Review by: Schönwald, Ingrid (2004-08-03)

The author introduces himself as a faculty member who is “too old to be completely at ease with technology, yet too young to ignore it”. From this perspective he explores how technology is influencing the work lives and careers of faculty in higher education through an examination of the increasingly close interrelationship between technology and the academic profession.

Starting form his personal experiences in technology use from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, the author explores how technology has changed the roles and work lives of professors. He states differences of technology adoption between fields and types of institution. To explain this selective impact of technology he refers to a simplified version of Rogers’ model, distinguishing early adopters and mainstream faculty, which are characterised by different attitudes to technology, risks, and change.

Then the author examines technology’s impact on teaching, research, and service to society. Regarding the impact on teaching he states (from a late 90s perspective) that the expectations on technology’s potential to revolutionise the teaching-learning process are high, but that most professors use technology to supplement traditional instruction, not to redefine the instructional process. However traditional professor-centred models are increasingly called into questions and new technologies challenge the traditional role of faculty, as some aspects, such as the information dissemination function of lecturing can be performed more effectively or efficiently using technology. In comparison with the creeping impact on teaching, technology has profoundly transformed the research and scholarship component of faculty life by easing the process of collegial communication. Regarding the impact of technology on higher education’s service to society the author notices that technology eases the transfer of information, expertise and resources between campus and community, which will influence especially the service role of faculty in applied fields. The author mentions an interesting aspect of this discussion: Technology enables faculty to perform their traditional duties more effectively, but by expanding faculty duties may also increase role overload or role conflict and implicate information overload.

The author identifies three implications from the proceeding discussion for current practice and future planning in higher education. The first implication affects faculty careers. Baldwin predicts a higher flexibility of the academic career, e. g. by providing new career paths as a discipline-specific technology specialist or by enabling faculty to hold joint appointments at two or more institutions. The second implication is about faculty personnel policies. Baldwin advises institutions to reflect their policies, especially tenure and promotion policies, whether they reflect the value of integrating technology in teaching and proposes a differentiated staffing policy to reflect different faculty roles in higher education. The third implication concerns professional development support. As professors are required to assume new functions, most faculty members need support to develop new skills. Baldwin proposes a range of activities to convince and enable faculty to use technology, such as demonstrations of successful applications instead of speeches testifying to the benefits of technology. Regarding resistant faculty as a special challenge, the author asks whether all faculty have to be encouraged to adopt technology in their work. He points out that technology sceptics may perform a useful function – that of confronting academic leaders with the need to scrutinise the value of existing and new teaching practices.

Overall this article provides an exploratory qualitative approach to the changing faculty role due to technology. It is easy-to-read and offers many interesting starting-points for further research.