Promotion, Tenure and Electronic Teaching

Aspects of the Process that merit consideration:

• Electronic curriculum development is very much like doing research. Its time consuming, painstaking with emphasis on quality control and delivery

• Electronic curriculum development has creative and "artistic" attributes associated with it. According to the Faculty Handbook, this is part of a faculty member's portfolio.

• It can directly integrate one's research into teaching - something that the UO faculty has been "urged" to do.

• The endeavor is similar to writing a textbook. At the very least, it does require preparation time for teaching, but currently we don't measure this for evaluation.

Aspects of the Process that work against consideration:

• No evidence that this effort makes a difference in learning

• No evidence that nnovative teaching with technology provides a value added to the process

• No guarantee of success

• No peer review structure for the preparation of material.

Some Good Links

• Some Initial Evaluations of Instructional Technology
• Using Information Technology to Enhance Academic Productivity
• New Tools For Teaching - Notes from A Classicist Advocating Technology

Comments from Other Universities:

• Other activities that provide evidence of a faculty member's particular commitment to effective teaching include:
  • contributions in curricular development, including collaborative courses and programs;
  • innovation in teaching strategies, including the incorporation of new technologies and approaches to learning;

• Leaving development only to senior, tenured faculty misses those who are generally more conversant with technology and who have new ideas--not to mention the energy--to innovate pedagogically.

• P&T traditions are well established and hard to change. We have to keep hammering away at the process, but at the same time we have to be prepared to demonstrate that innovative teaching with technology provides a value added that traditional teaching cannot provide. In traditional universities, that kind of evaluation is rarely practiced.

• If teaching with technology is considered a legitimate part of a faculty member's pedagogical efforts, then certainly evidence of substantive development for the purpose of enhancing teaching through technology, whether wholly successful or not, ought to count for something

• There is real fear that faculty at our institution will be penalized for not adopting some form of instructional technology into their curriculum.

• The adoption of on-line resources can bring about a learning environment in which knowledge is readily created by the individual student, not transmitted from the teacher to the student. Are we ready to handle that as University professors?