STEPs

by Trent Batson, Gallaudet University
Judy Williamson, American University

A Program for Faculty Development Sponsored
Collaboratively by: The Epiphany Project and
The TLT Group of The American Association
for Higher Education

The STEPs Program is a 5-semester program for faculty in higher education to make the transition from the traditional knowledge technologies to the new. The program takes faculty and their departments through a transition leading to institutionalized changes. The individual and departmental transition process is coordinated with the institution-wide process of transition around technology. STEPs is a program for mainstream faculty that takes into account differences between "early adopters" or "pioneers" and mainstream faculty. The steps, listed below, should be seen as heuristic (scaffolding), not as prescriptive. STEPs is a powerful statement about the necessarily experimental nature of any pedagogical change that is so sweeping and profound.

Table of Contents:

The Background for STEPs
STEPs Overview
Semester One: Discovering Your Ecology
Semester Two: Your First Solo Flight
Semester Three: What Went Right?
Semester Four: The Second Attempt
Semester Five: Telling the World

The Historical Moment

In a time of revolutionary change in the knowledge-making processes in our culture, faculty development must itself take on a new role, not of helping faculty improve their performance in the status quo, but of empowering them to re-create a new order. It must also look not at the individual faculty member as the only target for change, but at the entire ecology of teaching and learning surrounding that individual faculty member. Individual faculty members cannot be expected, on their own, to go off quixotically tilting at the windmills of the established order on campus, assuming the entire risk of revolutionary change in their teaching approach, and with no reward or compensation.

STEPs describes the systematic and coordinated change process that faculty development agents on a campus--be they traditional faculty development central offices, faculty development people within departments, or academic technology offices--must support.

A Commonly-Used Heuristic for Change

Contemplating change, we humans often balk but have learned to follow various patterns to help us accommodate to change. But, often, formally or informally, we follow the following pattern:

• Identify the problem(s) that prompt us to want to change;
• Make hypotheses about how to solve the problems;
• Test our hypotheses;
• Examine our results;
• Make adjustments in our experimental approach based on this examination;
• Test our hypotheses again taking into account the examination and adjustments; and
• Make conclusions which we feel confident enough to communicate to others.

Whether we call this process the academic research model, "trial and error," the scientific method, decision science, the writing process, or the problem-solving process, it's a process for change--with variations--that's common. We've modeled the STEPs program on it, and believe it can be useful and effective when faculty contemplate the new technologies and how to use them in their teaching.

Those who innovate in education often use this method for introducing interventions into the established teaching paradigm. Our question, as we consider information technology, is how to use this method for totally altering that paradigm.

Are Faculty Development Offices Ready to Support Sweeping Change?

While individual faculty members may be encouraged through a faculty development office on campus to innovate, and that office may support faculty in the empirical approach we've just described, faculty development offices may not be prepared to adopt a generalized, across-the boards, method to help faculty revolutionize the established teaching paradigm. Indeed, faculty development might be seen as a conservative effort to strengthen and thus retain the status quo.

Generally speaking, faculty development is aimed to improve an individual's capabilities in a special area of the stable teaching paradigm: scholarship, or proficiency in a teaching method such as the lecture or collaborative approaches, or methods of evaluation such as the portfolio approach to evaluation. Faculty development is a way to help teachers do what we've always done better. It has traditionally not been grounded in a discipline, nor organized around epistemological principles meaning that we have not always considered the construction of knowledge itself when considering how we introduce innovative practices to faculty.

Instead of basing faculty development on a foundation that considers, for example, the social construction of knowledge, more commonly found foundations might be cognitive, developmental, or educational psychology. Traditional faculty development ranges from yearly dispersion of faculty innovation funds to offering programs year-around to help teachers gain perspective on good teaching approaches.

Thus, faculty development, as it exists today, would not be likely to adopt a full process of change as we have depicted in the STEPs model.

