The first indicator that there may well be a challenging curricular build is the nature of the question in the initial interactions with a subject matter expert (SME). One recent case involved a professor who came in with a simple question: “How can I actualize the capture of various lecture-captures from around the state?”

Getting Situated

An effective approach with a new instructor is to get them situated, and the easiest approach is to base the situating on legal and policy requirements of a build, namely the intellectual property and the accessibility requirements.

Then, it’s helpful to address any extant questions—so the subject matter expert (SME) generally takes responsibility and drives the direction of the work. For a very new instructor, I have found that it’s helpful to offer samples of digital work by other professors—preferably from a variety of fields.

Instructors need to know the various tools and resources they have access to. And while getting a sense of the technologies may be overwhelming, it’s good to let them know what the essential functions are and what can be created. This helps in their overall planning. They will learn soon enough the amount of time and effort needed to actually create the contents that they want. The finer nuanced points will becoming clearer over time.

Another critical point is to connect the faculty member to the various individuals who may influence their work and learning. That is an important piece early on given how busy people are. Getting something on someone else’s calendar takes some doing, and it’s important to move a project forward on multiple tracks in order to maximize time.

A Dry Run through the Processes

It of course helps to do a dry run of a lecture capture, a video capture, and what-not. It’s all about getting a sense of the work required and making the right choices along the way—so work does not have to be retrofitted. Also, if a SME can work to build quality early on, they then have a goal and a standard to build to.

In this particular case, the instructor already had a basic understanding of the technology systems—and particularly the learning / course management system on campus.

The Authorizing Environment

Another challenge involves the authorizing environment. This is the executive layer over a particular project. These are the decision-makers who make choices about where a project goes. This is also the layer that sets the ambitions and the focuses of the project. This group of leaders has to understand the affordances and constraints of a particular project.

The particular faculty member I dealt with was just hired on to set up a course that others would inherit and teach. He had no budget. He had very poor inherited technologies. He needed to get around and contact a variety of experts from around the state and likely on the peripheries of the state but had no support per se, no budget, and one temporarily inherited laptop. Not only did he need a sense of the logistics, but he needed to make his supervisors aware of what they were asking and more importantly what he needed in order to actualize the work. I’m all for ambition, but I want doable ambition. I want it all actualizable.

Mobile Equipment Sets

Anyway, it was clear after the first meeting that there would be a lot of planning work and coordination. There would need to be discussions about the curriculum. And there would have to be a lot of enabling and support. Part of the flexibility of the office I work in is that they have sufficient foresight to have a mobile work station that may be made available to an occasional faculty member for an extended period of time to enable lecture captures and video editing. I’ve had to use this set of equipment multiple times on various projects just to get SMEs on their way. There is always a thrill to starting a new project, and this is no less true even when the odds are stacked up oddly against a project reaching full fruition in the next little while but which has great prospects in the long term.