Connect: What is the TLTR?

Stein: The Teaching, Learning & Technology Roundtable, or TLTR, was initiated in the fall of 1998, in response to the accelerating pace of technological change on NC State's campus. The trend toward greater development and adoption of technologically facilitated educational practices holds the potential to be a real boon for education but it also yields consequences that are stretching the limits of human and material resources. The TLTR addresses such issues. The Roundtable is based on a model created by the Teaching, Learning, & Technology (TLT) group, originally within the American Association of Higher Learning and Roundtables are in operation on over six hundred campuses nationwide. The Roundtable is unique in being composed of a cross-section of every university sector who choose to join--interested faculty, administrators, students, staff, and technical personnel--who rarely have the opportunity to converse all together. It's constructed to serve as an advisory council whose purpose is to provide a forum for deliberations on all issues related to educational technologies. These deliberations are geared toward producing both formal recommendations for higher administrators and educational functions for the larger campus. It serves also to provide a channel of communication and education about topics of interest to the campus as a whole.

Connect: What has been the impact?

Stein: Just to start out with, I can say there has been a real change on campus since we started. People have the sense that there is a way to engage with often thorny issues in the area of education and technology. There's less of a belief that there are no means to address decisions, or that all decisions are made without input by higher administration. To give you an example right off the bat, Sam Averitt (Vice Provost of IT) and Henry Schaffer wanted me--as facilitator of the TLTR--to work with them on thinking up a new model for intellectual property ownership in light of the tremendous drain to corporations of technical personnel from traditional education campuses. They were also interested in looking at some of the more hidden dimensions that may arise in relation to faculty creation of online course materials.

The model I came up with was in direct response to what I had heard from technical consultants on the Roundtable. They spoke about the other interests they had that weren't simply a matter of money-- something corporations can offer at a scale we cannot. Their dedication to developing new applications and being part of a recognized creative team became the basis for finding a new way to give credits and other forms of compensation to a wider range of people than just faculty members. At the same time, we found ways to address how faculty members themselves may not be sufficiently protected under old ways of thinking about copyright when it comes to online materials, while also respecting the investments made by the university. Complicated, but these things are. Meanwhile, this model has just been published in the January/February 2001 edition of Educause Review and I was asked to present it at the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative conference in New Orleans on January 29th. It's taken a lot of people by surprise and there's clear interest in it. That would never have happened without the Roundtable--as a faculty member, I wouldn't have been able to think about technical personnel needs, for example, without being in dialogue with them.

The TLTR is also working with Joanne Dehoney in the Learning Technologies Services and the UNC-wide TLT Collaborative to host a symposium this April 16th at the Friday Center. It will be a day-long event with national directors of effective faculty training centers geared specifically toward the implementation of learning technologies. One thing that has clearly been communicated by my participation in the Roundtable is how much of a difference it's going to make to faculty to know there's adequate training and support. Many more are willing to explore new technology tools and methods if there is sufficient recognition of the time and effort involved as well as the means provided to produce something of quality.

Connect: Where did you first encounter the Roundtable idea?

Stein: I was at a conference on learning online at Virginia Tech in 1998, which I had been sent to by the dean of CHASS [the College of Humanities and Social Sciences] to find out what was going on with distance education on the national level. One of the presenters was Steve Gilbert, who created the roundtable model. His presentation followed a man's whose contribution to the proceedings was to suggest that higher education could best be improved by hiring celebrities and trained actors to teach classes, akin to the practice of hiring news broadcasters who aren't reporters, because college teaching is so bad. He didn't appear to be joking. Gilbert presented next. He said the real questions that have to be asked of higher education are, "What do you cherish most and will fight to protect when you're talking about this move into online classes? And what would you be willing, or eager to give up for the benefits learning technologies can bring?" Needless to say, I found him a breath of fresh air after the preceding presentation.

Connect: How did that message affect your thinking about online education?

Stein: I was heartened to hear someone speak about distributed learning and online education without feeling the need to disparage traditional education and its pedagogical aims--a tactic taken too often by promoters of new learning technologies. I continue to think you have to listen very attentively when people start talking about online education as the panacea for all the ills and challenges that confront us with rising enrollment, higher costs, and so on.

From Gilbert's approach I saw that there was a productive way to entertain the questions that need to be asked about the directions we're moving in, even if you don't immediately have all the answers. That if the questions aren't allowed to surface, we'll be in great difficulties in the future in terms of distance education and distributed learning in general.