The Time Period Needed for Sweeping Change

The five semesters of the STEPs program represents the minimal time period we have found necessary for most faculty to begin to adapt to a new pedagogical paradigm in almost any field. In most fields in higher education, since content has been primary, and pedagogy an unexamined given, the pedagogical focus in STEPs may seem unfamiliar and unwelcome to faculty members. We are inviting teachers to become more reflective and to examine practices and assumptions which previously have been somewhat transparent, and we're encouraging, through the STEPs process, that they make those pedagogies visible and consider them seriously.

The STEPs program arises from a faculty viewpoint, and it is grounded thoroughly in the experience of teaching in higher education. We propose STEPs as prompts for coordinated curricular change since it has implications not only for faculty, but for a re-conceptualized faculty development model.

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STEPs: A Strategy for Technologically Enlightened Pedagogies

Below are questions and guidelines used to re-design "courses of study." One of the major lessons of these steps is that change cannot occur overnight. Don't expect it, unless you are an unusual innovator. In our experience, faculty need at least a couple of years to shift from current traditional teaching approaches to approaches more appropriate to electronic technologies.

In each semester, administration and faculty have to coordinate with support services on campus, creating new kinds of support.

We are not expecting faculty to become research scientists, of course, although we are advocating teacher research. On the other hand, the classic research paradigm is very useful to follow for these reasons:

it has a proven track record as a useful model for change it makes a strong statement about the experimental nature of the changes around technology it makes a valid claim for a reasonable length of time for getting the change process underway it communicates clearly to authorities on campus that the changes contemplated are beyond the normal curricular adjustments: there are both support services and faculty development costs that need to become part of operating expenses.

Read the steps and use what applies to you. This is not prescriptive, but just suggestive.

Practical Steps Toward Re-Design of a Course of Study

When you change one part of the educational formula, other parts are affected. Think of your course as existing within an educational "ecology." Don't think just of the course, but of all the other elements, support, logistics, scheduling, evaluation and so on, that may be affected by your changes. An ecology is a system; changes in one part of the system affect other parts, or may affect the whole. A system can become self-correcting. The ecology in which your course exists may or may not be self-correcting. As you consider change, you may want to consider how to factor adaptive mechanisms into the planning process.

Faculty members who are interested in significant use of information technology in their teaching could use these steps as a road map, a guide to issues that usually need to be addressed but which may be overlooked as invisible, given, or unexamined assumptions.

The statements are written without the usual qualifiers you find in academic discourse. We did this for the sake of brevity. In each case, take the statement as "it is our belief, based on our experience, that in most classes this is a useful guideline." Use what seems useful, ignore the rest.

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Semester One: Discovering Your Ecology
You've decided to start using computers in your teaching. It's the beginning of a semester. The following steps are a guide to follow as you look at the elements within and beyond your own department that in some way support or depend on or interact with your own course. This is the ecology of your course. It is a system that has assumed traditional materials and a traditional knowledge-creation process and thus will be affected by your change to new materials and a new knowledge-creation process.

Research to do before you actually attempt to use computers in your classes:

Assess Your Situation

1. Ask yourself who else is using computers in your department. For example, if you're a writing teacher, find out as much as you can about computer-friendly faculty and staff in the writing program, literature department or program, writing intensive program, tutorial, writing center, or other related programs.
   
2. What can you learn from colleagues who are already attempting to integrate computers?
   
3. Who else is using computers in their teaching and learning in other departments--what lessons do they have to share?
   
4. What support would your department offer you for integrating computers into your teaching? Departments seem more willing now than a few years ago to provide some kind of support, so don't be afraid to ask and to get as specific and formal as possible. For example, consider possible changes in faculty evaluation criteria regarding technology.
   
5. Can you schedule your class into a computer lab? Is there a college/university policy about scheduling labs? Who "owns" the lab? Does the registrar or a department coordinate scheduling? You need to be able to schedule your class into a lab on a predictable schedule, or at least make sure your students have regular and predictable access themselves.
   
