It is conference season for educators. It comes three times per year: In the middle of fall, after the semester has gotten started, but before the end of the term crunch starts. Again, in the middle of the spring semester and finally (to a lesser degree) in the summer.
For educators, these can be refreshing. We get away from the day-to-day tasks of teaching and spend time talking to and hearing from others who do the same work we do. Conferences remind us why we entered the field.
For as long as educators have gone to conferences (at least since I started attending when I was an undergraduate student in the mid 1980s), some of the most popular sessions are on new or rediscovered teaching methods. Educators always like to hear and see what is working with others. As a long-time presenter at such sessions, I know there are always excellent questions from the audience when we get together and talk teaching. This is especially true when those sessions demonstrate new hardware or software.
Among the common questions at sessions demonstrating technology-based teaching are those that focus on how one gets it and what are the costs. The reality for many educators is they do not control the teaching tools they have available. Books and other materials must be purchased, and hardware and software must be installed, configured, and managed. Educators do not control the budgets to purchase the things they need, and they do not control the IT staff who must manage the technology they need.
The result is a frustrating situation for educators. They go to conferences, learn about great new tools they want to use, but they can’t.
The budget realities are understandable and, in many cases, can’t be addressed. Budget planning is a long process in institutions like schools.
The IT realities pose a more difficult situation. I am a technology leader. I understand the realities of managing large fleets of devices, providing robust and reliable networks, and securing data. It takes planning and testing, and school IT staffs are understaffed. I understand what motivates IT leaders to say “no” to requests for new hardware and software.
I believe, however, that is an indefensible response from IT.
IT leaders and staff have a responsibility to do what they must do to ensure educators have the hardware and software they need. Sure, it needs to be tested and integrated in into the existing systems, but their job is to test technology and integrate it into existing systems.
A common response from IT is they want to be included in the decision-making process. Sure, we should be included, but they must be able to override decisions in a very limited domain:
- A team wants to purchase Acer laptops for a project in which staff need general purpose laptops. IT should override the recommendation and provide laptops that can be imaged and otherwise deployed and supported within existing procedures.
- A team needs Macintosh desktops to run software necessary for their program that is not available on Windows computers. IT cannot override the decision; they must provide the platform the faculty deem necessary.
It takes hubris for IT to think they have better knowledge of what hardware and software educators need than the educators themselves. It is failure for leaders to allow IT to be the “department of no” when IT requests are made.
A few years ago, I was asked to attend a meeting at which the faculty of a department were asking for an upgrade necessary for their courses. There were multiple technicians—technicians who provide tier 1 support, valuable staff to be sure, but also those with the least knowledge of the situations—who were vehemently telling the faculty they did not need the upgrade. I will not give additional details about how the faculty and their needs were dismissed by the IT team. I did apologize to the faculty later and I explained to the CIO how that meeting had done much to erode the trust between faculty and IT they indicated they wanted to improve when I was hired.
To conclude this post:
- Faculty go to conferences and get excited about new teaching tools, some of which include technology.
- It is the IT staff’s role to ensure the faculty have the IT they need. Even if they are not familiar with the tools or if they were not involved in the decision-making, they must provide it.
- It is the leaders’ role to ensure IT is doing what they are supposed to be doing.
Just as we should judge faculty who do not seek to improve their teaching to be failed, we must judge IT staff who are a barrier to educators getting what they need to be a failure, and we need to judge any leaders who allow the barrier to be a failure as well. If you are not comfortable giving this message to the IT departments or leaders in your institution, I’d be happy to do it for you.