Lessons in Leadership in the Field of Educational Technology

The idea for this edited book came about due to the increased discussion and focus on leadership within the educational technology field and particularly in the Association for Educational Communications and Technology organization. There is a diverse amount of individuals in leadership in the field that contributed their lessons learned. This book focuses on sharing the lessons learned by leaders in the field on how they became a leader and what leadership means. The primary contributions address three central questions. 

What is your story about how you became a leader? 

What lessons have you learned about being an effective leader? 

What advice would you give others to become a leader?

In addition, this book spotlights the impact that past leaders have had on current leaders and upon the field of educational technology.

       

• Language: English
• Publisher: Springer
• Release date: Nov 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9783030295011

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Part ILessons from Education (P-12 and Higher Education)

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

C. T. Miller, A. A. Piña (eds.)Lessons in Leadership in the Field of Educational Technologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29501-1_1

1. Introduction: Lessons in Leadership

Anthony A. Piña¹   and Christopher T. Miller²  

(1)

Sullivan University, Louisville, KY, USA

(2)

Morehead State University, Morehead, KY, USA

Anthony A. Piña (Corresponding author)

Email: [e-mail]

Christopher T. Miller

Email: [e-mail]

You don’t have to hold a position in order to be a leader

– Henry Ford

What you do has far greater impact than what you say

– Steven Covey

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other

– John F. Kennedy

The idea for Lesson in Leadership in the Field of Educational Technology grew out of a presidential panel sesson at the 2017 international convention of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, titled From the Classroom to the Board Room: Becoming an Administrative Leader at Your Institution. We were joined by Marcy Driscoll, Dean of the College of Education at Florida State University, Allison Carr-Chellman, Dean of the College of Education at the University of Idaho, Kay Persichitte, Professor Emeritus and former Dean of the College of Education at the University of Wyoming and Jason Huett, Associate Dean of Online Development and University System of Georgia eCampus. During that presentation, we briefly discussed our individual journeys into administration, some of the advantages and challenges along the way, and what we would have like to have known when we began our administrative careers.

Marcy delivered a keynote address at the same AECT Convention where she shared how her preparation within the field of instructional design and educational technology had endowed her with particular knowledge, skills and perspectives that her colleagues from other disciplines did not possess. In addition to preparing instructional designers, multimedia developers, training and performance professionals, teachers and university faculty, our field provides excellent preparation for organizational and institutional leaders.

Following the panel session, Chris said we really need to do a book where leaders’ stories from our field can be told. We were both inspired by a landmark book edited by our cherished friend and colleague J. Ana Donaldson, Women’s Voices in the Field of Educational Technology . Ana’s book looks at the field of Educational Technology through the stories of women who have become its leaders and influencers—all while battling cultural stereotypes and political opposition. Ana’s book provided both the inspiration and the model for Lessons in Leadership in the Field of Educational Technology .

Ana was incredibly generous and supportive of our idea and shared her correspondence and other materials used to produce her book. Marcy and Ali, who had contributed chapters to Ana’s book, became the first two recruits for this book. Sadly, Kay had prior commitments that precluded her participation in this project.

Those who are acquainted with popular books on leadership will find the approach of this volume to be different. As with Ana’s Women’s Voices, we felt that much can be learned from the stories of those who have risen to different positions and types of leadership roles and from the lessons that this diverse set of leaders had learned from their experiences and interactions with others. We asked each author to tell her or his story, reflect on the lessons learned about leadership and provide some advice for future leaders. We purposefully did not prescribe how this would be done. As a result, some chapters, like Tony’s, follow a specific story > lessons learned > advice format, while others, like Chris’ chapter, weave these ideas into the overall narrative. We have enjoyed the uniqueness of each of these chapters and hope that you do, too.

The selection of contributors to this book was deliberate. They represent a diversity of experiences across the spectrum of education around the world along with the lessons learned from past leaders. We are grateful to each of these busy professionals, who have taken time from their very full lives and careers to share their stories and insights. Nearly all of our authors also served as peer reviewers for others’ chapters and we appreciate their great work under some very stiff deadlines.

M. David Merrill, who was recuperating from a recent surgery, graciously consented to author the foreword for this book. No work on leadership in the field of educational technology would be complete without his voice.

