Three institutionally sponsored and centrally managed, 3-year faculty-development projects, implemented by Boise State University’s Academic Technologies Department since 1998, have become major catalysts for large-scale integration and adoption of educational technologies by Boise State faculty, according to two educational technologists. In an interview with Educational Pathways, Ben Hambelton, Boise State’s director of Academic Technologies, and Kevin Wilson, technical communicator, explained how these three projects - titled "Bridging the Chasm," "CoreOnline at Boise State," and "H3: High Tech, High Quality, Hybrid" - have assisted faculty with incorporating technology into instruction, transforming the way faculty teach at Boise State. Each project was funded by a Technology Incentive Grant from the Idaho State Board of Education and sponsored at the Provost level.

Bridging the Chasm was the first 3-year project launched in 1998. It established the faculty training capacity at four state institutions: Boise State, Idaho State University, Lewis-Clark State College, and the University of Idaho. The collaboration between four institutions brought about the development of a curriculum for faculty training in instructional technologies, including online tutorials and databases of instructional software and innovative teaching practices (see http://itc.boisestate.edu/facdev.htm). The project was also a catalyst for building a studio for producing digital teaching materials.

The second 3-year project - CoreOnline at Boise State - was conducted from 2001 to 2004. It trained Boise State faculty, in teams, to develop online versions of general-education core courses. An added benefit is that the project has ultimately increased the number of faculty who now have the skills to infuse technology into courses crossing over a wide variety of disciplines. A good number of what Hambelton refers to as "enabling environments" came out of this project.

First, CoreOnline had high institutional value that elicited participation from faculty who were middle to late adopters of educational technologies. The project garnered 90 faculty members, put into teams of two or three people, who were paid to participate in a graduated, three- to five-semester project that had the support of a well-rounded Academic Technologies staff (23 full-timers and 30 part-timers). The first semester consisted of workshops that focused on technical skills training. For the second semester, faculty had to introduce a web presence into one of their courses, such as an online syllabus or announcements. Through the third semester, faculty were required to incrementally design a full online course. The fourth and fifth semesters were for a segment of the faculty members in the project who actually taught the courses. A total of 30 general education core courses were created. Participants in the CoreOnline project received a notebook computer and the following monetary remuneration: $500 for attending the first-semester training; $1,500 upon completion of the second and third semester course development requirements; $1,500 for teaching the pilot online course held during the fourth semester of the project (one team member only); and $1,000 for teaching the follow-up fifth semester (one team member only).

Hambelton explained that the second enabling environment dealt with the fact that making these 30 general education courses available online (and more continue to be developed on an ad-hoc basis) has provided a head start to departments thinking about offering entire degree programs online, because now they need to concentrate on converting only their 300- to 400-level major courses.

Third, like many colleges and universities, general-education core on-campus courses typically fill up quickly, resulting in an access problem particularly for nontraditional students who cannot always fit day classes into their schedules. Moving additional sections of these courses online has made it more convenient for students to get access to the core courses they ultimately need to graduate.

Fourth, due to the high visibility of a large project involving a wide variety of departments and having high-level administrative support, CoreOnline "communicated to the campus that this is a priority, that this is important and I need to get on board," said Hambelton. He added that, during this period, there was "an explosion of faculty" coming through Academic Technologies for Blackboard training, resulting in face-to-face classes getting supplemented with educational technology on a much larger scale than in the past.

Fifth, Wilson added that the CoreOnline project "had some influence on tenure and promotion policies that were rewritten about the same time to give a little more weight to teachers using technology in instruction." However, Hambelton mentioned that the revised policies were only a "crack in the door," but nevertheless a good start for reform in this area as well.

Regarding the third 3-year project - H3: High Tech, High Quality, Hybrid - which began in 2003 and is still in progress, Hambelton said that "we recognized that the most pervasive use of technology was in the blended environment. So we decided to focus our next project on developing a more defined hybrid course design, taking faculty who were not novices, but were experienced online users, and immersing them in instructional design, active learning, and student-centered practices."

The aim of the H3 project is to create 50 hybrid courses from two cohorts of 25 faculty members. The goal of each hybrid course is to replace 50 percent of seat time in a course with online teaching and learning environments. The first cohort of 25 developed their hybrid courses during a mandatory 8-week Spring Seminar, followed by an 8-week Summer Development Institute in 2004. They created 25 courses, 16 of which were offered during the Fall 2004 semester, with the remaining currently in progress. A representative sample of the hybrid courses includes "Managing People in Organizations," "Organic Chemistry," "Health Assessment and Promotion," "Introduction to Gender Studies," and "Health Law and Ethics." The second cohort of 20 faculty members just started training this Spring 2005.

The H3 project began with a campus-wide RFP that sought out faculty members experienced with using Blackboard and educational technologies, in general, who were also teaching 300- or 400- level courses and/or not teaching general education core courses. Each faculty member accepted into the program receives a laptop and a $6,000 stipend.

The 8-week Spring Seminar (see "What’s Inside Boise State’s 8-Week Spring Seminar on How to Teach Hybrids" on page 3) put these faculty members inside a hybrid course as real students, meeting every other week face-to-face and participating in online learning experiences between meetings. Wilson said that "for many of them it was an eye-opening experience. To find themselves as students in a hybrid course was something that few of them had ever done before."

During the 8-week Summer Development Institute, faculty members worked with Academic Technologies staff members, including student technology assistants, to develop all of the teaching materials and content for their redesigned hybrid courses.

Hambelton added the H3 project overall has less of an emphasis on technical skills training and more of an emphasis on pedagogy. "We are focused on introducing some of the pedagogy and instructional theories and considerations they should go through during their design process," he said. Plus, it’s suggested that these H3 participants "treat their courses as creating a community of learners," forming peer groups and conducting peer reviews as they develop their hybrid courses, all under the watchful eyes, consultations and feedback that is provided by the Academic Technologies staff.

Looking at the three projects as a whole, Hambelton said that an enabling environment has been created at Boise State "where policies, structures, support, recognition, and training have been put into place that benefit all faculty who choose to get engaged. We make the claim that there has been a transformative effect on our campus in a very short period of time because of these central, large-scale projects. We believe that lessons learned from this experience are applicable in other settings."

References:
Ben Hambelton and Kevin S. Wilson. Evolving Faculty Development and Support: A Model for Responding to Change. BbMatters, January 18, 2005.

Editor’s Note:
Hambelton and Wilson mentioned that they are grateful for the consultative assistance they received during the development of the H3 project from educators working on blended learning projects at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UW-M) and the University of Central Florida (UCF). UW-M’s blended learning initiative was covered in the April 2004 issue of Educational Pathways. UCF’s work with blended learning was featured in the March 2004 issue.