Transforming the College through Technology: A Change of Culture

Abstract

In this article we address the implementation of sustainable technological change among the faculty, staff, and students in the College of Education and Human Services at a mid-western urban institution. We examine cultural factors common to institutions of higher education and then describe particular planning and implementation processes employed at one institution to move faculty and staff from a state of minimal technology use to one of substantial technological competence over a period of years. The process turns out to be robust and stable despite growth over time. We conclude with recommendations for other educational institutions facing similar needs for cultural change in the use of technology.Key words technology . higher education . academic culture . faculty development . engagement It has become commonplace to note that information technologies have transformed our world almost beyond recognition within our lifetimes. As our cultures have incorporated a Innov High Educ (diverse collection of electronic devices and developed new habits and cultural mores because of them, schools at all levels have been affected by these developments in at least two ways.First, schools function within a societal context and necessarily reflect their environment. As society has changed, that context has changed; and schools now exist within a world where pre-teenagers casually make use of cell phones and MP3 players and consider access to a global collection of information (the Web) to be as basic a utility as water or electricity. It is necessary that schools acknowledge this reality in order to communicate meaningfully with their students, regardless of what the subject matter embedded in their curricula might be like. Even if schools choose to retain a highly traditional body of content for their curriculum, it is necessary that they employ modern reference points in order to convey this material to 21st Century students.Second, the curricula themselves have been forced to change to the extent that schools are expected to prepare students for life in the real world. Just as the skills of trimming a quill pen or using a slide rule have vanished from programs of study, the use of modern technologies has become a subject in its own right and has also come to be embedded in every discipline insofar as it reflects current practice on the part of professionals in the world outside the school. Technology itself may be coming to constitute a new form of student/faculty engagement. As Laird and Kuh (2005) put it, "there may also be areas, like student-faculty interaction, where using technology is a different or additional form of interaction that makes it own contribution to teaching and learning independent of other types of contact between students and faculty members" (p. 231).Schools have traditionally been charged with passing along the accumulated experience of those who have gone before, which is a critical cultural function. At the same time, they have been assigned to prepare students to function in the environment ...

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