ICT in Promotion, Tenure, and Retention
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Readers of this document are encouraged to edit the existing parts and add new parts and content.
Introduction
This page is intended mainly for college and university faculty who are interested in possible roles that Information and Communication Technology may play in their promotion, tenure, and retention.
The three most common considerations for promotion, tenure, and retention center around teaching, service, and research. Institutions vary tremendously in how much weight they give to teach of these three general areas. Information and Communication Technology can play a significant role in each of these areas. Some institutions actively encorage faculty to learn to make routine use of ICT in their professional work, while others downplay this area.
Definitions
This section gives short definitions of teaching, research, and service. The definitions of these terms vary somewhat from institution to institution. Typically, each institution has a faculty handbook or other document that provides details of requirements for promotion, tenure, and retention. These documents contain details on what counts in terms of teaching, research (and other scholarly activity) and service.
Teaching
There are a wide range of activities that can be incorporated under the heading of Teaching. Obviously there is considerable difference between teaching a class of several hundred students, and working with one student in a reading and conference setting. In addition to helping students gain knowledge and skills in a discipline area, teaching may involve advising students, writing letters of recommendation, recruiting students, and other activities that contribute to the learning environment.
Teaching typically includes working with distance learning studetns in a synchronous, asynchronous, or hybrid mode. teaching includes developing courses and course materials.
Research
Many institutions use a broader category, such as research and other scholarly activity. Others use a very narrow definition of research.
Thus, for example, a "research" university that places considerable emphasis on its doctoral programs and externally funded research may use a very narrow definition. Research "that counts" might be restricted to refereed papers in the upper echelon of research journals in one's field of research. Thus, in a top notch research department in a top notch university, there may be a dozen or less journals that count. In such a university, promotion and tenure in a humanities department may require (among other things) publication of a scholarly book by a highly reputable publishing company.
Outside grants are quite important in some departments, and practically unavailable in others. Thus, some departments place considerable weight on obtaining large grants in highly competitive grant competitions.
If a very broad definition of research and scholarly activity is being used,then all kinds of scholarly activities are counted. For example, a paper presented at a conference counts.
Service
Service can be on-campus or off-campus. On campus, there are many committee activities at the department or higher level that count. Off campus there articles that have been submitted for publication to be refereed, there are journals to be edited, there are grant proposals to be refereed, there are talks to be given to civic and educational groups, and so on.
Roles of ICT in Teaching
We all know about use of computerized slide shows, computerized video clips, using email for communication between students and with the faculty member teaching a course,use of classroom response "clickers," and so on. Some of these activities cause a faculty member to more carefully plan and prepare his or her course and teaching of a course. Some improve outside of class communication among students and communication between the course instructor and students. Some are specifically valued by students, such as having a detailed syllabus and assignments available online.
In terms of the above uses of ICT in teaching, I (David Moursund) am not personally aware of good research studies that students learn more, better, faster, and retain it better as compared to traditional methods of instruction.
However, there is also the issue of high quality Computer-Assisted Learning (CAL). There is quite a lot of research supporting the effectiveness of such materials. Thus, a faculty member who uses—or who creates and uses—such materials is apt to be able to show that students are learning better and in less time in his or her courses.
Research on Distance Learning suggests that for students who stick with a DL course, the learning is roughly the same as for a traditional course. However, the drop out rate tends to be quite a bit higher. It is a lot of work to develop a high quality DL course that incorporates appropraite use of CAL. Such a DL course is apt to be quite convenient to many students, and it apt to support faster and better learning (as compared to tradiotnal instruction) for studetns who have the self-discipline to take responsibility for their learning in such an environment.
Roles of ICT in Research
This topic needs to be broken into "Research" and "Other Scholarly Activity." Consider, for example, a faculty member in Creative Arts or a Performing Arts Department. Perhaps this person in use of computers as an art medium, or use of computers in musical performance. The person may be at the forefront of these new aspects of their field, advancing the field.
In brief summary, faculty members who are serious about their research will learn to use ICT in that research if it advances their work.
Roles of ICT in Service
ICT opens up a new avenue for faculty service to people throughout the world and is often helpful in the traditional areas of service. In the first case, a faculty member may have an educationally-oriented Website or Blog that helps educate thousands of viewers throughout the world. I the second case, a faculty member might be a referee for an electronic journal of contribute educational materials to an Open Source Website.
Author or Authors
The initial version of this document was developed by David Moursund.
References
Moursund, D.G. (April 2007). Faculty member's guide to computers in higher education. Information Age Education. Access free in PDF and Microsoft Word formats at http://i-a-e.org/ebooks/doc_download/16-faculty-members-guide-to-computers-in-higher-education.html.
Moursund, D.G. (May 2007). College student's guide to computers in education. Access free in PDF and Microsoft Word formats at http://i-a-e.org/ebooks/doc_download/2-college-students-guide-to-computers-in-education.html Chronicle of Higher Education (12/10/08). Bringing Tenure into the Digital Age. The Wired Campus. Retrieved 12/20/08: http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3511&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en. This article is a short interview of Christine L. Borgman, professor of information studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. She is author of the book: Scholarship in the digital age.
Parry, Marc (2/20/2011). Free 'Video Book' From MIT Press Challenges Limits of Scholarship. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 2/24/2011 from http://chronicle.com/article/Free-Video-Book-From/126427/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en.
Quoting from the article:
- The YouTube book was peer-reviewed and comes with an ISBN number, but beyond that it has little in common with the books we're used to seeing. Users get to it by visiting a Web site that consists of about 250 "texteos," pages that combine text and video. The videos, many of them produced by Ms. Juhasz's students, encourage readers to reflect on YouTube by learning inside it. The closest thing to chapters are "YouTours," which guide viewers through related pages. That format also makes the book a test of staying power: Since much of the content isn't owned by Ms. Juhasz, its owners could take it down, leaving holes in her book.
- The MIT Press thinks this form is worth a try because scholars are demanding new publishing forums. They "are studying rich media forms of communications, and they have to be able to write and create in those formats," says Ellen W. Faran, director of the press. "And this takes their work, at the moment, sort of outside of the regular stream of publishing pipelines in the academy."
…
- "We have a disconnect between popular forms and what the folks who produce and review and give credit for scholarly work recognize as scholarship," says Tara McPherson, an associate professor in the School of Cinematic Arts at Southern California, who is the lead scholar on the Mellon grant. "The reason we're partnering both with presses and scholarly societies is to help credential the work and make it possible for young scholars to produce this sort of work with a reasonable expectation it would count for tenure."
- Another new publishing tool, Anthologize, approaches the same obstacle from the opposite direction. A WordPress plug-in created with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, it transforms blog posts into books. Brett Bobley, who directs the agency's digital-humanities office, says the project is slightly "subversive" because it turns new-media objects into old-fashioned texts so that scholars can "print them or distribute them using more traditional publishing channels, something that may still be needed for promotion and tenure or other reasons."