6. Does that lab employ lab assistants? Do the assistants know how to run appropriate software for you? Do the assistants also help your students get up and running on their computers during class? Is the person who hires and trains the assistants agreeable to training lab assistants in the software and/or peripherals you need to use in your course?
   
7. Do your students need/have computer accounts?
   
8. Is there an academic technology or academic computing office on campus that is interested in faculty use of computers? How can it help you?
   
9. Does your faculty development office have an interest in computer use in the classroom? if so, what formal support does it offer? For example, are there faculty development grants?
   
10. Is there someone at a nearby university or high school who uses computers to teach?
    
11. Are there regional meetings that might be appropriate for you to attend?
    
12. If you don't have a computer in your office, will your university supply one?
    
13. If you do get your own computer, will it be linked to the campus network? Will you then have Internet access? Will your computer have an Internet "browser" (e.g., Netscape or Internet Explorer software that allows you to surf the Web in full, living color)?
    
14. Where in the published priorities of your institution is technology mentioned? Can you use this information in some way during this early research/negotiation phase of technology integration?
    
15. Is there a campus-wide technology committee or roundtable and can it help you in some way?
    
16. Are there computer email lists you can join? Web pages to visit? Conferences you can attend?  What about print resources?

Assess Your Own Syllabus

1. What does it assume about the kind of learning your students should engage in? What does it imply is the purpose of that learning?
   
2. If your students have to pass an exit exam, or departmental final exam, can alternate, computer-based work prepare them for that exam? Is there a way to gradually alter or expand the scope of the final exam to take into account students' computer expertise?
   
3. How does your current course fit into a larger course of study for your students? What changes would be implied for the other elements in the course of study if you make significant changes? For example, is your course a pre-requisite? Or, do other departments depend on your course to prepare students for their courses? How much leeway do you have to alter your course?
   
4. As you think about re-design of your own course, consider what ways computers or networks might enhance the communication among the class, teacher to students, students to teacher, students to students? Can those communication enhancements in any way enrich collaborative work, peer critiquing, student conferencing, class discussion, or teacher commenting?
   
5. Are there new ways to stress thinking-process work when you move to computers? That is, are students more likely to participate in disciplinary conversations given the increased collaborative opportunities in computer-intensive environments?
   
6. How does current technology (paper, black boards, overhead projectors, print, pens and pencils) figure in your syllabus? What strengths or limitations do you take for granted in current technologies? Atomic inscription technologies--traditional technologies--tend toward the presentational; electronic toward the collaborative. What does your current syllabus say about your role as teacher? Does it assume you are involved in almost all transactions during class time? Where does authority lie in your syllabus' description of the semester's work?
   
7. What deeper learning goals are implied by your syllabus? Does discovering those deeper goals help you become "medium and materials" independent?

Research Your Technology Options

1. Pose questions on discussion lists in your field.
   
2. Attend conferences in your field related to computers. Review back issues of appropriate journals in your field.
   
3. Write to software companies who sell software in your field and see what informational services they might support or provide for teachers in your field.
   
4. Consider using the campus email system and conferencing software with your students(this way, you can extend the class conversation beyond the actual class time.
   
5. Get demo copies of the most highly-touted software in your field and talk to company reps about uses; ask for email addresses of other software users in your geographical area and visit their classes.
   
6. Tour the Web to look for presentations and home pages that might contain information for you;
   visit the Web sites of the various software companies in your field; Visit a MOO site where people in your field "hang out."

Prepare for Your First Pilot Class

Before signing up to teach your first computer-intensive course--and do this early enough to negotiate possible changes in registration and scheduling procedures--check to see if the lab you'll use has enough computers for the standard number of students in your course; if not, ask if your enrollment can be limited to the number of computers in the lab.

