15 The Essential Role of Faculty Development in New Higher Education Models

There is a growing interest in and active discussion about new educational environments, which shift the emphasis of education from faculty and their teaching to students and their learning. This shift enables us to view the education of students in multiple educational environments beyond the traditional model of faculty teaching students in a classroom. Combining both different instructional roles and educational settings into new higher education models of undergraduate education will demand that faculty learn new roles. It also holds out the hope that reducing the demands on faculty time and increasing the availability of other institutional resources will enhance the quality of faculty worklife. To successfully address factors like financial constraints and accountability while creating, implementing, and sustaining new higher education models will require the commitment of a number of significant groups in the institution. Among the most important will be the work of faculty development professionals and the centers they lead.

INTRODUCTION

In the next ten years, the academy will undergo major reforms as institutions strive to deal with significant reductions in financial resources and increases in costs, demands for accountable student learning outcomes, and stable—or increased—student enrollment. These conditions raise serious concerns about our present educational delivery system that is primarily limited to faculty teaching students in classroom settings in traditional institutional structures.

Decreases in financial resources convert directly into budget reductions and personnel cuts. Stated bluntly, more students must be taught with fewer faculty and fewer support personnel. In traditional higher education settings, this would mean sharp increases in faculty workload and, most probably, decreases in student learning outcomes.

There is a growing and vocal interest in new educational environments, which shift the emphasis of education from faculty and their teaching to students and their learning. This shift enables us to view the education of students in multiple educational environments beyond the traditional model of faculty teaching students in a classroom. This shift in thinking to student learning-focused environments creates the foundation for the reform of undergraduate education, even its transformation.

THE NEW HIGHER EDUCATION MODELS

Peter Ewell (2002) predicts this shift will focus on a move from course-based credits and seat time to assessment-based mastery of recognized bodies of knowledge and skills. Students would be accountable for “attainment of common outcomes, not on common content or curricular structure” (Ewell, 2002, p.5). Specifically, this shift will require major changes in how institutions are organized and the systems used to count and measure what they do. It will also require various new pedagogies within these learning environments. Furthermore, formative institutional and programmatic assessment will be an expectation and an obligation. All participants in these environments will be involved in the assessment of student learning. Marie Eaton (2002), in summing up how the new higher education models could change how faculty work, writes, “In the new university, faculty will relinquish some of their responsibility for delivery of instruction to become designers of learning environments” (p. 3).

The higher education setting of the next ten years will be marked by a host of new instructional roles in many new educational settings. Table l5.1 highlights a few examples of these changes.

Many or most of the new higher education settings will combine some or many of these different instructional roles and educational settings in order to refocus on student learning while reducing instructional costs. Put another way, by utilizing these new roles and settings, the institution will be able to reduce the cost of educating an individual student.

A major strategy for accomplishing this would be reducing the time an individual faculty member spends with any single group of students, while concurrently increasing the exposure of students to sources of learning other than the traditional faculty member. Some of these instructional roles and settings will actually provide more intense faculty-student interactions that occur over shorter periods of time than they do presently.

A key to the learning and financial success of any of the emerging higher education models will be the capability to use new information technologies and software in sophisticated ways, and to integrate, as partners, individuals and groups that have only rarely been so involved. An example of this might mean that librarians (and the library) would be key educators and key learning centers. Another example may well be the integration of student service personnel into the educational process. External to the institution, this will mean that community members and work site supervisors become partners in the student learning process.

The role of technology is beginning to change how students learn and, it is likely, will transform student learning experiences in the future. The recent improvements in information and computer technologies are likely to continue to develop at an ever-increasing pace over the years ahead—especially in the area of sophisticated content-oriented software—which will enable institutions of higher education to further integrate technology into the core of the educational process. Newman and Scurry (2001) emphasize this point in a recent article:

New higher education models of undergraduate education that combine different instructional roles and educational settings will require more faculty to learn new skills in order to succeed in the new instructional roles. At the same time, these new models hold out the hope for reducing the demands on faculty time and increasing the availability of other institutional resources that will enhance the quality of faculty work-life. There will be reduced pressure to teach more students and to add additional classes, there will be time for faculty members to pursue their professional and scholarly passions, and there will be potential for increased stimulation from faculty-student interaction, increased excitement from being involved in new educational environments, and increased availability of resources for decent salaries.

Such major and widespread institutional reform of faculty roles and student learning will not be successful without major efforts to provide faculty with the necessary skills, training, technology, and support to perform their new roles. As important, these new roles will only be successful if 1) the institutional rewards for faculty are aligned with their new roles, and 2) the faculty, academic, and administrative decision-makers understand and provide resources for the new faculty roles and the support necessary to implement and sustain them.