I came back from that conference fired up about this new thing called a Roundtable and presented it to Senior Associate Vice Provost Frank Abrams; Doug Wellman, the head of the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning; Caroline Beebe, who had just come on as Director of the library's Digital Initiatives; and Assistant Deans of CHASS Ed Funkhauser and Moni Sawhney.

Connect: What was the reaction?

Stein: They were supportive of the idea. We ended up sitting around a table for a couple of hours talking about pedagogy--it was the prototype for what always happens when the Roundtable meets! When questions are raised that don't shy away from the things a lot of the hype surrounding new technologies likes to ignore, people really get into what matters. It makes us think about what really works in terms of teaching and what happens in a teacher-student interaction that is really valuable, what should not be lost and what could be improved by new technologies.

That meeting happened to coincide with a program that the TLT group was presenting at Wake Forest in 1998. I joined a small group from the Hewlett Initiative for their 2-day TLTR workshop. When we came back we started to meet and we met for six months in the spring of 1998 as a steering committee. We had about 15 people who were meeting once a month. Then our numbers started to increase. At that point, I, as a junior faculty member, had to look at the fact that I was spending a lot of time on something that didn't have immediate bearing on my tenure requirements. It was taking a lot more time than I had and I was simultaneously teaching three courses. I thought I couldn't continue in this effort to get the Roundtable off the ground. At that point, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Affairs James Anderson and Assistant Vice-Provost Jo Allen stepped in and offered to sponsor the Roundtable with funds that give me the time to lead the Roundtable and to attend conferences and workshops related to its areas of interest.

We came into official status in August of 1999 and began meeting with about 35 to 40 people in regular attendance. That coincided with the arrival of the new provost, Kermit Hall. Shortly thereafter, the TLTR became engaged with the Provost's request to determine the best course management software system (CMS) for adoption by NC State. It happened that some of the people on the Roundtable, who were probably more connected to the technical staff at this point, knew that this was going on. We elected to put it on our immediate agenda. Suddenly we were catapulted into participation in the question of what course management system should be adopted.

That decision in traditional terms would have been made by a very select committee appointed by people at a high level of the IT staff and the administration. It would never have been open to general discussion.

Also, Joanne Dehoney had just arrived at the university as head of Learning Technologies Services (LTS). She heard about the Roundtable and was interested in what we were doing so I met with her. It was very exciting to have someone with that kind of training and vision to develop the LTS and to be a part of the TLTR. Joanne was responsible for bringing commercial CMS vendors to the campus. The TLTR met and decided it was very important that the Roundtable have a voice in that decision and that it was the perfect use for the Roundtable. These were the sort of people who had already shown themselves to be very interested and committed to what kinds of technological decisions were being made on campus and so we put it on our agenda and became more officially invited to participate in the process.

Connect: What was the process?

Stein: The process consisted of having a number of CMS vendors--Blackboard, WebCt, Eduprise and others-- make presentations to the university. The Roundtable members constituted a large number of those who evaluated these systems. The question of open source adoption on campus became a part of those deliberations as well. Ultimately, a report was written by members of the TLTR and submitted to the Provost, the Chancellor, and the heads of Information Technology (IT) who were to make the final decision.

These sessions were often volatile. The open source issue alone brought out 55 people for a 2 hour meeting on December 21st--imagine that! All voluntary. The views of members were on several occasions directly at odds with others present. A consensus was finally reached that satisfied the majority but we made sure that the concerns of those opposed were written into the recommendation we submitted, along with the reassurances given to those concerns by the administrators meeting with us. The traditional way of decision-making in the arena of information technology-top down edicts out of hierarchical, appointed committees-was expanded to include the views of those most directly affected. In turn, the Provost and IT administrators acknowledged with appreciation the constructive role of the Roundtable in a series of decisions that affect the whole university.

Connect: So, recommendations are written up in the form of reports for the higher administration?

Stein: This is not a body that makes policy decisions. It's an advisory council. If a formal recommendation is appropriate, we work to achieve consensus, not unanimity.

Connect: How did the administration respond to the TLTR's involvement at the time?

