The panel discussion I was on last week at Blackboard World turned out to be pretty interesting. We actually wound up with a whopping 20 people in the audience, which was about 18 more than I expected. There were 7 of us on the panel - 3 were from community colleges, two from private universities (USC and Loma Linda) and 2 were from CSUs. We were each asked to share something about our use of Blackboard and specifically how we managed and/or encouraged growth. All three of the community college reps talked about the mechanics of our implementation - server integration, support, etc. The universities mostly talked about faculty training, mentoring, etc.
The person next to me on the panel was James Frazee, the Director of Instructional Technology Services at SDSU. Real nice guy - he showed us a great program called TechStars they use to encourage faculty in the use of technology. He told me he has a staff of about 25 people who do nothing but work with faculty and their use of technology. What an amazing resource! What a great focus for an organization to have - to help faculty help students learn with technology. I don't know of any community college that has anything like it - or even close.
Clearly it's at least partially an issue of funding - the public universities in California get an enormous amount of money compared to community colleges - but I can't help but wonder if it's also an issue of priorities. Why don't we spend more time and money helping faculty with technology? Is it just money, or is it also a matter of institutional focus?
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