A $20-Million Carrot

At the moment, the corridors of Innovation Hall are silent, empty of everything but anticipation and the chalky tang of new drywall. In the classrooms, holes have been cut in the ceilings for the latest digital projectors. Loose wires hang where workers will soon install computer-loaded podiums. Desks are just as ready to accommodate laptops as pens and paper.

Innovation Hall, a $20-million, 100,000-square-foot building stocked with technological tools, will be a showpiece for George Mason University and will undoubtedly be an attractive location for courses that use technology. Alan G. Merten, the university's president, plans to use that to his advantage.

Like many administrators, Mr. Merten has struggled with the challenge of getting more professors to use technology in the classroom. He has improved technology support and set up grant programs to pay for course retooling. He has even scheduled awards ceremonies to honor faculty members who have incorporated high-tech devices in their teaching. Now he is approaching Innovation Hall with a new plan, a wager: What tech-savvy professor, or merely tech-curious professor, wouldn't want to teach in this brand-new, high-tech building? Most colleges assign fancy new buildings to departments. Innovation Hall will be open to all professors in all disciplines, he says, but only on the condition that they expand the use of technology in their lessons.

Teaching in Innovation Hall will be a reward for those who have already upgraded their courses to use technology, Mr. Merten says. As for those instructors who are merely curious about technology, Mr. Merten hopes the lure of the building and its new classrooms will encourage them to take the next step.

When Innovation Hall opens in the fall, it will feature rooms with sound systems, video players, digital projectors, wireless microphones, tables with Internet jacks and power outlets for laptops, and touch-screen computers in podiums to control all of the gadgets. It will also have a television studio with satellite-linking capabilities, seminar rooms with 12-foot screens, and a computer lab that could -- in size, at least -- serve as a basketball court.

Minor features of the building, such as dimming switches for the lights, were added based on faculty members' frustrations with the university's existing electronic classrooms. Tech support will be located on the fourth floor, so faculty members also won't have to wait as long for help if something goes wrong.

Administrators at many colleges look for ways to induce faculty members to use technology, but even so Mr. Merten's latest plan stands out. On a campus that is desperately short on classrooms, and especially short on up-to-date electronic classrooms, using a $20-million building as a carrot to lure professors toward classroom technology is an approach many other institutions would shy away from.

"Everyone is going to want to teach in the new building, but we're going to be saying to people that in this new building, you have to be doing something special to get in," Mr. Merten says. "We're trying to change the way people think about teaching. In some cases, no technology is fine. But for more, we felt that we had to increase the incentive to rethink the way they taught."

Enthusiasm and Indifference

So far, few professors have heard about Mr. Merten's plan. Some support it, and some aren't sure it will work.

"I have no problems with that policy," says Robert Ehrlich, a professor of physics who says that he is a "modest" user of technology in teaching -- showing classes the occasional video or PowerPoint presentation. But he adds: "I doubt that would be much of an incentive. I think the people that are going to use technology are already using it. As carrots go, this is a small one."

College administrators say it is a challenge to persuade professors who have taught with blackboards and textbooks for years to learn new high-tech tricks. At some institutions, pressure to use new techniques reflects the cost of high-tech buildings. At others, administrators say students expect a certain level of technology-based instruction. But preparing to use technology often takes time and energy, especially if the course has been taught without it in the past. Many professors say they don't have time to prepare elaborate new presentations.

Mark F. Smith, a specialist in technology issues for the American Association of University Professors, says that faculty members should use technology in courses if it is appropriate for the day's lesson. He worries that a plan like Mr. Merten's would emphasize the use of technology over sound pedagogy.

"Thorstein Veblen wrote, 'Invention is the mother of necessity' -- we've got this technology, and now we have to justify the expense," he says. "We have written over the years about the drive to use technology because it is the newest toy in the repertoire. You shouldn't use something just because it is new. The thing should be used to advance the purpose of the course."

Mark Valenti is president of the Sextant Group, a technology-consulting company that works with colleges. He says that after colleges have spent millions putting up buildings that feature advanced technology, "the last thing you want is an instructor to go in there and not use technology." Some colleges have dangled premium classroom space as an incentive -- successfully, he says. "The carrot does seem to work."

He cites a project his company worked on at Saint Vincent College, in Latrobe, Pa. Saint Vincent added high-tech classrooms next to a traditional classroom building. "The deal was, if you wanted to get out of the drafty old classrooms, you had to demonstrate that you could use the technology," he says. "They were booked for the first semester with people using the stuff. They actually had a waiting list."

C. Thomas Morrison, Saint Vincent's chief information officer, says that the high-tech of the rooms did push professors to learn new skills, but on the whole, he adds, "just buying the technology doesn't get it done." Lately he has found that the use of course-management software and participation in training sessions has helped more professors adopt technology for teaching.