Stein: There was intense time pressure on deciding on the course management software and the decision about a commitment to open source. There were those in positions responsible for the decisions who were skeptical of the Roundtable's involvement because it is a large group, unwieldy in the traditional sense of committees. Plus, there is no formal hierarchical structure. I am "chair" of the roundtable in the sense that someone needs to organize meetings. Now there's a scheduling challenge! and facilitate meetings. But I don't carry any special weight beyond those duties. Everyone has a voice. But we showed ourselves able and willing to put in the time and the effort to come to those presentations, to meet frequently when we were confronted with a deadline for a decision, and to issue a report within a timely fashion. We have remarkable people on the roundtable! That changed a lot of thinking. People who didn't believe it could operate as anything more than a venting session rethought their positions. And of course, as Steve Gilbert pointed out to Kermit Hall and others when he visited campus last year, it helps to spread the responsibility--that is, the glory and the blame-- to a wide number of people when those kinds of decisions are to be made!

Now, the TLTR seems a logical and obvious place to try out new ideas or to engage with certain kinds of decisions. Provost Hall praised the TLTR several times in his keynote address to the 2000 IT Expo last fall, saying he saw it as an example of the kind of grassroots involvement needed in moving forward in this digital education world. And I was asked to serve, as both a representative of the TLTR and as a faculty member representing CHASS, on the search committee for the Vice-Provost of our new DELTA office [Distance Education & Learning Technologies Applications]. In turn, it seemed obvious to Sam Averitt, the chair of that committee who is also a Roundtable member, that the TLTR would be central players in the public presentations of the candidates invited to campus. The people who attended those presentations filled out evaluation forms that were treated seriously by the committee.

Connect: You said you have had as many as 55 people attend the Roundtable meetings. How do you communicate the roundtable topics and decisions to the university community?

Stein: I have a TLTR listerv that people subscribe to--they send me a message and I send them the subscription email. They would email me at sstein@unity.ncsu.edu. But, to my mind we have a terrible problem in general with communication on this campus--so few issues get circulated in ways that people feel they're in touch with what's going on or even what's available that might help them do their jobs better I am constantly looking for ways to let more people know about the Roundtable meetings and the issues we're confronting. One of our missions since the beginning has been to help create a central database for all the teaching and learning with technologies services offered on campus, that would include faculty who are "early adopters" and whose experience can help others.

Connect: So, the challenge is to find ways to include more people or communicate this information more broadly.

Stein: I'm always looking for more ways to recruit. I recruit a lot and I'm always trying to get the word out. I don't know who will read this online. It may be the same people who come already. Students are part of the constituency of Roundtable, but I wish we could get more of them to come regularly. Their schedules sometimes don't allow for it. We have one student who's just been wonderful. He's always there as much as he can be. People are terribly busy and overburdened and it can be hard to add on another commitment. But I have found those who attend regularly find it of real value.

Connect: How many regular attendees do you have?

Stein: About 35 come to regular meetings, 35-40 depending on what the topic is. I haven't called a meeting in the last couple of months because of the DELTA Vice-Provost search--it took a great deal of my time, and ultimately TLTR members were putting in a lot of time coming to four campus presentations of candidates.

Connect: What will TLTR's relationship be to the new Vice-Provost of DELTA, Tom Miller, and to the DELTA office?

Stein: It makes sense that the TLTR be engaged with Tom Miller (who is a member of the Roundtable), to help shape some of the initiatives and efforts that office will make. We as a group are in touch with many of the problems and solutions that pertain to the changing landscape of higher education. After all, this campus created Wolfware and Web Assign, two really effective products in adapting technology to student needs and many of those creators are members of the Roundtable. I'm looking forward now to our TLTR meeting in the next few weeks in which I see as a primary agenda item our ideas and concerns for DELTA.

Connect: What would you say to each of these constituencies to let them know how important this is?

Stein: Faculty, I believe, are sometimes a little shortsighted in terms of how the societal move into the "information age" is going to impact them and future directions of higher education. The more mainstream faculty get involved in online course development, use, and tools, which is what buying the Course Management System program for instance was all about, the more I think they're going to understand that the issues the TLTR takes on affect them directly. Traditional campuses are all looking at a much greater distributed learning presence. For one thing we have these high enrollment increases that are coming. We'll have up to 31,000 students by 2008. Part of it will be a move to Centennial campus but the refurbishing of the older buildings is going to take years. The thinking for accommodating those students is that it's partly going to be through other means and not necessarily in completely traditional settings. There's also the growing presence of interest in lifelong learning--that can be an opportunity for traditional educators and one we traditional institutions are beginning to explore.