To successfully address factors like financial constraints and accountability while creating, implementing and sustaining new higher education models will require the commitment of a number of significant groups in the institution. Among the most important will be the work of faculty development professionals and the centers they lead.

FACULTY DEVELOPMENT AND NEW HIGHER EDUCATION MODELS

As faculty development professionals position themselves to support the continuing needs of faculty members and administrators to think differently about delivery, assessment, scholarship, and demographics, they will need to address some major issues. Table 15.2 begins to address some current responsibilities of faculty developers and how their expertise will be needed to implement the new higher education models:

Inherent in these shifts is a new perspective in the role of faculty developers within the institution. Much like librarians, faculty developers will have to shift their thinking from being providers of good and important technical services to professionals whose work is critical for the transformation of the institution. Also like librarians, faculty developers will move from the periphery of the academic enterprise to the core—focusing on strategies that enable students to learn more effectively and efficiently within many different arenas and for faculty skills and expertise to be focused and used efficiently.

In order to accomplish these critical functions, faculty developers must perceive themselves as institutional change agents. Rather than directing support activities to individual faculty, faculty developers will also need to take responsibility for supporting administrators and faculty leaders, who have some sense that significant change is needed, by providing access to new conceptions of educating students, new institutional forms to enable them to occur, and the change process needed to accomplish both.

The following questions identify some goals of the faculty developer in supporting new higher education models:

• How are faculty supported as they explore multiple pedagogical needs?

• How are faculty supported as they deal with the new learning environments of the new models of higher education?

• How are faculty supported as they expand their definitions and forms of scholarship?

• How are individuals educated to evaluate faculty involved in new instructional roles and expanded forms of scholarship?

• How are part-time and adjunct faculty assisted in their teaching roles at the institution?

• How are faculty, staff, and students supported as they partner with members of the surrounding and international communities as well as diversifying and internationalizing?

SUPPORTING MULTIPLE TEACHING AND LEARNING PEDAGOGIES

In the new higher education model, faculty and students are expected to be scholarly. Scholarly, in this context, means that learning environments will include course content that is not only current and topical within the discipline, but engages students in an interdisciplinary approach, focuses on students’ developing inquiry and critical thinking skills, and emphasizes student learning with peers as well as spending more time learning independently. Traditionally, the focus has been on the teacher and the process through which the course content is delivered. The students’ responsibilities have been to learn the content, regardless of delivery mode or style. With the shift in roles and responsibilities, for faculty and learner, the emphasis will rest on the scholarly approaches to teaching and learning by all participants in the learning environment.

LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS IN THE NEW MODEL FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

In the past, institutions of higher education touted their low faculty-to-student ratio. However, as institutional budgets decrease, it is becoming critical for funding streams to increase. To meet expenses, institutions have turned to increasing tuition and increasing numbers of students. This has occurred without significantly enhancing tenure-track faculty ranks. Consequently, class sizes have increased exponentially both in face-to-face classes as well as in online course delivery.

Working with faculty members and academic administrators, faculty development offices are indispensable for developing these new learning environments in ways that the faculty and student relationships are created that reflect small student-to-faculty ratios. A common assumption is that as student enrollment increases and faculty numbers do not, the frequency of faculty/student interaction and accessibility of faculty member to student are significantly compromised. These outcomes are not inevitable but they do require important changes. Faculty developers can help provide support strategies that can enhance the feeling of connection between each student and the faculty. In this process, faculty developers can assist faculty to: 1) identify student learning outcomes in the course and the particular learning environment, 2) consider alternative learning environments in which students can access the information, 3) assist with various pedagogies that focus on student learning, 4) assist with assessment strategies, 5) suggest ways to be efficient in order to reduce faculty time on task, and 6) assist faculty and students in encouraging student learning by the development of individualized student learning plans to meet individualized needs (Ewell, 2002, p. 5). The following are specific examples of ways faculty developers can meet these needs.

The electronic learning environment requires thinking differently about delivery, content, and student feedback. It is critical that the academy focuses not only on the importance of the technological delivery, but also on the pedagogy involved in this process. The literature on the relationship between student learning and technology has emphasized that technology is a tool that provides a learning environment in which students learn. How learning is framed within that environment is critical (Laurillard, 1993). Faculty developers working together with instructional designers can provide that learning environment by integrating student learning, course delivery, and technology. They can also enhance student learning and faculty effectiveness by integrating librarians and other important institutional members involved in the educational process.

