Last month I participated in the MISO Survey presentation at the online EDUCAUSE 2012 Annual Meeting. Our talk was entitled, “What Faculty Need: National Insights from the MISO Survey.” Dave Consiglio presented the talk, with the rest of us manning different aspects of the online room.
This event was the third one in which a model I’ve developed, describing a library & information technology hierarchy of need that’s necessary for innovation in teaching and learning using library or IT services, was shared. At its lower levels, the model holds up well against MISO data. But the model crashes somehow when we look at faculty fluencies. Dave took the opportunity in this presentation to ask participants why they felt the results seem to challenge the model.
Dave and I both feel that the model is right. But it may be that the questions we use from the survey – where faculty rate their skills and interest in learning – may not measure what we would need to measure to prove the theory. We hope in time to have more information to validate or help us adjust the model.
I will be writing more about the hierarchy in the coming months. For now, the video of our presentation is available only to participants from the online conference. In February, the video of the presentation will be publicly available. I hope you’ll take a look.