rookie in this discussion, my uses of technology-related activities in the classroom, and my perceptions of their integration into the traditional evaluation criteria of teaching, research, and service, are governed principally by pragmatism and the immediate need for self-preservation. Long before coming to Southeast I had been interested in multi-media presentations in the classroom to make history more relevant; and make its sound and fury come alive with images, computer graphics, and audio. Yet, even though I had attempted this in my own limited and primitive way, I had never taught at an institution with the technological resources to integrate technology in my classroom in any meaningful way (and consequently never encountered a debate regarding technology's place in tenure and promotion criteria). Upon arriving at Southeast in the summer of 2001, for the first time I had at my disposal classrooms equipped with computers, projection units, presentation software, a library of scanned historical images and photographs, a graduate student dedicated to expanding that library, and two faculty members more than willing to show me the way. For me, the decision to integrate this technology in the classroom to enhance my teaching was really no decision at all, just as an annoyed Harry Truman had explained to interviewers for the umpteenth time about his “decision” to use the atomic bomb. “I wasn't not going to use it.”

From my first week on campus, I spent a great deal of time converting survey lectures to computer-mediated slide shows, with decidedly varying degrees of sophistication. Again, my limited and modest goals reflected my practical assumptions about technology during my first year. I wanted to create a slide show for every lecture so in the coming years I could polish the presentations, making them more multi-media, more interactive, more graphic, and eventually incorporating a web site. In this way, for me the use of technology is not an ideological or paradigmatic issue, instead it is a means to an end, a self-evident truth that fulfills a very practical need to enhance and supplement my classroom teaching on a daily basis. Apparently this conception was quite shortsighted of me and naive. I naturally assumed that because it was available, technology would be widely used in our department and in terms of the bigger picture of tenure and promotion, would be duly noted and rewarded.

But like many departments, the Department of History at Southeast is in flux regarding the use of technology in the classroom and as such is currently negotiating the relative value and appropriateness of technology-related activities in relation to the tenure and promotion process. Tenured faculty like Easley and Hoffman seek to change the culture of resistance to technology in the department by promoting the integration of technology in the scholarly activities of their colleagues and minimizing the negative impact the use of technology-related activities can have on a new faculty member's evaluation for tenure and promotion. I, on the other hand, have again chosen a very pragmatic course in this debate that reflects not only my practical application of technology, but moreover, my primary concern for securing my own tenure and promotion.

In the larger departmental debates regarding the relative value and appropriateness of technology in the evaluation criteria of teaching, research, and service, I have remained personally ambivalent and publicly silent. Being so close still to the research university atmosphere that bore me, my conceptions of scholarship are fairly orthodox and narrowly defined to include work employing the historical method in one's chosen field of specialty. By training and inclination, reinforced now by circumstances inherent in our tenure and promotion policies, I am going to pursue scholarship in its orthodox definition “researching, presenting, and publishing” in my field. As a postwar American historian, that is what I do, and I feel comfortable with it. Yet, since hearing both sides of the debate regarding technology-related activities in relation to the tenure and promotion process, I have developed an appreciation for a more inclusive definition of scholarship. In principle I believe in rewarding faculty who work to incorporate technology into their classrooms, and who choose to make its integration a scholarly endeavor by examining the pertinent pedagogical issues involved. I find it quite appropriate and natural to fairly value this work in the areas of technology and pedagogy within the traditional research criteria for tenure and promotion. If we are to err in designing promotion and tenure criteria in this liberal arts department of twelve faculty members, we should do so on the side of inclusiveness, supporting our colleagues in their scholarly endeavors, not limiting or restricting them.

But as an untenured faculty member, I do not feel I have the luxury of engaging in these debates or risking my own tenure and promotion by straying too far from the “company line.” Of course, I would like to be rewarded for everything I do, including using technology in the classroom, but for the next six years I have got to take the practical route and tailor my research agenda to meet a traditional interpretation of the departmental criteria for scholarship. While I can appreciate the need to integrate technology into the traditional evaluation criteria in a meaningful way, at this point in my career it just not prudent to be a trailblazer and devote too much energy integrating technology-related issues of pedagogy into my research agenda. In my opinion, these battles are more appropriately fought by tenured and senior faculty.

Still, regardless of my determination not to pursue the integration of technology as a scholarly endeavor, I am going to continue to incorporate technology into my classroom because, quite simply, it is an unparalleled tool for improving my effectiveness as a teacher. Recent studies of exemplary college teachers have shown that both students and teachers consider “clarity and understandability” and “teacher preparation and organization” to be the two most important classroom characteristics of effective teaching. [7] I believe that the use of computer-mediated slide shows has a strong correlation to my classroom performance in these two key areas that ultimately should manifest itself in stronger teacher evaluations. Therefore, even under a traditional interpretation of our evaluation criteria for teaching, research, and service, while technology may not benefit me in regard to scholarship and research, it is my hope that its use in my classroom will be a direct and tangible advantage for me in the area of teaching effectiveness.