Whether students are spending time learning by themselves or with peers as well as interacting with faculty in new ways, clarity of student learning outcomes and their assessment are critical. Also, formative assessment of student learning is needed as well as assessment of the learning environment itself.

Intensive faculty-student interaction over short periods of time. While the 12- to 16-week course and lecture are the major modes of teaching and learning in higher education, most learning outside of colleges and universities occurs in shorter and more intensive periods of time. Utilizing this learning environment within higher education can increase faculty-student interaction and connection, even in large institutional settings. Such learning environments will require faculty to be skilled in facilitating group process and methods for working in intensive group settings. These intensive workshop-type settings will also require faculty and academic administrators to rethink the nature of the weekly and term academic calendar. Faculty developers can help both faculty and administrative leaders deal with the structures, learning processes, and skills needed to implement these types of learning environments.

Faculty developers have a significant role in supporting the hybrid course. Pedagogical principles that apply to the face-to-face environment do not necessarily apply to the electronic environment. The hybrid course spans both those environments; thus, the instructor has the opportunity to focus on student learning differently in two different environments. In this case, the instructor can answer the following questions: “What can the student learner achieve in the face-to-face environment that is impossible in the electronic environment?” and “What can the student-learner achieve in the online environment that would be impossible in the face-to-face environment?” The answers to these questions coupled with specific student learning outcomes for this course guide the learning activities and pedagogies that shape each aspect of the course. Faculty developers and instructional designers working in concert provide indispensable support for faculty teaching in this environment.

Faculty developers assist faculty in pedagogies appropriate for community based learning. When learning outcomes are achieved through interaction with a carefully considered community-based experience, nontraditional pedagogies may be appropriate. “In the new university, a significant part of a faculty member’s time will be allocated to cultivating both research field sites and community based learning environments in which undergraduates can observe and participate in the process of discovery” (Eaton, 2002, p. 5). Faculty developers will become brokers between the faculty/student and the community partner as well as between faculty and institutional partners such as librarians and student affairs professionals. Ewell (2002) coins the phrase “learning broker” (p. 11). This “involves identifying and setting up appropriate field settings or on-line opportunities for learning, as well as organizing the kind of monitoring and feedback support that such settings demand” (Ewell, 2002, p. 11).

Creating alternative times and days of course delivery. While at present all courses are offered in set time slots during the weekly and term calendars, there is considerable new evidence that accelerated courses (e.g., six weeks) are effective in producing student learning (Wladkowski & Westover, 1999). As discussed earlier, intensive, short-term workshop-type learning environments also offer alternatives to the present course settings. Faculty developers will assist in developing courses that are offered on weekends, in shortened terms, on nontraditional days, and in a myriad of other times and formats (Guskin & Marcy, 2001; Guskin & Marcy, in press).

Expectations for skills such as critical thinking, problem-based learning, reflective practice, and intercultural competence thread throughout the curriculum. Employers assert that these are usually the types of skills they seek in their new hires. Eaton (2002) claims that faculty spend most of their instructional time in classrooms or labs, either lecturing or facilitating discussions. “Largely untapped are other potential avenues for student learning and strategies to engender the kinds of thinking and skills that our graduates need to face in the complexities of today’s society” (Eaton, 2002, p. 2). Faculty developers can assist campus-wide in supporting appropriate pedagogies that can be adapted to both face-to-face, electronic, and community-based learning environments.

FACULTY RECOGNITION IN PROMOTION AND TENURE

Institutions are addressing issues of faculty recognition in the promotion and tenure process. Educators seeking to think differently about teaching, learning, and scholarship responded positively when Rice (1991) encouraged scholars to reexamine the traditionally recognized definitions and forms of scholarship. Boyer (1990), along with Glassick, Huber, and Maeroff (1997), continued the discussion by exploring multiple forms of scholarship. As institutions expect faculty to focus more on student learning outcomes and course delivery, it is also imperative that an expanded definition of scholarship be recognized in the academy. Expanded definitions of scholarship readily include the scholarship of teaching, the scholarship of engagement, and discipline-based scholarship. The assumption is that expanded forms of scholarship will contribute new knowledge to an existing body of literature. The expected outcome from this scholarship is that those who teach will enhance their own practice by learning from others who have studied the interactions between the learning environment, the learner, and the instructor. With increased demands on teaching faculty, and the permission to pursue diverse forms of scholarship, it is important that no scholarship “be privileged over another with respect to rewards” (Ewell, 2002, p. 12). Eaton (2002) claims,

As faculty choose to undertake expanded forms of scholarship, faculty developers can help them to 1) frame appropriate research questions, 2) design research, 3) assist with data collection and analysis, and 4) to identify appropriate public dissemination outlets. Colleagues in different disciplines are usually not as familiar with these outlets as are faculty developers.

