U. of Kentucky’s Technology Leadership Center Will Be Run From Iowa

March 7, 2011, 5:51 pm

Testing the limits of distance education and administration, the University of Kentucky has hired a professor and the technology leadership center that he directs away from Iowa State University—but will leave the professor in Ames to work remotely, unsettling some of his new colleagues, according to a local newspaper.

Scott McLeod will become an an associate professor in the department of educational leadership studies in the fall of 2011, the university announced today. His organization, the Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education, will be moving to Kentucky as well, along with another full-time faculty member. The center will have two research assistants.

The center focuses on school instructors and administrators, leading courses in cutting-edge educational technology use. Mr. McLeod expects to teach online, visit Kentucky several times each month, and work with local school districts as well as with colleagues at the university.

Some of those colleagues expressed a little hesitancy at the idea of a distant professor in an article in the Lexington Herald-Leader, wondering how Mr. McLeod was going to perform the service part of his job, such as mentoring other professors, doing classroom observations, and participating in departmental meetings. Mr. McLeod and university officials were reassuring, noting that he would be in Kentucky regularly, that teleconferencing is common and effective, and that he already has a great deal of experience teaching remotely. Mr. McLeod will be Kentucky’s first remote professor, although the university already offers many online courses.

The reservations don’t surprise Cole W. Camplese, senior director of teaching and learning with technology at Pennsylvania State University. “Anytime there is a radical change in the way things are done, people will be cautious,” he says. The university has apparently decided this is worth the risk, he adds. Mr. Camplese also notes that Mr. McLeod is well-regarded and very experienced. “If anyone can pull this off, it will be someone like Scott,” he says.

On his blog, Dangerously Irrelevant, Mr. McLeod admits “this is an unusual setup for a tenured faculty member at a traditional (i.e., not wholly online) university. I’ve repeatedly said that knowledge workers are increasingly able to work for anyone from anywhere. Apparently I now get to live that statement.”

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jabberwocky12

Finally, f2f universities with distance education components are prepared to have the staff work at a distance. It’s been interesting to see so many institutions advocating distance education, but simultaneously insisting that the staff interact with each other f2f. It’s been amazing that almost none of them see the incongruity of that.

Of course, part of the problem is that the employment policies, rules regarding things like FTEs, working hours, etc, are decided by people who have little idea about education in the 21st century, and those policies simply struggle to cope with the concept of full-time employees not coming onto campus.
http://twitter.com/Lonnie_Fuller Lonnie_Fuller

In a previous job, I found that I needed some core amount of face time to build and maintain relationships before being able to excel from a distance. He may also need some established time to “check in” and stay abreast of local issues that he won’t hear about from afar. It should be a good experiment.
http://hiresteve.com/ Steve Foerster

Don’t get me wrong, it’s good that they’ll consider an arrangement, but the fact that this is so amazing just highlights how backwards traditional higher education still is.
drob00

I’m a graduate of the University of Kentucky. This is a great idea for all of the stakeholders involved in the community and at UK. Education and technology are partners in this knowledge economy. Universities should lead the way in improving this vital relationship.
goxewu

When I went to college, a long time ago, I had lots of remote professors.
chronic_reader

Trust me, Scott really knows how to work remotely, he used to do that even at Iowa State! Like, he was never there! So what the big deal? UK have fun with this hire, remotely, that is. LMAO.
eelalien

I really like this trend, I am hoping it continues. I traveled overseas last year and was away for five months on a Fulbright Scholarship, experiencing what it was like – it is all quite doable. I attended a student’s committee meeting, advised graduate students, and even received my annual evaluation from my dept. chair via Skype. Many technologies available today are free and easy to use, and communications, even across continents and eight hour time zone differences, are relatively simple to arrange. Let’s encourage higher education to join the 21st century workforce!
11272784

Only one word can sum this up: DUH.

I do a great deal of tech support and almost all is done by phone or email; I could easily add desktop conferencing.
etmiller

My word to sum it up is “meh.” It’s about the same distance between the UC Regents in San Francisco and the UC San Diego campus.
http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org Scott McLeod

Thanks for the write-up. Everyone involved with this recognizes that it’s unusual, at least for academe. We have committed ourselves to ongoing evaluation of the arrangement and will make changes as need be. For those who are interested, here’s my blog post about the move:

http://bigthink.com/ideas/30848

and here are a few paragraphs from my proposal to UK:

“Growing numbers of employees are working away from the office, either at home and/or from the road. These ‘remote workers’ now make up at least 10% of the American workforce, a percentage that’s tripled since 2000 (Mulki et al., 2009). Like corporations, nonprofits, and other institutions, colleges and universities will increasingly need to set aside some of their traditional place-bound and ‘on site’ notions of employment in order to 1) accommodate employees’ preferences regarding work-life balance, and 2) attract and retain top-line talent in a hypercompetitive global economy that allows knowledge work to occur anywhere.
…
Knowledge work typically isn’t place-bound. Postsecondary faculty members are prototypical knowledge workers; if they are willing and interested, they are able to do the vast majority of their work from any location on the globe, traveling when necessary to facilitate particularly critical face-to-face interactions.
…
Of course there are advantages to being physically present now and then. I think that this proposed plan takes that into account. I can be around for many (and, hopefully, most) College and department meetings, orientations, conferences, training institutes, learning seminars, and the like; I’ll just schedule my visits to campus to accommodate them (like I do now). I already do most of my work from home or from the road; the only difference in this scenario will be that – instead of my few days per month ‘in office’ being occasional and dispersed over the course of 28 to 31 days – my days on campus and/or in Kentucky will be more focused and compressed into one roughly-contiguous week per month.
…
Although studies suggest that “telecommuters tend to be more productive than their office-bound counterparts” (Hakala, 2008), there are potential disadvantages to being a remote worker. Those include workplace isolation, lack of visibility, and other issues related to lack of face-to-face communication (Mulki et al., 2009). I will be particularly sensitive to the need to foster interpersonal relationships with department, college, and university faculty (as well as outside individuals and institutions) during my monthly times in Kentucky and will go out of my way to ensure that those happen. I recognize that some individuals at UK are going to be resentful of this setup, feel inconvenienced, and/or see this as special treatment; I am willing to address these concerns as I am able. I likely will miss a few faculty social get-togethers as well as a few professional meetings and will miss out on some of the culture and other benefits of being a resident UK faculty member.
…
Despite some of the inherent disadvantages of this proposed plan, I really do think that the benefits outweigh the burdens and that, on the whole, we can make this work. I know that this is an ‘out of the box’ proposal when it comes to typical university thinking about faculty members, but one of the things that is attractive to me about UK is its current proclivity for some unconventional thinking. If any traditional, flagship, land grant university can overcome long held notions regarding faculty ‘on site’ presence, I think it could be UK. If folks are willing to pick up a phone, turn on a webcam, or send an e-mail or instant message every once in a while instead of needing to physically meet with me (like they would if I lived in a Kentucky location distant from Lexington, for example), I believe this could go fairly smoothly. I will do my best to be a model employee, will not expect fewer service obligations just because of my residential distance, and will work diligently with the Educational Leadership faculty, the College of Education administration and professors, and other relevant individuals and institutions to resolve ongoing needs and concerns.”

—

chronic_reader is correct when he/she says that I’m not on the hall much at ISU. Most of the Educational Leadership faculty at ISU are around much less than our colleagues because our classes are off-campus around the state and our work is with practicing administrators in the field. Additionally, my center, CASTLE, focuses heavily on direct, hands-on work with principals and superintendents. I’ve done nearly 200 workshops for school leaders over the past couple of years; most of those have been in-state. It is this combination of statewide and national work (and our concurrent impacts on schools and students) – along with our fairly high international visibility – that is of great interest to UK. Despite some concerns expressed – and, to be honest, a bit of uncertainty regarding some of the day-to-day details of this arrangement – on the whole we think we can make this work. I have strong support from my department and the Dean, Provost, and President; am looking forward to meeting the rest of the UK faculty; and am both honored and humbled to be given the chance to try and strike this work-home life balance.

Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have further thoughts! http://www.scottmcleod.net
edwoof

How do we really know that you are The Scott Mcleod?

We don’t. And that’s the point.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000403166792 Paul Dadosky

My alma mater employs a professor from one of the first universities where computers were “born”.
bormand

Duh, if he will be there periodically f2f, and virtually frequently, then why does he have to live there. Regarding the criticism of not being able to mentor other professors (do they not have anyone trained to use a telephone, skype/webconf, email, wiki work, etc.), not being able to do classroom observations (do they not have any online courses and/or have not heard about things like Quality Matters peer review process), and not being able to participate in departmental meetings (first reaction “thank God”, but seriouisly, if they cannot include remote participants in their meetings smoothly, then how good are they at supporting their DE students). As far as community, a virtual community can sometime be better than the f2f one. I have often found more collegial and engaging people who live in other places then some of the folks on my own campus. Virtual is great, F2F is great – hybrid working/learning is in our futures.

OK, so most people do like to interact “in person” occasionally…. He will be on campus several times a month (similar to how often some professors are seen around their offices). Did he get a dorm room with the job ;-). His job should be about competency and deliverables, not “seat time” (hey, haven’t we heard something like this related to educational reform).
tee_bee

Wow, I agree with this nutjob. A first time for everything, I guess.
11134078

Careful tee-bee. This is more likely a shot in his (apparently) increasing war with the clerical powers than something he cares about or believes in.
wchristie

I think it would be interesting to know how consistent people are in their approaches. I was always fairly strict with my freshmen because my experience had shown me that they weren’t quite ready to handle too much freedom. But then I was thoroughly libertarian with my seniors and (especially) my graduate students. That mix of approaches seemed to serve pretty well.
johnw86

Wow, that last paragraph took a left turn. As an administrator who clearly stands in the libertarian camp, I really don’t care how faculty manage their classrooms, as long as they’re fair to students, clearly explain their expectations, follow college policies, and don’t send students to my office for minor infractions of instructor-specific policies.
robjenkins

A left turn indeed.