Many of the administrators I've talked to are aware of the need for faculty to "buy-in" as it were to some of these new technological innovations. It's been good having administrative staff involved with the Roundtable--what gets communicated loud and clear there is that people are not willfully obstructive or indifferent--they need to know how such things as getting involved in online course development is going to be supported, and how its going to reflect on promotion and tenure decisions. To have that dialogue is a really constructive way to proceed, rather than people insulated from others and believing simply that there's no support or no interest.

The technical staff who've been involved already have a big voice in the proceedings. There has been a significant educational element thus far for faculty, for example, to hear what the technical consultants' concerns are and vice versa. That has been tremendously fruitful.

As I mentioned before, I find that when students are able to be present that they both learn about the dramatic changes that are being considered and are able to contribute to the other members' understanding of what is desirable from their perspective. It's also an interesting lesson in governance--watching that kind of nonhierarchical structure in action.

Connect: I've been in meetings where there is a student presence and we'll be talking about something, and everyone seems to be assuming what the students want. Then a student speaks up and it's just totally different than what we had expected

Stein: That happens a lot. It would be great if more students would come to these meetings. All of these things are being discussed: What are the key trends? What are the movements? What are the challenges ahead? What are the goals and possibilities?

Connect: In thinking about the faculty, how will the moves into distributed learning affect them? Will it put pressure on them to put classes online?

Stein: Some may want to explore putting classes online, especially if the university can really meet the needs for training, but also to use other tools of pedagogical value to enhance their teaching. The direction we see on the national scale is toward developing programs for distance education.

Connect: What sort of tools are we talking about?

Stein: Electronic mail is the simplest. There are also web-based tools and some interesting multimedia possibilities and ways to bring students into greater engagement with each other and with others on a global level.

Connect: Does this mean that faculty are going to have to develop webpages?

Stein: Well, not the have-to part, but it seems to me that it is difficult to be in an environment where people are talking about Web discussions and video conferences and multimedia applications when you're not doing any of that, especially if you're in a field that could benefit from their use. Part of my particular interest in the Roundtable, however, is to make sure that there isn't an overemphasis on tools, on the idea that pedagogy is inferior without the use of new teaching technology. I resist that.

Connect: There's a real tension there.

Stein: There is a tremendous tension there. We live in a culture where there's a lot of emphasis on new toys. I think that faculty members are going to feel pressure from various fronts. Nobody is going to tell them they have to do anything at this stage, but I think that we're living in a culture which is moving in those directions and there are going to be funds available for certain kinds of development in using learning technologies.

Connect: What other changes come with new technologies?

Stein: The administrative services--the back-end infrastructure for student services to be handled electronically--that's an area that is going to be happening more and is very promising. Streamlining registration and records and all the other things students need to be able to manage in such a large university. The classes coming up will bring us the first freshmen who were born after the personal computer entered mainstream use. The "Computers R Us" generation. Then there's this burgeoning new market and competition in education that universities must think about, and view themselves differently than just serving a completely on-campus, on-site population. The enrollment increases and the accelerating growth in the numbers of lifelong learners mean the need for expanded access is enormous.

Connect: What do you consider the most valuable role of the Roundtable to be?

Stein: When we meet, no matter how long the meeting is scheduled for (and they are never less than 90 minutes), people are still talking at the end of them--and with energy and passion. Long after the meeting has been adjourned, there will still be considerable numbers of people standing around--and usually in circles!!--continuing the dialogue. I find it endlessly fascinating and heartening. There's something so natural about that circle formation that stimulates people to talk and to listen. There's a real hunger to engage with issues that really matter and with other people who are thinking about them too. We don't come to the end of every meeting and say, "What have we adopted?" Often what we are doing is putting all of the questions and all of the concerns on the table. That in itself is one of the most valuable things that a Roundtable can do. Nobody really knows what all of the issues are going to be with distance education and with learning technologies. Everyone is learning. No campus has the answers. We don't have the research, yet, that really tells what happens in online courses. How students are learning. What is being lost. What is being gained. What really needs to change. In my mind, where we're really at is being able to generate and raise questions that need to be pondered if digital technology-assisted education is going to something we all value.
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If you would like more information about the Teaching, Learning & Technology Roundtable, contact Sarah Stein atsstein@unity.ncsu.edu or visit the TLTR website: http://www.ncsu.edu/tltr