Gerard Gervedink Nijhuis feels that universities and faculties should pay more attention to the working conditions of teachers and offer them better support. He made it one of the recommendations in his thesis Academics in control, supporting personal performance for teaching-related activities.
His research was prompted by his own experiences of teaching at the faculty of Behavioral Sciences. ´Even when Teletop was introduced, I felt that teachers were left to struggle with it. How should you manage such a new medium as a teacher? What effect does Teletop have on your work? How do you handle students submitting their work at irregular hours and how do you manage your online course materials?'
But it is not just Teletop that is causing a higher work load, according to Gervedink Nijhuis's thesis. `The student population is getting more and more diverse. We have part-time students, bachelor's, master's and international students. All of them have a different background and different knowledge. There is also an increasing focus on skills: students are starting to follow a personal development plan. In short, education is getting more individualistic. Teachers have to figure out for themselves how to deal with that. There is plenty of attention for innovation in education, but it is mainly focused on students.'
The pressure is only increasing. Gervedink Nijhuis: `The consequence is that teachers work fifty or sixty hours a week, take student work home, and update Teletop over the weekend. Right now most of them accept that, but that won't last if the pressure keeps mounting.'
Another consequence is that promising methods are wasted. `Take the online discussion feature of Teletop. Hardly anyone at the UT uses that feature!' Or in the wrong way. `One of the people I interviewed told me: “I open Teletop, click Discussion, add a question and I'm done.” But it doesn't work that way: you have to guide the discussion, which means that you have to change your schedule.´
According to Gervedink Nijhuis, this means teachers need to know exactly what is expected of them, how much time a certain task will cost them and when they need to schedule it.
Gervedink Nijhuis developed a system: a personal performance support tool, which gives an overview per task of what needs to be done and how much time it is estimated to take. `For example, “what is expected of the teacher?” in an ideal case for an online discussion. How much time should the teacher schedule for feedback? Management will have to provide the basic information and the teachers can change that information to fit their personal circumstances.'
An evaluation shows that teachers are very positive about the system. Gervedink Nijhuis: `It slightly reduces the workload, but mainly it ensures that the teachers can control their work. That increases the quality of education.'
Trans. Jeroen Latour
