A New Career Track Combines Teaching and
Academic Computing

'Instructional designers' help fellow professors take
advantage of technology in the classroom

By LISA GUERNSEY

Gettysburg, Pa.

Charles Hannon has a beard and glasses, and on this chilly
gray day he wears a green button-down shirt with a brown
tweed jacket. It's familiar attire for a guy with a Ph.D. in English.
But tucked in his jacket pocket is something that doesn't
ordinarily come with the outfit: a Palm Pilot.

Is the hand-held computer a sign that Mr. Hannon is a computer
jock in academic's clothing? Or is he just a typical professor with
a techie quirk? Turns out, he's a little of both.

Mr. Hannon, an instructional technologist at Gettysburg College,
offers full-time technology support to faculty members. His job is
one of a growing number of similar academic positions
emerging nationally. At other institutions, they might be called
instructional-technology consultants, information-resource
specialists, or instructional designers. But the people who fill the
jobs have one thing in common: a hybrid expertise that blends
academic computing with college teaching.

Mr. Hannon, for example, was once an English-and-composition
instructor with a penchant for computerized instruction, quietly
navigating between the realms of faculty members and
computing specialists. Until recently, that dual role was little more
than an oddity in his search for a secure academic position.

But last summer, it became his best asset. At 33, Mr. Hannon
found himself with three job offers -- two of them for positions
that didn't even exist a few years ago. He opted for the job here.

Instructional-technology positions are the latest attempt to solve
a problem that for the past three years has topped the list of
"most important I.T. issues" in the well-known annual Campus
Computing Project survey: helping faculty members to integrate
technology in their classrooms.

"Everyone now understands that they have to get on the Web,"
says Nancy Frishberg, director of a San Francisco-based
non-profit organization called New Media Centers, which selects
institutions that are building centers for teaching and technology
to participate in its programs. "But how do you provide
instructional materials, lectures, and classes over the Web to just
the right set of students -- and service all of these faculty
members from disciplines that have slightly different
requirements?"

Most faculty members say they don't have the time or skills to
experiment with the World-Wide Web, let alone try complicated
courseware, streaming video, or on-line message boards. They
need sophisticated guidance, which most computer-help desks
and student assistants can't provide. And they need more than a
computing center's basic training in how to use Windows or
word-processing software.

Follow Mr. Hannon around Gettysburg College on a typical
workday, and those needs become clear. This morning, for
example, he is talking about digital photography with Deborah
Sommer, a professor in the religious-studies department. A rack
of slides stands next to her computer, and posters of
eastern-Asian religious icons hang on the walls of her office.

She is trying to download the software needed to display an
image produced by QuickTime VR, a program that creates
360-degree views of three-dimensional objects. She is creating
a Web site for her course in Chinese religions that will provide a
photograph of a sand-colored tomb figure that is part of
Gettysburg's collection of ancient Asian artifacts.

Through the Web site, students will be able to examine the figure
without having to retrieve it from storage. The QuickTime
software is already installed on the machines they use in the
computer laboratories, but not on Ms. Sommer's computer. She
readily admits that she doesn't know the first thing about
downloading.

So Mr. Hannon walks her through the process of retrieving the
software from the QuickTime Web site. We have a T-1 line, he
explains, pointing to the appropriate box on the site's
registration form. And this is a Pentium computer. Yes, select that
option. Now open that folder. Click on the icon and it will start to
install.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, a photograph of the figurine
appears on her course's Web site. "It helps to have someone
standing over you, telling you which buttons to push," Ms.
Sommer says as she plays with the image, rotating it back and
forth. "Otherwise," she adds with a laugh, "I would never do this,
I tell you."

Until last summer, Gettysburg had provided such guidance to
faculty members by assigning instructional-consulting duties to
members of its already-stretched computing staff. "But no one
was dedicated to the issue full time, and we had limited success,"
says Mike Martys, vice-provost for information resources and
director of computing at the college.

Computing officials at nearby institutions describe similar
situations.

At Hood College, in Frederick, Md., the chief technology officer
is conducting a search for an instructional technologist. At
Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania, the library hired
Shelley Gross-Gray a year and a half ago.

Ms. Gross-Gray's title is instructional-technology specialist, and
her days are a mix of training sessions on multimedia software,
discussions with individual professors, work on Web-page
design, grant writing, and meetings with techies about network
issues. She also tries to stay on top of the latest on-line
innovations that might help faculty members engage students in
their courses.

Larger universities are also hiring people to support faculty
members full time -- and are usually looking for more than one.
At the University of Maryland at College Park, the academic
information-technology center employs 10 people called
"campus computing associates," each of whom is assigned to a
college within the university. Maryland created the positions in
1987, much earlier than most other colleges, and officials of
other institutions are now coming around to see how the
program works.

College Park made a strategic decision early on: putting the
computing associates' offices within the colleges they assist,
rather than in the centralized information-technology center.
Jennifer Fajman, director of information-technology services
there, tries to fill the positions with people who have graduate
degrees and teaching experience in an academic subject taught
by that college.

Gettysburg employs the same strategy. "Faculty members
respect someone who has been in their shoes," says Mr.
Martys.

In fact, Mr. Hannon's next appointment this morning finds him
standing in a place usually occupied by Michael J. Birkner,
chairman of the history department. Mr. Birkner has turned over
his "Historical Methods" class to Mr. Hannon for the day, and the
class is meeting in the computer laboratory instead of its regular
classroom.