I admire and appreciate the kind of administrator you describe. I’ve known a few of them. I tried to behave that way when I was an administrator. But sadly, I don’t believe most administators fit into that category. I’ve seen too much evidence to the contrary.

Best,
Rob
lithead

I also see the same division about whether to have no distribution requirements or many. It seems to me, based entirely on a nonscientific sample, that those who are more invested in education theory want fewer requirements/rules. But I’ve come to see the tension itself as a useful one, partly so that we can explore the ways the sides are the same, as johnskm suggests. But I believe it’s useful for students to experience different types of classroom management.
My experience with deans and other academic-focused administrators is that they often feel (I think overly) worried about precedent, but also are sympathetic to faculty and student challenges in the classroom, which makes me feel they are less authoritarian.
shoelessjoe1980

I agree with the Rob and will add an additional cause. Younger professors often feel like they have to get respect from their students because of their closeness in age; thus, they often use the authoritarian approach in order to let their students know “whose the boss.” Then, as they get older they loosen up a bit.

Regarding the main article, I would say that the numbers are not fairly approached statistically for a representative model because you are not accounting for a significant factor. The reason you had 2/3 Authoritarian and 1/3 Lib is that your article was Lib and thus, they were responding to it. If your article had been promoting an A model, you would have probably gotten twice as many L responses in order to combat the “privileged” voice posted on the Chronicle.
robjenkins

Maybe you’re right, shoelessjoe. I’m no expert on statistical analysis. But I’ve written on other topics from a particular point of view and had most commenters agree with me.

Rob
proftowanda

Agreed; in response to the first reply above, it’s less about the age of the professor than the age of the students. Many of my “13th-graders” transitioning from high school ask for clear, concise rules and boundaries, but my juniors and seniors like to push beyond those to some extent and are ready to be the “grown ups” that they are, as are grad students.

This also may be because of my type of campus, a public commuter campus with fairly open admission standards. I also have taught at large public and private campuses with far higher admission standards, where students arrived ready to take more responsibility and did not plead for less flexibility. Again: Thus, this may be more about them than about us.
jamesebryan

Well, in my junior and senior level classes (we don’t have graduate students yet, but will next year) I frequently allow my students some input as to what details of the topics we have been covering are most important and therefore most appropriate for testing, subject to my amendment or veto. As I always explain to the students, my classroom isn’t a democracy, it’s a benevolent dictatorship. I value their input and want to get them to invest in what they are learning, but if they already knew enough about the topic to be completely in charge they wouldn’t need to be in school taking a class on it. On the other hand, in graduate school I was treated almost as a colleague by my instructors, and plan to allow much greater freedom with my grad students, while expecting much more from them.
deller

I’m naturally quite “libertarian,” but have gotten myself into trouble at times. I notice when I have ignored the people texting in class that others are distracted by it. Occasionally I would just stop the class and wait for the student[s] to realize they were disrupting our process. But I get kind of like a worn-out parent. As long as it’s not too distracting, I ignore them. I just don’t think it’s my job to make college students pay attention. I try to engage people the best I can, with interesting approaches, enthusiasm, variety, and active in-class work, but some people you just can’t hook. Coercion [fear - punishment, disapproval, etc.] always makes me feel like a jailer. That’s not the job I signed up for [but to some degree, has at times been the job I've had]. I should say that maintaining high standards in terms of classroom conduct is important, is not the same as being a jailer. But I do feel like many students seem poorly socialized – they don’t seem to know what appropriate semi-formal public behavior is [don't put your feet in chairs where other people sit, don't bring Big Macs to eat in class, don't ignore what is going on in class - i.e. don't hold private conversations. Weird stuff, to me]. So we have to “teach” that too. Don’t know what they had been doing the 12 years prior.

I’ll add that I am taking a class now myself which meets in a computer lab. At any given time, probably 50% of the students [8 of 16] are surfing or reading facebook, and ignoring the instructor. But they are not disruptive, and their inattention doesn’t seem to bother him – the other 6-8 people make up for those in orbit. People daydreamed in class before cell phones [though you couldn't always tell...].
tardigrade

It doesn’t matter how much you know. Unless a school is benevolent enough to allow a demonstrastion of equivalent*** competency, the students still need that credit for the all-important degree.

*** – not “exact” competency – given the abundance of examples which
could be used on a test only a real expert could be guaranteed to pass any
test.