Page 147 - Innovative Professional Development Methods and Strategies for STEM Education

Introducing Educational Technology into the Higher Education Environment

Due to these time constraints, lecturers also struggled to find the time needed to develop their teach-
ing and learning materials, using the skills they mastered at the workshop. As such, months sometimes
passed before a lecturer would have the time to sit down and develop learning materials or opportunities,
by which time they had long since forgotten what they have learnt in the workshop.
Sometimes, training sessions would focus on new technologies/software packages that were not yet
available for use in a particular department. Workshops then added to the levels of frustrations experi-
enced by teaching staff as they now knew what was possible, but due to financial or other constraints
were not able to utilise the new funcitonalities.
Another constraint is the everpresent emphasis on research and research outputs, as is prominent in
all higher education institutions world-wide. Acknowledging that learning to use and implement new
educational technologies takes an initial time investment, it is obvious that time spent in this manner
competes with that of other academic key performance areas, specifically time to do research.
As a result of the abovementioned realities, the Partners@Work project was thus conceptualised and
implemented.

Research Methodology

The Partners@Work programme was introduced when it became clear that the traditional workshop-
based approach to professional staff development was not going to be effective in empowering educators
to adequately address the problems experienced in higher education. With this sense of dissonance in
mind, the professional development framework was designed as described below. The Partners@Work
framework for the empowerment of educators who are interested in using technology in their teach-
ing, was firmly grounded on the theories of adult learning (Decker, 2002; Rogers, 1993; Cross, 1981;
Knowles, 1959) and further informed by the motivation theories of Lieb (1991), O.Houle (1988), Malone
and Lepper (1987), Csikszentmihalyi (1975), Herzberg (1959) and Maslow (1954).
The case study has been hailed as a major methodological tool in social science inquiry and as
a distinctive means for providing valid social knowledge (Sjoberg et al. 1991). The term case study,
however, has multiple meanings. It can be used to describe a unit of analysis or to describe a research
method. Stake, in Denzin and Lincoln 2000, argues that a ‘case study is not a methodological choice but
a choice of what is to be studied. By whatever methods, we choose to study the case.’ In this study, the
Partners@Work professional development programme as it was presented at the University of Technol-
ogy in question, was selected as the unit of analysis.
According to Patton (1987) the ‘evaluation of any research data should take into consideration a
multiplicity of evidence gathered through numerous data collection methods and incorporate both quan-
titative ad qualitative methods.’ Data was therefore collected by a variety of means including question-
naires, surveys, focus groups, personal interviews, research diaries, electronic communication (email and
bulletin board messages), reflective journals (webblog entries), video reflections, group and informal
individual discussions, course statistics and exploratory visits to other higher education institutions.
Literature concerning professional development, capacity building and academic development were
also scrutinized. These data sources acted as powerful instruments to investigate the extent to which a
professional development programme can address the challenges faced by a higher education institution.

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