Dive Brief:
- Technology-driven pedagogy is seen as the future of higher education with flipped, blended and online instruction considered key to improving access and student success, yet the faculty who must lead this revolution are not properly incentivized to do so.
- Ed Tech reports tenure-track faculty do not have the time to experiment with new teaching techniques because of the pressure to excel in their research and publish, and tenured faculty members are also often tied up with their own research and additional service.
- Instructors off the tenure track may see innovative classroom design as risky, leaving administrators with the responsibility to encourage such adoption through new appointments, reward systems and investments.
Dive Insight:
Higher education institutions are increasingly serving a nontraditional student population, full of adults who are working part- or full-time while pursuing their degrees and raising children or taking care of elderly parents. The flexible classroom experiences that can be achieved through tech-driven techniques are an important way to make higher education possible for this group of students.
Conversations around the erosion of tenure in the higher education workforce may include a path forward for incentivizing innovative instructional techniques. Adrianna Kezar, co-director and principal investigator of the Pullias Center for Higher Education’s Delphi Project, advocates a new model: Tenure for dedicated teachers, not just dedicated researchers.
