Collaborating in Online Instruction
In their article Teaching Demands Versus Research Productivity, Sharobeam & Howard (2002) stated that:
| "Faculty at predominantly undergraduate (teaching) institutions encountered such research difficulties as little institutional support, lack of research facilities, limited support for travel, and lack of external funding. Despite these problems, the majority of the faculty surveyed indicated that research is a requirement for
tenure and promotion at their institutions" (p. 441). |
Among these realities, faculty's heavy teaching loads and pressure to publish has been a reason for lack of enthusiasm to improve teaching. Weimer (2002), in her book Learner-Centered Teaching, noted that: "Ask faculty members if they are interested in improving their teaching, and the response are almost always defensive. "Why? Did somebody tell you I need to?" Or, "Why should I? Teaching doesn't matter around here anyway" (p. vx)." If faculty members do not have the enthusiasm to improve teaching in general, what can motivate them to teach online, which can be more time-consuming in its design and instruction compared with face-to-face instruction?
Clearly, given the fact that the "publish or perish" rule usually plays a major role in tenure and promotion in research-oriented institutions, faculty have to put on more weight on research rather than on teaching. Such a reality necessitates some compromises from the institutions, the departments, and the faculty. Before the compromises are on the table, we are introducing a few examples that OSU faculty accommodated their research and teaching which resulted in grants and publications.
Collegiate Cooperation
In 2005, OSU School of Electrical and Computer Engineering received about a million dollars from National Science Foundation for their program titled “Engineering Students for the 21st Century.” This program is focusing on transforming ten electrical engineering courses from traditional lectures to student-oriented learning courses.
To this end, the traditional courses will be transformed from knowledge-based to development-based programs. Such an approach corresponds to Bloom's Taxonomy, which divides learning into six levels from the simplest behavior to the most complex (which is, Knowledge-Comprehension-Application-Analysis-Synthesis-Evaluation).
Click here for a video presentation about this program.
Faculty Cooperation across Research, Teaching, and Services
* OSU faculty and students from the Master of Science in Telecommunications Management (MSTM) program worked together in assessing e-learning technologies in their lab courses. The cooperation led to student advising, improved instruction and a publication. Click here to read the published article.
* Dr. Leffingwell, Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology, published an article on using multimedia archiving in training students in evidence-based practice of psychology. Click here to see the website that is a companion to that article.
* OSU faculty Dr. Leffingwell and Dr. Thomas worked with professional technologist Bill Elliot on using Microsoft Producer to enhance traditional PowerPoint Presentation. They have their work published.
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