LTAs – Replacements for the Missing “Professional Development”
Remember back in the early days of IT's transformation of higher education?
Every IT department was offering classes in "how to" this and that-how
to use word processing software, how to use database or spreadsheet software,
how to use a Web browser, how to use e-mail, and so forth. But we couldn't get
the faculty (or the higher level administrators and managers) into those classes.
Some combination of innate stubbornness and a fear of being seen as inadequate
kept those classes full of secretaries and administrative assistants. Some universities
and colleges hit upon the technique of sending trainers into faculty and managers'
offices for not-as-visible, one-on-one sessions, which worked a little better.
Probably most IT managers feel they still lack adequate resources and cooperation
with regard to IT training, or what in more general terms could be called professional
development with regard to IT tools. But guess what: "professional development"
relating to IT, as poor as it often is, is light years ahead of professional
development with regard to the other parts of the work life and responsibilities
of institutional staff. One initiative to substitute for some of the missing
professional development on campus (and of course it d'es more than that) is
the collection and sharing of Low Threshold Applications (LTAs).
Here at SCUP, we found ourselves recently facing some unexpected and untimely
technical issues with our annual survey of campus space, the Campus Facilities
Inventory (CFI). We've built a data collection tool that provides the various
campus space planners with password-protected access to provide online information
about the amount of campus space devoted to various functional categories. This
year, we are building several new features, some aimed at providing last year's
users with editorial access to their previous data-but we ran into glitches.
I don't understand the glitches. Not because I am incapable of understanding
them, but because I don't have the time to, plus it is someone else's job to
do so - a very capable someone else. But I do understand the sever time constraints
we are under to get the data collected soon. As I awoke one morning early this
week a solution came to me. It was a Low Threshold Application solution, an
LTA. Though it turns out we didn't have to use it this time, I'll share that
potential solution here along with some great resources for LTAs.
What's an LTA?
Coincidental to our database issues with the Campus Facilities Inventory, Steve
Gilbert, of the TLT Group,
was scheduled to drop by my office later that morning for a meeting and lunch.
The TLT Group is an independent nonprofit organization probably best known for
Teachin. Steve, who has been active in teaching, learning, and technology issues
for a quarter-century, was formerly with Educom as early as 1983, then with
AAHE (the American Association for Higher Education), from which the TLT Group
was "spun out" a few years ago.
Steve defines an LTA as "a teaching/learning application of information
technology that is reliable, accessible, easy to learn, non-intimidating and
(incrementally) inexpensive." The TLT Group has a
portion of its Web site devoted to LTAs.
Another good Web site about LTAs is the
Low Threshold Applications site maintained by Charles Ansorge, of the University
of Nebraska-Lincoln. Both the TLT site and Charles' Web site collect and publish
informative "how-tos" explaining useful LTAs.
Featured on Charles' site right now, for example, is his LTA#36, "Using
an 'Aggregator' to Capture RSS Feeds: A Technology for Keeping Up-to-Date."
Recently featured are such LTAs as #35, "Monitoring Web Page Changes,"
#32, "Partnering with Students to Avoid 'Cut and Paste' Plagiarism,"
and #30, "Screen Captures and What to Do With Them." The TLT Group's
site also collects examples of LTAs shared by subscribers to Steve's immensely
popular TLT-SWG e-mail list (formerly known as AAHESGIT).
Characteristics of LTAs include:
· Low incremental cost - based on using technology applications that
are already almost ubiquitous, already essential for the discipline, and inexpensive
· Easy to learn and access - part of this is ubiquity; everyone already
has it and probably already knows how to use it
· Not intimidating - faculty and students do not perceive the LTA as
requiring major adjustments in their roles or lives; they're already familiar
· Observable positive consequences - anecdotal testimony from peers and
colleagues confirm desirable results from similar activities
· Reliability - they work as intended most of the time, not likely to
break down during valuable class time
· May precipitate or facilitate long-term changes - using LTAs can give
faculty confidence and instill trust in technology
Now, if these LTAs sound just a little bit like the sharing, from experience,
of what really works, well, that's certainly a part of it. In our conversations,
Steve more or less suggested that a lot of the work that the TLT Group engages
in probably fills in some of the huge gaps left where our institutions simply
do not devote meaningful resources to professional development. To me, the reasons
behind that are some amalgam of faculty resistance to being subjected to "professional
development" that relates to teaching or administration as opposed to the
academic subject matter which is their knowledge forte, and the perhaps subconscious
administrative realization that with such a highly educated body of employees,
we can get away without adequately supporting continuing professional development.
Steve also shared that his observations of LTAs over time are beginning to
reveal two major categories, those, which pertain more directly to, teaching
and learning and those, which are more widely applicable to general work and
administrative, uses. That's why, although the TLT Web site defines them as
necessarily related to teaching and learning, I have few qualms about applying
the concept outside the classroom.
LTAs also "get around," and in doing so somewhat expose a techie-tendency
to want to build new and interesting things, as opposed to perhaps just using
lower technology we already have more efficiently, but that's another issue.
LTA = B
My "Plan B" for our Campus Facilities Inventory (CFI) may be an example
of a more administrative or research-oriented LTA. For the CFI we've built a very
nice online system with good user interfaces, to collect data. It's impressive,
it's integrated, and it can be built upon for more functionality later. But if
you look at it starkly, with the "high" technology maybe not working
and a deadline looming - as I did earlier this week - what we're really doing
right now is collecting (a) from each of 200-400 campuses, one person on each
campus, (b) about 35 fields of data. It's a very important project and quite useful
data, but d'esn't really, imperatively need the application of high tech.
There's no reason we can't do that by creating a simple spreadsheet, sending
a copy to each participant, and having them complete and return them by a deadline.
Whereupon we simply collate all the data into one place and begin analysis.
That's my LTA, Low Threshold Application, otherwise known around here right
now as Plan B.
Now, I'd bet there are hundreds of working groups all over my campus that are
collecting data that is at least structurally similar to what we are collecting.
And I'd bet there are dozens, if not hundreds, of technical tools and procedures
created by those groups to do so. Some are probably technologically state of
the art; some are probably still sending our paper surveys and then having work-study
students key in data. Too bad there isn't some place to go to share lessons-learned,
or some professional development class in various data collection techniques
that don't require high-level technology.
I'm not talking about a hands-on, computer laboratory class in how to use Access
or FileMaker, or SPSS, we've got those. I'm talking about a "here's the
problem" and "here's how others have solved it, using various tools
and techniques" - what I think much of "professional development"
is about. Maybe we're all smart enough and highly-educated enough to not need
someone to fund, develop, and teach such a course, or even to collect the various
solutions for sharing? Maybe we don't need related professional development?
Maybe it's efficient for us all to invent our own wheels? Not really.
So, I urge people to check out the TLT Group's Low Threshold Applications collection,
and its links to others, and to share their own LTAs. (Noting, also, that the
hundreds of useful articles and resources available on the
Syllabus Web site serves much the same purpose!) Maybe we can create an
inter-institutional professional development LTA network instead of worrying
about intra-institutional professional development programs that no one wants
to fund, anyway.
