Maximizing Campus Impact

» Case Study 1

Case Western Reserve University Creates Faculty Outreach Program
With a staff of three serving hundreds of faculty, ITAC created a program that increased their visibility, expanded their clientele, and established a solid reputation for the department among the faculty. Here is the story in their own words.

The Situation
The department of Instructional Technology and Academic Computing (ITAC) at Case is part of Information Technology Services (ITS) and is charged with providing support for faculty to enable them to integrate technology into teaching and learning processes. One of the biggest challenges faced by ITAC is getting people to use the services offered.

The problem is threefold:

• Making faculty aware of services
• Building trust with faculty
• Providing services to faculty

The problem is compounded by the fact that there are over 800 faculty at Case.

The Action Taken
In response to this problem, ITAC's Faculty Support Group created the Faculty Outreach Program. The Faculty Support Group is made up of 3 staff members under the Faculty Support Group Manager:

• The Instructional Designer
• The Instructional Technology Coordinator
• The Creative Director of New Media

The academic departments were divided across the 3 staff members with each staff member becoming the department liaison, responsible for each faculty member within that department.

Each liaison has "Invitations" to give out to Faculty. These invitations not only outline the services offered by ITAC but give each faculty member the personal contact information for the liaison (phone, email, and even a photo). The invitations were part of a well-developed communication plan. They are attractively glossy and oversized (4”X6”) so that they are not easily filed away with commonplace business cards. As a result, we have observed that the invitations are being placed where they belong, next to faculty computers or on their desks.

The liaisons take both a top-down and bottom-up approach. The first approach is to contact the Department Chairs and get invited to Faculty Meetings to introduce ITAC and the outreach program. The second is to contact faculty anywhere they can be encountered (mostly through networking), resulting in word-of-mouth recommendations through the faculty.

The Faculty Support Group staff members still continue with their primary responsibilities – for instance, one staff member arranged to put on a Blackboard workshop for the Dance department that was then given by a different staff member who was trained in Blackboard. The Faculty Liaison may not personally possess the skills or resources that the faculty need, but can serve as a facilitator that coordinates, refers, and schedules them with appropriate personnel. This significantly reduces the burden on faculty to find the right person or resource which can be costly in terms of time and satisfaction with our services.

For the most part the services offered are free, though we do promote some of the pay-for services that the department offers. We are very clear about what goes beyond basic support and into the realm of a special project that needs allocated resources.

The Effect on Campus
The response has been overwhelming. The department Chairs have welcomed us to attend their faculty meetings and it is not unusual to get a call with a question or two the same day from some of the faculty who were in attendance.

We are measuring the volume of contacts but also the volume and type of responses. For instance, we track the number of workshops or one-on-one sessions requested. It is worthy of note that while attendance at our faculty workshops and seminars was not high in the past, after the initiation of our faculty outreach program, demands for training and resultant attendance have increased significantly. We attribute some of the success to the trust and communication we have developed through the faculty outreach initiative.

It is very much a divide-and-conquer approach – to offer support one department at a time, one faculty member at a time, and raise the bar of instructional technology use.

Tips for Other Centers
Less is more. You don’t have to commit to a project to help a faculty member – sometimes it is enough to be a source of information. This type of support scales up pretty easily because one-on-one support can quickly turn into mini groups or even workshops. It is important to let them know what you are and aren’t selling right away. Sometimes it’s best to get past what services DO require funding and then focus on what you can do today.

Finally, it’s only useful to build the faculty trust if you are not going to abuse it. Follow-up is essential not only on your own actions but on people you might hand them off to as well.

Additional Comments
We believe that, while there are still novices, most faculty at Case are ready to move beyond button-pushing and mouse-clicking support. Our focus has evolved into three areas: teaching and learning, or pedagogy before technology; emerging technologies; and assessment and evaluation.

There has been a refreshing change in the direction of faculty interest and requests for assistance from "how do I set up my wiki or blog" to "how might I use a wiki or blog in my courses?" There has also been an acceptance by our faculty that we are the “go to” people when it comes to testing and recommending new media or emerging technologies. In the words of one faculty member, “I no longer have to worry about the latest and greatest; we have people here at Case that do that for us.”

Finally, we have begun to create a culture of assessment and evaluation in all we do. As part of trust building beyond being there for them, faculty want to know if this “stuff” works. Only by using a consistent, well-thought-out plan for assessing and evaluating technology and communicating the results, will we be able to maintain a trusting and lasting relationship with them. The Faculty Outreach Initiative at Case takes us one step closer to our goal.