The authors included in this book represent a variety of walks of life and have varied perspectives on leadership. While each of the authors come from different walks of life and different experiences, they each have lessons to share.

Some like Christopher Miller, Jason Huett, Maria Avgerinou, Camille Dickson-Deane, Tom Hergert, and Jason Rhode followed various paths towards leadership. Often those paths did not include the educational technology field when they started. Those experiences may have been theatre and filmmaking for Tom, theatre and corporate design for Chris, English for Jason Huett, Christian education for Jason Rhode, or systems analysis for Camille, but through their experiences they moved into the field of educational technology. It is through those experiences and along their paths that a variety of lessons learned have influenced their understanding of leadership throughout their careers.

Often, we see the influence of leadership from our mentors and colleagues, but rarely does the public get to hear about those influences. Some of these authors like Pat Miller, Michael Molenda, and Suzuki Katsuaki share how they were influenced as they continued through their development by leaders in the field such as Addie Kinsinger, Don Ely, and Robert Gagné. These leaders sometimes were teachers and sometimes colleagues but always showing examples of leadership to others.

Some of our authors take a more autobiographical route and share their stories of development such as Marcy Driscoll, Anthony Piña, Linda Campion, Bruce DuBoff, and Maria Avgerinou, as examples. You get a glimpse into the fortitude developed by Marcy as she is able to get out of Iran during the Iranian Revolution, or Anthony as he moved through various opportunities across the country different from what he expected his career path to be, but still leading him into leadership. Linda is able to share about how she gained inspiration from other women leaders to encourage her to make a difference in the world. Bruce is able to share his story as a black sheep working in public education for 25 years, being a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and now beginning a new career as a Ph.D. student and future academician and Maria shares how she has connected the dots in her life journey and the lessons in leadership she learned.

You will also find the leadership beliefs and philosophies expressed by authors such as Barbara Lockee, Robert Doyle, Alison Carr-Chellman, Ward Cates, and Phil Harris. Through the various stages of his career Ward is able to share the lessons learned along the road from college to retirement. For Barbara servant leadership is a focal point of her leadership philosophy. Through her experiences as a faculty member and administrator she has learned the importance of serving others. Bob is able to describe the he learned along the road but also the leadership lessons and advice that his daughters have provided. Ali shares a variety of important lessons and advice for aspiring leaders based on her own experiences and the lessons she has learned in leadership. Phil and Barb are able to share their personal philosophies of leadership and how it has influenced them within academia and beyond.

Finally, we felt that it was important to not only include the stories and lesson from those who currently hold positions of leadership within their organizational and institutions, but to include the lives and lessons of leaders of our field who are no longer with us. We were so fortunate that Hans-Erik Wennberg could provide us with a link to and look at Wes McJulien, a giant of a man in both stature and influence to his field. Wes’ promotion of diversity within the field led to the formation of Minorities in Media and its evolution into the present-day AECT Division of Culture Learning and Technology.

The influence of Robert M. Gagné and Donald P. Ely on the field of instructional design and educational technology cannot be overstated. The pioneering work of Robert Gagné on how people learn and how good instruction occurs continues to influence the field today. Marcy Driscoll and Robert Reiser, who worked alongside Gagné and who co-authored books with him, provides insights into Gagné the mentor and the man.

Thomas Reeves and Michael Molenda each provide their unique perspective on another pioneer—Donald P. Ely. Don’s eclectic career took him from instructional media to educational technology and distance education. His influence was worldwide—as the demand for his expertise and consultation took him to Chile, Peru, South Africa, Indonesia and the Netherlands.

Brent Wilson provides insights into the life, work and motivations of David Jonassen, one of our field’s most prolific and influential scholars. Dave’s work in problem solving and constructivism played a large role in marrying educational technology and learning science and has helped to shape much of the dialogue in our current field.

The passing of Addie Kinsinger in the midst of the production of the book was a poignant reminder of how those who have touched and influenced us are with us for such a finite amount of time. Addie was a mentor to both of us, helping us make critical connections to influential members of our field and providing encouragement and support as we became established in our careers. Chapters by Phil Harris, Patricia Miller and Chris pay tribute to this great lady.

