I am an expert when it comes to trying to do the right thing the wrong way. The best example is my most recent: buying a new 56K modem to replace my slower one–only to find that what was slowing me down was not my modem but my phone line. Because the widely accepted need for upgrading software has beaten us all into submission, our first impulse is often to spend our way out of the problems we encounter with technology. Fiscally conservative Republicans, tax n’ spend Democrats, it doesn’t seem to matter. It seems so much easier to buy the newest version than to search for the missed opportunities already before us. And without a doubt most of us will do anything–anything–to avoid reading the manual.

Those of us who believe we are involved in the transformation of higher education have not educated ourselves out of this tendency, and sometimes we are worse than most when it comes to overlooking promising opportunities that are right in front of us and have been for some time.

But first of all, let’s be clear about what I’m not saying to avoid disappointing those for whom "transformation" brings a vague sense of ill will and discomfort. I’m not arguing that we need to invest less in technology. In fact, a recent marketing survey conducted for Minnesota State Colleges and Universities confirms that students are increasingly coming to expect that colleges will be technologically sophisticated. In fact, some student populations surveyed ranked a college’s being up-to-date with technology as more important to them than the college’s cost. Clearly, colleges that are on the cutting edge of reasonably integrating new technologies into their curriculum no doubt should continue to do so. Those who are waiting for others to pave the way for them may want to reconsider the consequences of being left behind.

What I am saying is that if we spend smarter and leverage our investments better we can invest even more in our future. But what kind of investments makes the most sense? Buying more computers? Buying fancier software packages?

What about buying time?

Those have actually stayed up until 2 am trying to get their instructional web page just right understand better than most that time is what is really needed to bring colleges and universities up to speed–especially time for the faculty who need to integrate these new technologies to work intensively with the tools available.

Sure, people first need to get their hands on the tools, so a sound technological infrastructure is a necessary starting point. However, once a foundation is in place, a quick survey of higher education faculty will reveal that what holds teachers back from productive use of the emerging technologies is not lack of interest, philosophical opposition to technology, or a vague suspicion of the latest new thing. The real problem is that there is so much emerging technology, so little time.

Most colleges across the country, along with corporations, are trying to figure out how to get employees to master a tremendous amount of skills while they also continue to excel at their day jobs. Then, too, a faculty member at a community college or technical college may well be teaching five or more courses, and faculty seeking tenure at universities are usually expected to spend their time publishing books in their content areas, not fiddling around with how to make text swivel in PowerPoint. Given the average faculty member’s lack of time, it’s not surprising that the 1999 Campus Computing Survey reveals that the biggest challenge at the campus level is "getting faculty members to work with technology."

Many colleges solve the problem by buying release time for a select few faculty who develop, for example, on-line courses, but this approach is certain to alienate those whose efforts are not rewarded and further widen any campus rift between the Knowledge Age haves and have nots. Other campuses have experimented with incentives other than buying time, such as buying training opportunities or buying faculty hardware. Still, having new hardware or training doesn’t buy the time faculty must have to learn how to use the hardware or software at a sophisticated enough level to impact the way they teach or change the way their students learn.

The best solution to the real problem of needing to buy time does not have to be for higher education to spend a significant amount of additional money. The key to unlocking the power of the brave new world of instructional technologies lies in one of the oldest and least technological of higher education traditions: the sabbatical. Colleges and universities have a long-held tradition of offering faculty sabbaticals roughly every 7-10 years. Typically, sabbaticals allow faculty to spend between one semester and a full-year to reinvigorate their teaching or research.

If higher education is really serious about transforming higher education through the integration of instructional technologies, sabbaticals could be used to provide incentives for interested faculty to devote up to a full year to the study of how technology can enrich their research, their teaching, and their own learning.

The incentives need not be overly expensive. Packages could include special technical support available to those on sabbatical, loaner computers and/or software, or even stipends faculty can use toward the purchase of their own laptops to use during the sabbatical and then keep for their continuing work.

In the scheme of things, a two-thousand dollar incentive is extremely affordable, especially when measured against the possible product, which could include a complete on-line course or a sophisticated interactive learning object that will benefit students for years after the sabbatical.

The advantage of offering incentives is that the benefits can leverage even more focused efforts and concrete outcomes than might otherwise result. Perhaps the history professor considering a half-year sabbatical to explore the art of medieval France will expand the sabbatical to a full year to enable her to incorporate instructional technologies as a part of her research project, or perhaps the math instructor who was going to use his sabbatical to explore emerging technologies in general will now become more ambitious and use his new laptop to put together a full web course.

Because the bulk of their cost is already a relatively given budget line item, sabbaticals–sweetened with an relatively modest incentive package–could be a key factor in the grassroots transformation of higher education. The strength of encouraging sabbaticals devoted to instructional technology is that the plan requires no new significant funding while also actually addressing the real obstacle to the reasonable and appropriate use of technology to enhance teaching and learning. Tempus fugit.

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