Mr. Hannon's task is to guide the history students through a Web
page devoted to African-American history. He also wants them
to respond to questions about the Web site itself, posted on a
Web-based bulletin board that allows the students to read each
other's responses and continue threads of conversations about
what they've written.

Mr. Birkner introduces Mr. Hannon as students set up their
computer screens to click between the bulletin board and the
Web site. "He's not only going to show you how to hit a few
computer keys," the professor says, "but also show you how to
use the Web to complete an assignment."

As the students type away, Mr. Birkner learns how to use the
bulletin board with them. He follows along as Mr. Hannon
demonstrates how posted messages are organized. By the end
of the 90-minute class, he and Mr. Hannon are whispering about
other resources on the Web that might be used in classes.

An hour later, Mr. Hannon is having lunch with an assistant
professor of English, Christopher R. Fee, who has asked
students in his Viking-studies class to use the Web's hypertext
format to create their semester-long projects. Over apple pie, he
and Mr. Hannon talk about technology-related questions to add
to Mr. Fee's course-evaluation forms.

This is the kind of interaction, Mr. Hannon says later, that he
really enjoys. "I love teaching, and in this job, I get to teach," he
says. "Sometimes I'm teaching faculty, sometimes students in the
classroom." At the same time, he notes, he is able to devote
parts of his days to trying new teaching techniques -- something
that most professors don't have time to do.

Mr. Hannon, who received his Ph.D. from West Virginia
University, is also bent on making his job as academically
oriented as possible. Scholarly journals on teaching and
technology have emerged in the past few years, offering
instructional technologists like him the chance to write and
publish. To stay in touch with Gettysburg professors' concerns,
he has started a network of what he calls faculty liaisons,
comprising "early adopters" -- professors who started using
technology before most of their peers did. He meets with them
regularly to keep tabs on what software he should be
investigating and what the rest of the departments are coming to
expect.

Mr. Hannon says, however, that his job has its "hazards."
Sometimes he finds himself doing technical work rather than
teaching. A few months ago, for example, he and the rest of the
college's computing staff spent many weeks installing new
software on computers across the campus. "I felt like a computer
person when I was supposed to feel like a faculty person," Mr.
Hannon says.

Ms. Gross-Gray, of Shippensburg, says she has the same
frustration. "It seems like I get a lot of calls about glitches," she
says. Part of the problem, she says, is that her position is so
new that some people on the campus aren't sure what falls into
her domain and what doesn't. She transfers many calls to the
computer-help desk, but she does talk with professors who call
with specific problems. "It's those things that help me in my
workshops," she says. "I can see what needs are out there."

Unlike Mr. Hannon, who taught himself computer applications
while he was teaching English at Michigan State University and
the University of Alabama, Ms. Gross-Gray has formal training in
how to incorporate technology into the classroom. She earned
a master's degree in instructional technology from Bloomsburg
University of Pennsylvania. Graduates of the program take jobs
in schools, colleges, or corporations, where technology-based
training programs are becoming common.

Meanwhile, doctoral students who are learning the ins and outs
of on-line technologies are finding that jobs like Mr. Hannon's
could provide them with a new career track.

What's more, such positions may pay better than most
entrance-level professorships. The jobs are rarely considered to
be tenure-track, but the salary levels of instructional
technologists at some colleges are set a few thousand dollars
higher than those of assistant professorships. In general,
computing administrators say, instructional technologists make
$30,000 to $50,000 a year, depending on the level of
experience they bring to the job. At Maryland, one associate
now makes more than $60,000 a year.

"There are graduate students in every department in the country
who could make this their niche," says Gettysburg's Mr. Fee.

But it is an open question which department of a college or
university should pay for these positions. Many of the
instructional-technology specialists are hired and paid by an
academic-computing division. Others are taken under the
library's wing. In only a few cases do academic departments
cover the cost.

At Gettysburg, Mr. Hannon's position is within a group called
Instructional Technology and Training, which also includes a
Web-design specialist and a person responsible for student and
staff training. Bill Wilson manages the group. He lines up the
software, hardware, and staff time needed for implementing new
technologies, and works with faculty members on completing
multimedia projects that don't fit into Mr. Hannon's workload.

Mr. Wilson reports to Mr. Martys, the vice-provost for information
resources, but the group's office is located in the basement of
Musselman Library. It's a brightly lit space, with glass walls that
offer Mr. Hannon a view of shelves of books. His own shelves
are filling up with software boxes and power cords. Around the
corner is the instructional-technology "classroom," a computer
lab used for workshops and training.

After a meeting with Mr. Wilson and other staff members this
afternoon, Mr. Hannon turns to his e-mail. There's a message
from a technical-staff member about a software patch that has
just been installed; a reminder about an addition to his
"Teaching With Technology" Web site; and a notice from an
educational-software company about a new product. A few
other messages are from faculty members asking about
Gettysburg's new classroom-enhancement grants.

Right now, however, there's no time for more than a glance at
such messages. Faculty members are already gathering in the
computer lab around the corner. Mr. Wilson and Mr. Hannon are
planning to give a demonstration of WebCT and Blackboard,
two software products that are designed to help professors
transfer their courses to the Web.

Mr. Hannon reviews some notes on his yellow pad and scrolls
through his e-mail once more. The timed alarm on his Palm Pilot
beeps from his jacket pocket. It's time to go.

http://chronicle.com
Section: Information Technology
Page: A35

Copyright © 1998 by The Chronicle of Higher Education

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