Faculty & Technology: Rewarding TET
The emphasis on this article is the fear of Technology-Enabled Teaching due to the concerns that teachers will not be compensated or rewarded for the time they spend working on creating or recreating their courses into an online format. The fear that is discussed is due to “growing pains” that many institutions have faced (Starrett, 2004). With this, when technology was first pushed, the institutions were wanting it used more, but did not have the support put together for faculty that needed help or training on how to use the technology.
Now, more institutions want technology integrated into courses. However, the instructors are worried about several items. With the array of technology tools that are available they are first worried about support for training, maintenance, and upgrades. Secondly, what financial or time incentives will they be given to use more technology in their courses. Will they be given stipends or release time? Third, will they be rewarded with promotion or tenure? What kind of autonomy will they have to adapt courses? Other issues raised include workloads, accessibility to students and instructors in compliance with ADA, copyright laws, the quality of the classes, plagiarism, and reality of course materials.
Many of these concerns have been more in the higher education setting according to the articles, while K-12 has been pushed in this arena already. It is suggested that in order to address all of the issues discussed that the faculty need to talk with the different associations and increase awareness with the administration.
Starrett, D (2004, September 29). Faculty & technology: Rewarding TET. Retrieved October 3, 2008, from Campus Technology Web site: http://www.campustechnology.com/printarticle.aspx?id=39970