Faculty seeking to broaden scholarship interests do not have models for documenting their scholarship in promotion and tenure materials. Faculty developers, who are outside the evaluation system in the promotion and tenure process, have the opportunity to provide assistance to faculty in preparing their promotion and tenure materials. This assistance can be in the form of one-on-one feedback, workshops for untenured faculty, workshops for departments, and online materials (http://oaa.pdx.edu/cae).

Administrators and faculty need a common understanding of their institution’s definitions of scholarship as well as how to evaluate them. If faculty believe that expanded definitions of scholarship are recognized equally with traditional scholarship, they will be more inclined to undertake new and often untested forms of research design and scholarship. The information gathered through these expanded forms of scholarship would be critical for the continual assessment of the different learning environments and delivery model designs. Because faculty developers are not part of the evaluative process of the promotion and tenure review process, they are ideally positioned to assist deans, department chairs, and promotion and tenure committees in understanding the expanded definitions of scholarship.

ASSESSING THE CLASSROOM, THE PROGRAM, AND THE INSTITUTION

Palomba and Banta (1999) define assessment as “. . . the systematic collection, review and use of information about educational programs for the purpose of improving student learning development” (p. 4). Assessment must be threaded throughout the new higher education model, from the singular learning environment, to learning communities, to program review (Rhodes, 2002), to institutional assessment.

In the traditional learning environment, feedback from students about course content is gathered at designated junctures throughout the term (e.g., quizzes, exams, term papers, and projects). Little attention is paid to assessment of the learning environment or specific pedagogies. In the new higher education model, with multiple learning environments, the instructor will gather formative assessment throughout the term that informs him or her both on what the students are learning and how they are learning. These data will allow the instructor to be more nimble in making mid-course changes in the learning environment and will help with designing future courses. In the traditional learning environment, course data was collected for student and personnel purposes. In the new higher education model, course data will also inform and help shape program and institutional goals (Angelo, 2001).

ASSISTING PART-TIME AND ADJUNCT FACULTY IN THEIR INSTITUTION TEACHING ROLES

As institutions of higher education strain to meet the needs of increasing student enrollment, they often hire more adjunct and part-time faculty. Because these faculty are not faced with promotion and tenure issues, they are hired to teach multiple classes and more students. In the traditional higher education model, faculty developers spend more time assisting tenure-track faculty, leaving the adjunct faculty feeling marginalized and truly adjunct to the institution. In the new higher education model, faculty developers can provide institutional support around teaching and learning needs for tenure-track, adjunct, and part-time faculty. Data from the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty, 1987, 1992, and 1998 (United States Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics), cited in Guskin and Marcy (2001), reported that the percentage of tenure-track faculty decreased 12% between 1987 and 1998 while the percentage of nontenure-track faculty increased by 149% between 1987 and 1998. If this trend continues, the non tenure-track faculty will far surpass the tenure-track faculty across higher education. Faculty developers are the support providers for these faculty.

SUPPORTING FACULTY, STAFF, AND STUDENTS AS CAMPUSES DIVERSIFY AND INTERNATIONALIZE

As the demographics in the United States population change, so are the demographics changing among students and faculty. In efforts to achieve greater international and domestic diversity among students and faculty, representative of diversity within the region, institutions have a responsibility to provide support in outreach for faculty and students as well as intercultural communication and communication competence (Kardia, 1998). Faculty developers are critical for providing course and curriculum support and faculty recruitment and retention.

CONCLUSION

The future will not be an easy one for faculty nor for their institutions. Driven by reducing financial resources, increasing expenses, increases in the diversity and size of the student population, as well as demands for accountability of student learning, alternatives to present teaching and learning structures and processes will be more acceptable and necessary. New models of undergraduate education that will deal with these pressures will lead to significant changes in how faculty teach and students learn. In these new settings, the role of faculty developers will be critical. There will be the increased need for centralized faculty development to support the campus broadly in everything from individual faculty support, to program review, to campus wide assessment (Rhodes, 2002).

While, at present, others may question of the allocation of scarce resources to fund faculty development activities, faculty developers must anticipate these pressures and the future needs of new higher education models and lead both faculty and administrative leaders to deal with the demands of the future. As faculty, staff, and administrators address how they expect to meet the realities of the future by creating new learning environments, it is important for the success of the institution that faculty developers position themselves as key players in enabling faculty to become effective in these new settings.

