EDUCAUSE | Faculty and Contributed by Organizations or Campuses

Ithaka’s 2006 Studies of Key Stakeholders in the Digital Transformation in Higher Education

ckeller — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:51:48 -0500

Ithaka's 2006 survey of faculty members sought to determine their attitudes related to online resources, electronic archiving, teaching and learning and related subjects. This study affords the opportunity to develop trend analysis of many measurements collected in the 2003 and 2000 faculty surveys. As in the past, Ithaka developed a robust set of disciplinary and other demographic analyses that have allowed them to learn more about how best to serve the needs of different types of faculty members. Findings include;

Attitudes towards the possibility of a transition away from print format, both for scholarly journals and monographs
Perceptions of libraries and their value, including specific library functions, and how these perceptions are changing
Preferences in research practices, including disciplinary differences and changes over time
Attitudes towards archiving of both print and electronic resources
Preferences that lead authors to choose among scholarly journals in which to publish their articles, as well as attitudes towards digital repositories

Open Doors and Open Minds: What Faculty Authors Can Do to Ensure Open Access to Their Work Through Their Institution

ckeller — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:29:28 -0500

Recently, on February 12, 2008, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) at Harvard University took a landmark step. The faculty voted to adopt a policy requiring that faculty authors send an electronic copy of their scholarly articles to the university’s digital repository and that faculty authors automatically grant copyright permission to the university to archive and to distribute these articles unless a faculty member has waived the policy for a particular article. Essentially, the faculty voted to make open access to the results of their published journal articles the default policy for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University.

Inspired by the example set by the Harvard faculty, this White Paper is addressed to the faculty and administrators of academic institutions who support equitable access to scholarly research and knowledge, and who believe that the institution can play an important role as steward of the scholarly literature produced by its faculty. This paper discusses both the motivation and the process for establishing a binding institutional policy that automatically grants a copyright license from each faculty member to permit deposit of his or her peer-reviewed scholarly articles in institutional repositories, from which the works become available for others to read and cite.

Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An In-depth Study of Faculty Needs and Ways of Meeting Them

elilly — Fri, 16 May 2008 12:50:23 -0500

The Center for Studies in Higher Education, with generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is conducting research to understand the needs and desires of faculty for in-progress scholarly communication (i.e., forms of communication employed as research is being executed) as well as archival publication. In the interest of developing a deeper understanding of how and why scholars do what they do to advance their fields, as well as their careers, our approach focuses on fine-grained analyses of faculty values and behaviors throughout the scholarly communication lifecycle, including sharing, collaborating, publishing, and engaging with the public. Well into our second year, we have posted a draft interim report describing some of our early results and impressions based on the responses of more than 150 interviewees in the fields of astrophysics, archaeology, biology, economics, history, music, and political science.

Our work to date has confirmed the important impact of disciplinary culture and tradition on many scholarly communication habits. These traditions may override the perceived “opportunities” afforded by new technologies, including those falling into the Web 2.0 category. As we have listened to our diverse informants, as well as followed closely the prognostications about the likely future of scholarly communication, we note that it is absolutely imperative to be precise about terms. That includes being clear about what is meant by “open access” publishing (i.e., using preprint or postprint servers for work published in prestigious outlets, versus publishing in new, untested open access journals, or the more casual individual posting of working papers, blogs, and other non-peer-reviewed work). Our work suggests that enthusiasm for technology development and adoption should not be conflated with the hard reality of tenure and promotion requirements (including the needs and goals of final archival publication) in highly competitive professional environments.

Assessment From the Faculty Point of View

ckeller — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:39:55 -0600

Anthropologists say professors should stop looking at measuring outcomes as an external threat and start taking ownership of the process.

Exploring Burnout among University Online Instructors: An Initial Investigation

ckeller — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:43:10 -0500

Burnout has been identified as a significant issue among those in instructional positions. The purpose of the present research was to identify and describe the status of burnout among higher education online instructors. The population for this study included responses of 76 online instructors employed by baccalaureate granting institutions within the United States. A demographic survey and the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educators Survey (MBI-ES) were used to collect data from respondents. Data analysis
revealed online instructors possessed an average score on the emotional exhaustion subscale, high degree of depersonalization, and low degree of personal accomplishment

Faculty Attitudes and Behaviors Regarding Scholarly Communication:Survey Findings from the University of California

ckeller — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:37:08 -0500

This paper reports the results of over 1,100 responses to a late 2006 survey of UC faculty attitudes and behavior with regard to several key issues in scholarly publishing and scholarly communication. The report is timed to inform Universitywide discussions - many of them prompted by a series of faculty white papers - about strategic responses to challenges and opportunities in the evolution of scholarly publishing and communication. The survey also provides important insight into how the University's eScholarship publishing services (including those offered in partnership with the UC Press) can meet faculty needs.

Office Hours: Coming to a Computer Near You

ckeller — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:07:37 -0500

Harvard University has begun experimenting with virtual office hours this semester. TAs will begin holding real-time, online help sessions for students this week. Using free, Java-based software, students can log on, chat with each other (via text or microphone) and even “raise their hands” with the click of a button, which adds them to a queue on the teaching fellow’s computer.

Navigating the Mammoth University

ckeller — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 11:59:52 -0500

The University of Minnesota has expanded its orientation for new faculty members from several hours to 3 days. The faculty are given information on the library systems and invited to attend faculty development workshops in teaching and learning along with information on other various aspects and programs the university has to offer.

University of Michigan Technology Transfer Policy

ckeller — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 12:48:30 -0500

This Policy defines the ownership, distribution, and commercialization of rights associated with Intellectual Property developed at or received by the University of Michigan, and describes the general obligations associated with the technology licensing process.

Faculty Database System: Content Management for Faculty Information

drupal — Sat, 26 May 2007 17:17:34 -0500

Duke University's dean of arts and sciences commissioned the Faculty Database System (FDS) as an institutional content management system after learning of the tool's initial implementation in the mathematics department. The tool's ability to address several ongoing operational needs involving faculty curriculum vitae (CV) and related staff and graduate student data was matched by its ease of use and syndication capabilities. Specifically, FDS was conceived as a means of providing the following functionalities: - Single point of entry for faculty CV data - Up-to-date departmental Web sites - Templates to standardize display of faculty Web pages - Easy and secure use by faculty and staff - Incentives for faculty to update their CV information on a timely basis - Conduit for faculty access to institutional and external databases (e.g., enterprise directory, PubMed) to use data from reference sources - Discipline-specific formatting conventions - Top-down and bottom-up policies and configurations - Ability to export to different formats and create customized reports - Streamlining of annual faculty evaluation process - Syndication of information across departments and the university - Accommodation of as many hierarchical levels of units as needed - Archive of data for future use and longitudinal reports