A few years ago at a conference, I had the opportunity to hear Eric Larson speak about faculty use of technology and support. Since then, my colleagues have heard me refer to Maslow’s hierarchy of faculty support, so I thought that it was time that I wrote a blog post about this.
Larson’s premise was basically that faculty use of technology loosely follows the framework of Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs. In a nutshell, the higher needs on Maslow’s scale cannot be met if the lower needs have not been taken care of first. In Maslow’s hierarchy, the levels are as follows: Biological and Physical, Safety, Belongingness and Love, Esteem, Cognitive, Aesthetic, Self-actualization, and Transcendence.
But how does this relate to faculty using technology? Starting with Biological and Physical, these are the most basic needs that humans have. What are the basic needs that faculty have when it comes to teaching with technology? They need things that work. Issues such as a broken mouse, no internet connection, or a computer that won’t boot fall into this section. This is basic technical support.
The second step is Safety. This is where reliability comes into play. For faculty to feel ‘safe’ using technology in their classes, they have to be able to rely on it to work correctly every time they need it. No one likes to look stupid in front of their students. If a faculty member feels that there is a great possibility for failure with a certain technology, they simply will not use it.
The third state, Belongingness and Love, is where the human element comes into play in both teaching with technology. On the technical side, faculty members don’t want to feel alone. To achieve this, faculty could be part of a group of others who teach with technology and can share the same fears and desires. Also, they need a relationship with someone to help them teach with technology, such as instructional designers or technologists.
Esteem is next on Maslow’s and Larson’s lists. Larson argues this point from a technical support standpoint by saying 
that faculty need to feel respected in their work needs and provides examples from a support standpoint. However, I feel that this is an area where confidence in using the technology comes into play. Faculty need to feel not only supported in what they do, but also confident that they can teach with technology and in a manner that surpasses teaching without it.
Cognitive is where faculty take their own time to truly understand how something works as it does. A comprehensive investigation into a teaching method can lead to new, creative, and innovative ways of teaching. Aesthetic is the investigation taken one step further. After knowledge about “how” is attained, exploration into “how to make it better” occurs. Investigation of teaching methods leads to new, creative, and innovative ways of teaching. By the time these levels are reached, it means there are few concerns from the basic levels.
Finally, Self-actualization and Transcendence cap the top of our hierarchy. These two needs are signs of a happy faculty member effectively, and perhaps innovatively, teaching with technology. Larson argues that Transcendence is the evangelism of teaching with technologies. Faculty who are at this level are happy to share and spread the news of how they teach in an effective manner and want to help others do the same.
While it would be nice to have an entire university filled with faculty at the top two echelons of the hierarchy, it would also mean that I’d be out of a job. All kidding aside, it’s a difficult level to reach on an individual level, much less as an entire university or college. All facets of technological and pedagogical support play a role in this hierarchy of teaching and learning with technology. And if all else fails, take a page from both Larson’s and my book and appeal to the Biological and Physical need—it never hurts to bring food.
To see a copy of the PowerPoint that accompanied Larson’s presentation, click here.
Nicely written, Joann! One additional point, which I think I can share without stealing your thunder since you did link to my original presentation and it’s found there… This whole thing came about because we were trying to address our frustration that, “no matter what we do, faculty keep complaining!” (We’d phrase it more tactfully than that, of course, but that was the sentiment behind it.)
What I found, looking over a couple years’ worth of comments as one collection in chronological order, was that the nature of the complaints was changing, and the change indicated a progression of understanding. For example, comments of “X doesn’t work” were replaced with comments of “Why was X designed that way?”. And my argument was (and still is) that you can’t ponder a technology’s design if you’re busy being scared whether it’s even going to work.
So, indeed, there’s good advice to those of us who want to “see faculty advance” (for lack of a better term at the moment) that “the higher needs on Maslow’s scale cannot be met if the lower needs have not been taken care of first”… But in this framework there’s also the strong encouragement to us that “not all complaints are bad” — they might simply indicate that our faculty are comfortable enough with our technologies to notice where things can be improved.