2009 Day 3 10:00 Linda Murphy-Boyer, U of T: Engaging Faculty

Discussion Continued: Engaging Faculty in Higher Level Use of LMSs (lead by Linda Murphy-Boyer and Aldo Caputo)

Question # 1: How to decide which technology to support?

Aldo Caputo: The approach of the Distance Education at the University of Waterloo is that a starting point is LMS; everything that can be accomplished by using LMS is done through LMS; if an instructor needs some other tools (for example, wiki), the team works with instructor in implementing a particular technology; the team also helps with students; usually every new technology is tested through pilot projects, and depending on the pilot projects recommendations are made to the University;

Richard Pinet: At University of Ottawa, the decision on which technology to support cannot be made by the Centre for e-Learning; this can be frustrating because sometime instructors come with requests but Richard’s team cannot support them;

Linda Murphy-Boyer: It is sometimes very difficult to decide because there are so many tools; University of Toronto does not support centrally wikis and blogs; the lack of support is sometimes a reason why instructors use only basic tools in their teaching;

Cheryl Dickie: it is also not good when the tech team supports too many tools, because sometimes that can cause problems with other issues and ‘normal’ work, such as security, updates, etc. At York University the tech support group help and support everyone who approach them;

André Seguin: There are two issues here – a) how to choose the appropriate technology which goes with course requirements and professor’s abilities, and b) how to support professors with already developed courses, when they approach and ask for modifications, updates, changes; For how long should we support courses – one year or more?

Cheryl Dickie: At York University that’s one of the reasons why not too many people decide to go with the advanced use of different tools; many courses have been taught by part time faculty and they often need to create a course in a short period of time – in such situations they often use only basic tools;

Question# 2: What are the challenges that different institutions face with faculty members in adapting higher use of technology?

Linda Murphy-Boyer: At the University of Toronto the survey had been contacted in order to explore how to encourage faculty members; the main problem at the University of Toronto is a limited storage space; because of that instructors cannot place online film clips, podcasts, animation and other materials, even though the survey results showed that there is interest among instructors to use them; also wiki and blogs are not centrally supported;

Linda Murphy-Boyer: Copyright issues are handled by Media Services at the University of Toronto;

Patrick Lyons asked if other institutions have limited storage space inside LMS for instructors; only Brock University has limits – 1 GB, other institutions do not have storage limits;

Aldo Caputo: A huge issue is the future legislature on accessibility for persons and students with disabilities; they are looking into challenges and advantages that this legislature will pose for distance education; everyone will need to provide all information in different formats;

André Seguin: This legislature can be disadvantage because we will need to re-visit and re-design the existing curses and make sure that every single course has accessible PDF files and similar;

Question# 3: Successes?