Over at Pedablogue I saw a reference to Erica McWilliam’s Against Professional Development article. It reminds me of an episode ten years ago when I was a more naive librarian at Old Dominion University.

I was meeting with a young, new assistant professor who had a reputation for being on the leading edge of teaching in creative ways, particularly with technology. I had started to talk about the university’s faculty development programs when she stopped me. She looked at me questioningly and asked, “What about the faculty who are already developed?”.

That question stopped me cold.

Over the next ten years her comment has continued to be in the back of my mind as I think about library services targeted at faculty. Of course, that young member of the faculty knew that every professional would benefit from lifelong learning and development, just as McWilliams points out. But, this young assistant professor seemed to be really asking how did the university determine this particular faculty development program. And, more so, she was asking about what support services were available for faculty. It’s all well and good to have all sorts of workshops for faculty but if there are not solid support services lined up behind those workshops, then many faculty end up frustrated.

Digital media offers very interesting ways to enhance teaching and research. However, the focus for faculty should be on content and teaching models for use with technology rather than learning how to master the technology toolkit. Yet, there is so little support structure at most universities for technologists to work closely with faculty. Usually what is available is done in the form of training under the guise of professional development. Of course, there are a lot of issues involved, it takes a lot of planning, coordination, and staffing.

This is where I think that libraries can play an even great role in collaborating with faculty on issues of utilizing digital media in both the classroom and as a tool for disseminating research. For the latter, I’m not talking just about e-journals and web sites but teaming a technologist and a scholar together to really think hard about new ways of presenting scholarly information through digital media. On some campuses, an active teaching, learning, technology center might provide this function. On other campuses, that function is not clearly the domain of any support area. Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter what division of the university tackles these endeavors, it just matters that the issues are recognized, talked about, and that action is taking place.

In my conversations with faculty, I sense that many of them have a very good idea of what they would like to accomplish through digital media; they just need some support in making it a reality.

From reading her article one gets the sense that McWilliams well understands the ways that university administrators develop professional development programs just because they think that’s what univeristy administrators should be doing in orde to improve the efficiency of teaching and make the school more competitive in recruiting and retaining students and new faculty.

McWilliams writes, “Academics and academic managers should bring to
professional development the same systematic curiosity and capacity for scepticism that
is the hallmark of good science and good scholarship whatever the object of analysis. ”

Of course, in the end, it’s all about good management and leadership at the university level. Unfortunately, that is a lot harder than it sounds.