philosophi.ca : Gentile Bruno

Gentile's Story

Computer-based language learning materials
Administration of a language lab
Training and support of colleagues

Gentile was hired to teach Italian in a small liberal-arts college. Part of the job included setting up and running a computer-based language lab for all language instructors. It was clear that he was expected to transform the teaching of languages by example and by helping colleagues learn to use instructional technology.

When Gentile came up for his third-year review he had developed two years of computer based curriculum in Italian following best practices that used a core of drill materials he developed along with selected multimedia materials and resources from the web.

Despite running workshops, he didn�t seem to have interested any colleagues in developing materials. Many colleagues were still using audio (cassette) materials.

What can Gentile do to meet the expectations when he comes up for tenure?

What Gentile Can Do

Confront administrative expectations
Develop a CALL strategy for the department with the department
Scholarship of pedagogy

First, Gentile is being asked to take on a significant administrative task - managing a lab. Depending on the support he gets from others this could be the equivalent to an extra course every semester. He should negotiate teaching release or a budget to hire support staff, especially if he is expected to also train and support colleagues.

Second, Gentile should consider making the development of the lab, the development of learning materials, and the teaching of languages with computers an area of research. He should plan all projects so as to be able to assess, report and publish on what works. He can argue from the nature of the job, starting with the job ad, that scholarship of teaching is a tenurable form of research for this type of position. See suggestions on Demonstrating the Scholarship of Pedagogy. The key is to get support and to plan the running of the lab and development of computer-assisted language learning so that every major project has a scholarly component. Just creating learning materials is not scholarship of pedagogy.

Third, he must help the administration realize that it is not realistic to expect him to transform the teaching methods of colleagues senior to him. Transforming language instruction across the curriculum and supporting colleagues should not be expected of junior colleagues as a condition of getting tenure. Alas, too many humanities departments dream that a single person, a relatively inexpensive hire, can magically transform them. While junior colleagues can be asked to provide collegial training, that training should be counted as either an administrative or teaching contribution.

What Gentile can do is early on develop, in consultation with the Chair and the department, a plan for instructional transformation. Gentile should shift the evaluation from a subjective impression of whether he was helpful to his colleagues to whether he developed and implemented an appropriate plan for the introduction of computer-based learning. The development and implementation of a plan can be documented and assessed. The implementation can be evaluated and reported on as scholarship of pedagogy, even if the pedagogy here is collegial.

Gentile needs to ask for opportunities to present aspects of the plan to the department, opportunities to get feedback, and opportunities to report. He needs to ask his colleagues what sort of support they want, if any. In addition to documenting any acceptance of support, he should document refusal of support or, if support is asked for, refusal to accept it when it is offered. Such documentation of his successes and failures will supply him with evidence for tenure and for an appeal if tenure is denied on the on the grounds that he did not support a transformation.

What Evaluators Could Do

Provide administrative support for administrative expectations
Expect transformation from the department
Contribute to evaluation of new technologies in teaching languages
Prepare to evaluate digital learning

A tenure and promotion committee evaluating a case in the third year has a dual responsibility. First, it needs to assess the candidate's case as it stands, and second, it needs to recommend activities that would make the case tenurable. It needs to identify weaknesses and then identify the expectations of the committee when the candidate comes up for tenure. Third year reviews are an excellent opportunity to get in writing just what the department expects from the candidate based on what he or she has done.

Administrative Expectations and Transformation: If the department has administrative expectations beyond normal service that it will use to evaluate the candidate, now is the time to be explicit about them and to recognize how expectations beyond normal service should be compensated, whether by a reduced teaching load, administrative support, or explicit recognition in the tenure process. An enlightened Chair might also offer to co-author a paper about the transformation of language teaching with Gentile - thereby encouraging reflection on the transformation and communication.

Language Teaching Transformation: If Gentile has not been able to transform colleagues' teaching methods, then the department needs to make such transformation an explicit community task. Those who wrote the expectation of transformation into Gentile's hiring conditions should, at department meetings, urge the department to create, in consultation with Gentile, a plan with specific steps toward the goal of attaining teaching transformation. The progress of that plan should be assessed at every department meeting. In this way, the urging of colleagues to change will not be on Gentile's shoulders alone, but will become a shared endeavor.

Evaluation of Language Learning: Given that Gentile has a significant investment of knowledge in the two full years of language materials, the department should encourage him to look at the teaching innovation now as a research project into the pedagogy of learning. To do this he needs to work with experts to set up an process of formative and critical assessment. He also needs to start returning the knowledge to the community starting with demonstrations to the department and finishing with peer-reviewed presentations to other CALL experts capable of giving him feedback on the materials. He should be encouraged and expected to become an expert on CALL rather than just a developer so that he can share knowledge about computer-assisted language learning. That is the difference between a contribution to teaching and a contribution to the scholarship of teaching and learning. See Demonstrating the Scholarship of Pedagogy.

Preparation for Evaluation: Even if the committee is not familiar with computer-based materials, they should have experience evaluating language learning in general. A formative evaluation of Gentile's materials for Italian is the perfect opportunity to involve the department in thinking through computer-based materials. Working with campus instructional development experts, selected members of the committee could set up a formative evaluation (one designed to improve the materials rather than critique them) that would:

Help Gentile think through how the materials could be improved and evaluated formally
Help the department think through how to use computing in other courses/languages
Prepare committee members for the tenure review that will need to look at Gentile's contributions in depth
Develop a culture of assessment in the department

In short, no department should leave the evaluation of digital materials to the final tenure review. A department unfamiliar with digital materials should use earlier reviews as a chance to develop its capacity to evaluate and to set expectations for candidates so that the tenure evaluation is relatively open and fair.