It is my belief that the purpose of the blogging assignment is for students in the OMDE 603 course to have an avenue to express their personal beliefs or ideas, or try out newly formed thoughts (of which, this is one!)  So I’d like to go out on a limb, so to speak, and talk about an idea I’ve been noodling.  I would love to hear everyone’s thoughts on this , especially your’s, Dr. Eli.

I was just offered, and subsequently accepted a position, as an Instructional Technologist at a small liberal arts college.  During the interview process I had an extremely enlightening and somewhat concerning conversation with the chief information officer of the college.  He explained a situation, that I suspect is common in colleges and universities throughout the country, that kind of surprised me.  That is that, college Instructional Technology departments are pushing educational pedagogy on the professors.  Many colleges reward professors for publication.  In fact, for a lot of colleges, the single most important factor in being awarded tenure, is how many times a professor has been published or to what extent they have gained notoriety through their publications.  They are simply not rewarded for solid teaching.  At the same time, colleges are tasking their educational technology departments with convincing professors to utilize more technology with their students in pedagogically sounds ways.  In other words, solid educational pedagogy is coming from the technology departments.  In fact, many schools are staffing their instructional technology departments with professionals who started their careers in K-12 educational jobs.

As I said, this is just something I am noodling, and I’m certain that there are multiple perspectives that I am lacking, but I am certainly surprised by this so far.  Gaining perspective is always my prime initiative, so if you have some to give, I would love to hear it.