REFERENCES

• Angelo, T. A. (2001). Doing faculty development as if we value learning most: Transformative guidelines from research to practice. In D. Lieberman & C. Wehlburg (Eds.), To Improve the Academy: Vol. 19. Resources for faculty, instructional, and organizational development (pp. 97-112). Bolton, MA: Anker.
• Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered· Priorities of the professoriate. Princeton, NJ: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
• Chickering, A. W., & Gamson, Z. F. (1987). Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. AAHE Bulletin, 39 (7), 3-7.
• Eaton, M. (2002). Searching for the ‘new university’: Changing faculty roles. Project on the Future of Higher Education. Available: http://www.antioch.edu/pfhe
• Ewell, P. (2002). Three dialectics in higher education’s future. Project on the Future of Higher Education. Available: http://www.antioch.edu/pfhe
• Glassick, C. E., Huber, M. T., & Maeroff, G. I. (1997). Scholarship assessed: Evaluation of the professoriate. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
• Guskin, A., & Marcy, M. (2001). Facing the future: Faculty work, student learning and fundamental reform. Project on the future of higher education. Available: http://www.antioch.edu/pfhe
• Guskin, A., & Marcy, M. (in press). Pressures for fundamental reform: Creating a viable academic future. In R. Diamond (Ed.), Field guide to academic leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
• Kardia, D. (1998). Becoming a multicultural faculty developer: Reflections from the field. In M. Kaplan & D. Lieberman (Eds.), To Improve the Academy: Vol. 17. Resources for faculty, instructional, and organizational development (pp. 15-33). Stillwater, OK: New Forums Press.
• Laurillard, D. (1993). Rethinking university teaching: A framework for the effective use of educational technology. London, England: Routledge.
• Marincovich, M., Prostko, J., & Stout, F. (Eds.). (1998). The professional development of graduate teaching assistants. Bolton, MA: Anker.
• Newman, F., & Scurry, J. (2001, July 13). Online technology pushes pedagogy to the forefront. The Chronicle of Higher Education, p. B7.
• Palomba, C. A., & Banta, T. W. (1999). Assessment essentials: Planning, implementing, and improving assessment in higher education. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
• Rhodes, T. (2002). Could it be that it does make sense? A program review process for integrating activities. In D. Lieberman & C. Wehlburg (Eds.), To Improve the Academy: Vol. 20. Resources for faculty, instructional, and organizational development (pp. 49-64). Bolton, MA: Anker.
• Rice, E. (1991). The new American scholar: Scholarship and the purposes of the university. Metropolitan Universities, 1 (4), 7-18.
• Wladkowski, R. J., & Westover, T. (1999). Accelerated courses as a learning format for adults. The Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education, 13 (1), 1-20.

Contact:

• Devorah A. Lieberman

• Vice Provost and Special Assistant to the President

• Portland State University

• Center for Academic Excellence

• Box 751

• Portland, OR 97207

• Voice (503) 725-5642

• Fax (503) 728-5262

• Email [email protected]

• Web http://www.oaa.pdx.edu/cae

• Alan E. Guskin

• Co-Director and Senior Scholar

• Project on the Future of Higher Education and

• Distinguished University Professor

• Antioch University

• Home Address:

• 7724-171st St SW

• Edmonds, WA 98026

• Email [email protected]

Devorah A. Lieberman is Vice Provost and Special Assistant to the President at Portland State University. She received her PhD (1984) in lntercultural Communication. She directs the Center for Academic Excellence that supports all areas of teaching/learning, community-university partnerships, and assessment. She is also responsible for four campus-wide Presidential Initiatives: Assessment, Student Advising, Diversity, and Internationalizing the campus. Her scholarly research interests include institutional change, the scholarship of teaching/learning, teaching/learning and technology, and intercultural communication. Her participation in Al Guskin’s Project for the Future of Higher Education is helping shape her current research agenda and scholarly activities.

Alan E. Guskin became Distinguished University Professor and University President Emeritus of Antioch University on October I, 1997. He has served as president and chancellor of two universities (Antioch University from 1985 to 1997 and the University of Wisconsin, Parkside from 1975 to 1985) and has held faculty positions at the University of Michigan as well the University of Wisconsin, Parkside and Antioch University. He is presently co-directing the Project on the Future of Higher Education, which, along with 14 leading thinkers and practitioners, is developing new models for the future of undergraduate education. He recently received the 2001 Morris T. Keeton Award from the Council on Adult and Experiential Learning “for his long and noteworthy history in higher education as an administrator, teacher, writer, consultant, and speaker and his demonstrated commitment to student learning and innovation and change in higher education.”