Find out if computer-intensive courses are listed as such in pre-registration postings on campus. In other words, will students know they are signing up for a computer-intensive course?

Make sure you do these two things before committing to the course. For the items that follow lead time is also crucial--try to take care of them early in the semester before the start of the pilot semester.

These tasks can be attended to after you've taken care of basic registration and scheduling arrangements:

1. Reserve the appropriate lab for your class time--part of each week or everyday. "Appropriate" means the lab has computers that have the software you need.
   
2. If software is to be installed for you, make sure it is ordered and installed months before the start of the semester. Ask to see the new software running after it's installed; invite a few students to try it out with you. This is not an imposition, nor does it show distrust of "the computer guys," but will seem only appropriate.
   
3. Ask those in charge of computers on your campus who will be trained to troubleshoot the software.
   
4. Ask who will train the lab assistants on duty during your class time.
   
5. Arrange to practice with the software, with student volunteer participants if possible, in the semester before your pilot. If the software is already in use on your campus, ask to sit in on a class when it is used.
   
6. Make sure your students all have their computer accounts.
   
7. Check these arrangements in the lab:
   
   Who keeps paper in the printer and where is that paper kept?
   
   What's the phone number to call in case there's a problem and no one in the lab can solve it?
   
   Who can open the door of the lab if it's locked? Can campus security open the lab?
   
   Where are fresh whiteboard markers kept?
   
   How do you use the lab video projector?

Rules of Thumb

If there are not enough computers in the lab for each student to have their own, try having some or all of your students sit two to a computer.

Students who assure you on the first day of class that they can't get onto the campus computer system will usually find a way if you require their participation.

On the day when you have the most elaborate plan for using the lab, the system will not work (this is not meant to be funny). Always have a "Plan B." This is not meant to be funny, either. Plan B is usually more fun, anyway.

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Semester Two: Your First Solo Flight

This is your pilot semester. These are some steps or considerations you might look at during your actual plunge into using computers:

1. Form a Support Group:
   
   Cultivate a personal infrastructure of resources--through a computer listserv, regional organizations, and on campus with others in your department, or in other departments.
   
2. Set Up a Structure for Documenting Your Class:
   
   This data will be crucial as you review it to assess the course strengths, weaknesses, and lessons learned-
   
   Check to see if a graduate student or an upper-class student can observe/assist in your class. Ask the student to keep fieldnotes and other records of what happens.
   
   Print out hard copies of sessions transcripts and email. Consider a beginning and ending questionnaire for your students.
   
3. How To Cope

   Remember that useful human interaction occurs around technology as well as through it--failure of the technology can be an opportunity for good discussion.

   Plan activities with time limits and goals.

   Bring with you to the lab printouts of directions for the students as it is often hard to communicate in a computer lab.

   Arrive 15 minutes early at the lab to make sure everything is running.

   Time goes much faster in a lab--you will not be able to "cover" as much as in a regular classroom.

Unless your lab is set up with meeting space somewhere in the lab so students can physically leave or turn away from their computers, oral lecture and discussion is hard to sustain for more than a few minutes.

4. Pedagogical Deflation
   
   Take the leap of faith, believing that

Students can learn from each other,

"Play" has always been a part of learning,

You have no more "underlife" in a lab than in a regular classroom(it's just more visible, and

All the activity doesn't mean you've lost control just that more, or a different kind of, learning may be taking place.

But do stay in charge. That often means being louder and more commanding than ever: a computer lab is not the place for subtle suggestions but for explicit orders.

Don't tell, show!

5. Employ the Art of Situational Creativity. Instead of discussing something, create a situation on the computer network. A simulation, a collaborative exercise, or situational drama will lead students to experience the principle you want to explain. Possibilities include:

Improvisational Drama: A drama of issues. Students create characters that play out "positions" in an issue (like being a jury member in the OJ trial, for example). Students extend on characters in fictional or dramatic literature: they "talk" on the network like the characters but are not limited to the words in the book.

