Because of problems we were experiencing with BlackBoard a couple of weeks ago, I needed to lower the quality of the work I was doing in order to send announcements to my students. While re-drafting announcements so that they would not be as visually appealing and also harder to read, I thought of something I read last summer in which the author argued that it is important to give faculty the tools they need to do their jobs.

When I first read this argument, my immediate response was “We don’t want faculty—or anyone else—to have the tools to do their jobs.” Our goal should be to give faculty—and others—the tools they need to do their jobs well.

While I was lowering the quality of the work I was producing for students, I had the ability to do my job. But is this good enough? Don’t my students deserve more? Don’t students deserve my best? As administrators make policies concerning instructional technology and other issues, they need to ask themselves whether or not they are setting their expectations too low. Yes, faculty might be able to do their jobs with the technology or other resources provided, but are faculty members who want to do their best prevented from doing so?

Some administrators make the argument that we need to consider scalability and efficiency. While I do believe that such considerations are important, Ralph Waldo Emerson has warned that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” It is advice that I try to keep in mind.

I am critical of policies and lack of resources that prevent me from doing my best work on campus. Such criticism is easy to justify. What is more difficult is to ask myself if I am giving my students what they need to do their jobs. Or am I giving them what they need to do their jobs well?

I agree that sometimes students do not perform as well as I would expect because they are lazy and do not even complete the minimal expectations. Each semester, I find that there is a percentage of students who fall into this category; typically students who have a high rate of absenteeism. But if more than a couple of students who are present are not performing well, I need to consider whether or not I am providing them with what they need to do their jobs well.

About six years ago, more than 20% of the students in a class I was teaching turned in assignments that were academically dishonest enough that they deserved to fail the course. Because this was not typical in the classes I teach, I realized that I could not simply blame lazy students. After doing research on preventing plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty, I realized that while I could identify where I had given students the tools they needed, I could not demonstrate that I had been effective in teaching those skills; that I had not provided them with what they needed to do their best. Although most of the “dishonest” students “should” have known better, the vast majority of dishonesty came from ignorance and misunderstanding.

Over the years, I have found that one of the most important things that students need to do their jobs well is time. Therefore, I have built a significant number of library research days into my classes; days when students can work individually and in teams to advance their education. Because it is neither scalable nor efficient, there are those who might argue that working with students in the library should be discontinued so that I could be more proficient is getting my work done. However, because I want my students to have the tools to do their best work, I am willing to sacrifice efficiency for quality.

If we want our students to do quality work, we need to provide them with the tools to do their work well. I expect no less for them than I ask for myself.

–Steven L. Berg, PhD