Most institutions offer their professors more than classroom space to get them to teach with technology. Purdue University's Krannert Graduate School of Management offers grants and staff assistance to professors who are interested in incorporating technology into classes. At Drexel University, which has a new $15-million high-tech business-school building, administrators hand out $7,000 to $10,000 grants to professors to incorporate new technology into lesson plans. The university also gives monetary awards -- up to $12,000 -- to professors who have been particularly innovative.

Like Drexel and Purdue, George Mason has set up various incentives to push professors to employ technology. In Virginia, the tech industry is a mainstay of the economy and the state is giving money to institutions for technology initiatives. "Teaching with technology" has become something of a mantra on George Mason's campus.

Broad Efforts at George Mason

Soon after arriving at the university in 1996, Mr. Merten, a computer scientist and a former business-school dean, consolidated computing support on campus and hired a chief information officer to focus on instructional uses for technology. For the past several years, the university's College of Arts and Sciences has run a program called Technology Across the Curriculum that will give out $225,000 in grants and salaries for support staff this year. The university also holds awards ceremonies and conferences at which professors are recognized for their use of technology. Columns in university publications feature faculty members who use technology in teaching.

These programs have encouraged some faculty members to try out new teaching strategies in the university's various electronic classrooms, many of which have been retrofitted with digital projectors, sound systems, and Internet jacks. But in some cases, professors who want to use technology in their courses have had to transport projectors and laptops on wheeled carts. If glitches arise, the professor has to call tech support and wait for a staff member to arrive, sometimes from across campus.

Mr. Merten says professors who are already interested in technology will put up with old equipment, system bugs, and occasional crashes. Colleges support such early adopters of technology, but "we don't support the people who really want to use technology, but who are not going to do it on their own," he says.

"Those people need both the right facility and the right support," he continues, saying that this is the role for the new building. "The sophisticated classroom is the sophisticated chauffeur."

For the fall, the registrar was able to fill all the requests for electronic classrooms in Innovation Hall, but "we're going to start giving tours pretty soon, and then you're going to start to see a competition, then some conflict, and then we'll see successes and failures," Mr. Merten says. So far, however, no formal mechanism has been created to determine who will be allowed to teach in the building and who will not.

Mr. Merten says space in Innovation Hall will be distributed much as it is in the George W. Johnson Center, the university's humming, centrally located student center, which features offices and computer labs along with a library and a food court. To teach in the Johnson Center, faculty members must write proposals detailing how they would use the space effectively. The proposals are then reviewed by a committee. Occupants of the Johnson Center have to defend their territory from time to time.

"With rare exceptions, no one is permanently in there," Mr. Merten says. "We tell people, you can have this prime real estate as long as you can demonstrate you are effectively using it. If you're not, we'll throw you out and bring someone else in. The same kind of thing is driving Innovation Hall."

Conversations with faculty members, deans, administrators, and technology staff members indicate that reactions to Mr. Merten's plan are mixed, ranging from enthusiasm to skepticism to apathy.

'Who Does the Determining?'

Michael Kelley, a professor of telecommunications, says the incentive system Mr. Merten proposes is simply impractical at the university. "I can't even imagine who would dole out rewards like that," he says, adding that the building should be a general incentive for anyone. "To say that we're going to hold this out for Professor Jones is unrealistic. Who does the determining?"

"They might try it, but it's going to be difficult," he adds. "It won't be long before there are more professors than there are classrooms."

However, others at George Mason, particularly those who teach with technology and have already been active in lobbying for space, say they doubt that, in the end, Mr. Merten will explicitly use Innovation Hall as a reward for those whose teaching is cutting-edge. "I pride myself on being in the know," says Charlene Douglas, an associate professor of nursing. "It's not an incentive or reward. If you need a classroom, you'll get one."

A year ago, when she was asked by her department to file a request for space in the building, she was skeptical that she would get any. "I knew in my heart of hearts that nobody was getting in there but engineering and IT," she says. "But we got some of those rooms in Innovation Hall. I was stunned. We all were."

But Harold F. Gortner, the interim chairman of the geography department, says that using the building as an incentive will work. Mr. Gortner is looking forward to Innovation Hall's grand opening in the fall. His department will use a classroom featuring equipment with geographic-information-system software. "The idea is, if you build it, they will come," he says. "The process proposed by the administration makes sense. If professors have an interest in technology, this will be a boost."

Of course, there is always the chance that his department could get pushed out by another one, but he is not cowed by that prospect. "We need to stay on top, and if we're not, we're doing a disservice to the university."

And besides, he says, "I'm convinced that the kind of people that are fighting to get in there are on the top anyway."