Major changes are under way in both the organization and delivery of instructional technology on campus.

Key is the appointment of biochemistry professor Harry Matthews as the first faculty director to a new Instructional Technology and Digital Media Center. The center is a reorganized service within the Division of Information Technology that delivers video, photographic and Web products to the campus.

John Bruno, vice provost for information and educational technology, said that Matthews’ experience as a campus citizen interested in information technology made him the logical choice as the new faculty director. Not only has Matthews chaired the Academic Computing Coordinating Council since its inception two years ago, but he is also principal investigator for a $500,000 Mellon Foundation grant to evaluate the relationships between online instructional technology, traditional teaching and how students learn at UC Davis.

Matthews, in addition, was involved with the five-year review of Information Technology in 1999 as a member of the review committee chaired by Dave Shelby, assistant dean in the Division of Biological Sciences.

The May 1999 report issued from the review said the division is pulled in too many directions trying to meet wide-ranging expectations to best serve the campus. It suggested reconfiguring Creative Communication Services, a unit that had combined Repro Graphics, Illustration Services and Instructional Media during the Phase III restructuring after state budget cuts in the mid ’90s.

Faculty members told the review committee they were confused by the organizational structure when they needed help with a teaching or research project and believed that their technology needs were not being met by the division. The report also said IT needed to improve the way it prioritized projects so the projects that best fulfilled the campus mission, rather than the "squeaky wheels," were at the top of the list.

Mandate to bring faculty into the fold

Bruno, a computer scientist from UC Santa Barbara, was hired last year with a new vision for the division and a mandate to bring faculty members into the information technology fold.

The hiring of faculty member Matthews is part of Bruno’s plan to integrate faculty priorities and sensibilities into the division.

"Harry Matthews is someone who will be pivotal in bringing instructional technology services to the faculty," Bruno said. "He is concerned with issues of dealing with student growth coming from Tidal Wave II and can help the faculty, which is burdened by trying to use the Web while doing everything else they must do."

Matthews said his new unit is, in part, being structured to answer the recommendations of the five-year review.

He will be pulling together a group of almost 50 highly skilled photographers, videographers, designers, support staff, technology trainers, Web development professionals and experts on the use of emergent instructional technologies from Illustration Services, Instructional Media, the Arbor, the Center for Advanced Information Technology and other areas of Information Technology.

"We’re going to create a single group of people working together that is more productive," Matthews said.

Creating a clearer process

To create a clearer process, the new center will appoint project managers to help faculty and staff members make the best decisions on what they need.

"We also think this will be better for production staff who will be freed up from the project management role so they can do the work they are trained for," Matthews said.

In addition, to help address the problem of prioritizing projects, Matthews intends to form an academic advisory committee, with half its members from the center staff, and half staff from the schools, colleges and Teaching Resources Center. The committee will set guidelines for making priorities that staff can follow for most projects. For the biggest, most complex requests that come to the center, the committee will be asked to weigh in with its opinion.

Both Vice Provost Bruno and Matthews look forward to strengthening the collaboration between IT and the Teaching Resources Center, which puts on a summer technology institute for faculty. Matthews said the teaching center plays an important pedagogical role on campus in tying teaching to instructional technology.

Matthews will work 80 percent time for the first year of his three-year appointment and gradually decrease to a 50 percent position. He hopes to have on board a full-time associate director within the next three months.

Into technology since the '70s

A diligent teacher, Matthews has used technology since the late 1970s at Portsmouth University in southwest England. In the 1980s he discovered animated cartoons could help his UC Davis medical students better understand difficult concepts he developed online lectures to give his medical students more classroom time to apply their new-found knowledge to case studies and developed an honors seminar to help incoming students think critically about in their college careers and beyond.

A faculty member in the School of Medicine since 1980, Matthews began his research career as a physicist-turned-biochemist and has published more than 100 research papers and book chapters and three co-authored books. In the past few years, his research has turned toward instructional technology.

As a former chair of the Academic Senate Committee on Academic Personnel, Matthews also is familiar with the broader faculty interests.

Matthews said he has great hopes for the new center.

"This is an opportunity to rethink the kinds of services we offer and the way they are delivered as well as take full advantage of the excellent people we have in the unit," Matthews said.