Critique: Instead of explaining, consider engaging your students in a critique. Write short paragraphs that act as "mini-essays" on whatever subject you're working on in your course: respond rapidly to the whole class as they "publish" their paragraphs on the network.

Devil's Advocates: Set up "devil's advocates" teams. One student critiques the ideas or approaches of another on the network (communicating in writing) Do peer critiquing line-by-line: students may not be able to intelligently critique a whole work but they can serve as a "test reader" for their peers, reacting to a paper line-by-line.

Writing On-line: Create situations in which your students can write to live interlocutors. It's cognitively easier than writing on paper to an imagined, invented, and artificial audience. Your students may start to think they're good writers. They will be surprised at how easy it seems to write on the network and may get the idea their writing is improving.

Instead of analyzing, explore. Instead of teaching, play. Instead of whole class, create teams. Let them believe (this is most appropriate in regarding writing, but if can be applied to many fields). Think of your pilot semester as an experiment in the following concepts:

Let them Do the Work, Not You!, or

Let the Energies LOOSE, or

How to Stop Worrying About Teaching and Start Having Fun

Join the slightly-reticent, crookedly-smiling, doubt-entertaining, not-sure-if-this-is-a-good-thing cadre of ex-sages-on-the-stage who are not quite convinced this guide-on-the-side thing is a totally good thing. Then, let your students run with their new confidence that they are better writers (in whatever field) than either they or you thought. Keep them for a whole year if you can (it's easier to see changes in their learning style over a year than over one semester). Encourage on-line pseudonyms (identity, persona work). Let them get to know their new persona, this being who can write, this being who is created through writing. You're in a brave new rhetorical world--the energies of a democracy of learning are running free.

A Sample Sequence For Composing A Standard Academic Essay (for writing teachers or those who use writing as a vehicle for learning in their field)
Day One	On the network--discovery of topic, whole group, or two groups, teacher participating, brainstorming model using groupware on the network. The goal is to agree on one topic for everyone. Follow this sequence: brainstorming, idea organizing, prioritizing, voting. Send them out on the Web for homework. Gather information about the chosen topic.
Day Two	Small groups, minimum 6 students per group, develop idea further. "Visit" groups as they work via the network. Make available to students printouts of group written discussion.
Day Three	Students bring in two copies of rough draft (or use commenting software). Divide into pairs. On the network, sitting side-by-side, engage in "as-you-read" response method of critiquing. Use printouts or commenting software for reading drafts; use network discussion tool or commenting software for critiquing.
Day Four	Final draft due.

6. A "Community of Scholars"
   

Adopt varying personae yourself through email and conferencing: become a real person with your students by expanding the communication paths and allowing yourself to be less the authority figure and more the coach Through campus email and conferencing keep class "open" 24 hours a day. Your own participation is not so overwhelming when you are merely one line on the screen. Allow students to learn from and get to know each other. Consider new theories about how groups interact:

Hive Mind-- The idea that knowledge, like the work of bees in a hive, is socially constructed,

Multi-Vocality-- The idea that each person has multiple voices; that there are multiple voices in each group--hypertext and networked writing environments create excellent opportunities for examining how these voices reinforce, influence, contradict, and mitigate each other,

Hypertext & Networked Classrooms-- The idea that computer writing is a hybrid of writing and speaking, creating new writing dimensions that have their own attendant literacies. The networked classroom is a post-modern garden.

7. Assessment

The portfolio approach is the most natural to the computer classroom.

On-line and face-to-face. Do both. Do what you do best. The teacher is always the critical factor, not the technology.

Remember that we call this program "STEPs" because "LEAPS" usually don't work.

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 Semester Three: What Went Right?

After you've survived the first pilot semester, which, whether it's good or bad, you will always remember, spend a semester assessing what happened during that semester:

1. What do you want to change before you attempt another computer venture?
   
2. Look for opportunities to build on your experience--
   
   Are there grant opportunities on campus or through institutional advancement or the office of sponsored programs?
   
   Are there collaborative opportunities?
   
   Can you visit other campuses to view their labs?
   
   Are you able to re-design your research plan from semester one? You now have a context in which to ground that research plan.
   
3. Re-examine the effect of your changes on student learning and outcomes-- Is their learning being validly tested by your department?  Is there an easy way to find out how they do in courses during the semester after you've had them? Follow-up through email with your students.
   
4. Re-examine your department's posture and support for computers--Does your department have a mechanism for looking at changes in the field, or changes in practice because of computers?  How is your own work with computers viewed? Are you being allowed some latitude for experimentation in your teaching?
   
5. Look for things that worked. What was enjoyable?
   
6. Was there some computer work that could be supplemented with paper work?...supplanted with paper work?
   
7. Did you sometimes use computers just for the sake of using computers?
   
8. Did you resist using computers when you could have?
   
9. What made you least comfortable?
   
10. Were there energies in the work that made you uncomfortable which you could re-direct or harness in some way?
    
11. Were there opportunities where you could build in more of an experiential rather than talk-about approach? Do you still find yourself talking too much?
    
12. Are there other ways to create bridges from the oral competencies of your students to their writing?
    
13. Have you gone too far or not far enough toward computer-mediated collaboration?
    
14. Do you find yourself inventing new techniques, new collaborative patterns, new ways toward the experiential rather than the presentational?
    
15. Are you ready to try new software, new virtual spaces? ...or do you prefer to expand on the tried and true?

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SemesterFour: The Second Attempt

Now that you have some data that is not just from the first semester, re-examine your approach, and look for areas to expand. When you get back in the lab:

1. Remember that, as in a non-computer class, no two classes are the same: what worked your first semester may not work with the new class.
   
2. Remind yourself that you are the key factor, not the technology.
   
3. Don't be afraid to continue to try new things.
   
4. Continue to collect observations so you can compare your pilot and this second semester.
   
5. Don't be afraid to invite those experienced with computers to visit your lab during class time--visitors are much less disruptive in a lab than in a traditional classroom.

Try to get something in writing from your chair or dean supporting your attempts at innovation. This is your effort on behalf of the institution, not merely your personal whim.

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 Semester Five: Telling the World

This is when you may begin to wonder if all the extra work is worth it. Or it's when you decide you can help others with their own switch to a computer-intensive teaching environment. Analyze your second attempt: What were you able to repeat and still find useful during either semester?

Facing the Moment of Doubt:

1. Is there evidence of your students showing more improvement than in non-computer classes?
   
2. Do you miss just sitting and chatting with your students?
   
3. Are you tired of the uncertainty of working in a computer environment?
   
4. What rewards are you or your students getting from work with computers?
   
5. What could you bring from your work with computers and introduce into work in a non-computerized classroom?
   
6. Will you feel you failed personally if you give up on computers?
   
7. Are there better combinations of face-to-face and lab work?
   
8. What would you need to continue to work with computers?
   

Face your doubts and build (instead of feed) on them

Remind yourself that using a technology is intrinsically different than paper and print means and that your teaching, and the students' learning, will continue to change.

You will have more opportunities to experiment with computers: they will not go away, nor will change cease. As a teacher, computers will figure in your career for all the remaining years. Think of ways that you might use your classroom experiences and documentation in articles and conference presentations. Write about your findings over the past 2 years. Look to help others in your department with their own process of change.

Take a deep breath and forge on.

Combining the Inductive Process of STEPs with a Deductive Process

On the following page is a chart that presents one view of the epistemological changes that are occurring as information technologies pervade our society. The inductive approach of the STEPs needs to be combined with a deductive analysis in order to make the transition to new teaching/learning paradigms as informed as possible.

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This page last modified on October 1, 1999
(c)1996,1999 The Epiphany Project