We hope that you are as edified by the stories and lessons of this volume as we have been.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

C. T. Miller, A. A. Piña (eds.)Lessons in Leadership in the Field of Educational Technologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29501-1_2

2. Marcy’s Story: Fortune Favors the Bold

Marcy P. Driscoll¹  

(1)

Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

Marcy P. Driscoll

Email: [e-mail]

Keywords

LeadershipHigher education administrationEducational technology

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Marcy P. Driscoll

is the now retired Leslie J. Briggs Professor of Educational Research and Dean Emerita of the College of Education at Florida State University. She is Past-President of the Council of Academic Deans of Research Education Institutions (CADREI), Past-President of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT), and author or co-author of eight textbooks and numerous articles on learning and instruction and research methods. She was co-PI on a grant from the Florida Department of Education to establish the Florida Center for Research in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (FCR-STEM) and co-PI on FSU-Teach, which established an innovative program in math and science education. Dean Emerita Driscoll has been the recipient of teaching awards at the department, college, and university levels, earned for excellence in undergraduate and graduate teaching. She received her A.B. magna cum laude from Mount Holyoke College and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Educational Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She retired from Florida State University in December 2018.

To Boldly Go…

As the shortest kid in my class throughout elementary school, my teachers would always select me first when the class lined up to go anywhere and always positioned me in front in any class picture. I think perhaps I got used to the view from the front! I was quiet, some would say shy, and an astute observer of things around me. I remember on more than one occasion witnessing some injustice or inequity being visited on a classmate and speaking up on that person’s behalf. I remember feeling deep unfairness in the way my best friend in junior high school was treated because she was tracked into a different ability group than mine. These experiences had a profound effect on my nascent conceptions of leadership. When you are small and shy, then to be out front you had to be bold.

Although Star Trek (a favorite of mine) popularized the sentiment to boldly go where no one has gone before and has inspired the framing of this chapter, the quote originated from Emily Dickinson as ‘fortune befriends the bold’. The American poet (1830–1886) from Amherst, Massachusetts attended Mount Holyoke College, a women’s college and my alma mater. I was always intrigued by her story, especially her independence and refusal to be confined by the expectations of her time. In Driscoll (2016), I credited my experience at a women’s college with providing me the means to find my voice and make the choices that shaped my career. Gender expectations are something that most women – and certainly most women leaders – must contend with, but having strong role models has always encouraged me to defy expectations.

In college, I served as a Blue Key Guide (now called simply student tour guides), a competitively chosen position to provide campus tours to visitors and prospective students. I gained knowledge in my coursework, and my free time was spent sharing stories of the incredible alumnae of Mount Holyoke. The environment encouraged me to pursue leadership opportunities, and I was confident in my ability to do them well. Graduate school offered more of the same, and my major professor at the University of Massachusetts, James M. (Mike) Royer mentored me well. By the time I completed my doctoral degree, I was prepared to take the bold step of living and working in Iran. Academic jobs were few and far between the year I finished, and I wasn’t certain that I wanted to be a faculty member anyway. When the opportunity presented itself to work as an instructional designer and teach as part of a team for the National Iranian Radio and Television (NIRT), I leapt at the chance.

My parents were not happy with my decision. Now that I was finished with my education, they expected me to settle down, get married, have children, not travel to a politically unstable country half a world away. If something ever happened, they would be unable to help me. Something did happen – the Iranian revolution – and my team was told to leave the country. I could not, however, because my work visa had expired, and it could not be renewed during the civil strife occurring at the time. I was no longer legally in the country and therefore could not legally leave. I wasn’t all that concerned initially. My Iranian friends assured me that Americans were in no real danger and would surely be aided by our government. But it was a scary time, with soldiers parading in the streets and tanks appearing in the city squares. I realized I was on my own when the unthinkable happened: officials at the American Embassy told me there was nothing they could do to help me.

When I realized that neither my family nor my country could help me, I knew I had to take control of my own destiny. Finding my way out of Iran taught me a lot about being bold and trusting that my skills, knowledge, and grit could get me through most anything. I planned to travel with a friend once I was safely out of Iran and so entrusted her with most of my belongings, which she hauled from one country to another waiting for me to rendezvous with her. Carrying only a tote bag holding a change of clothes and toiletries, I moved in with another friend and began the long process of securing an exit visa.

I relied on my friend for bed, board, transportation, moral support, and advice while I negotiated with Iranian authorities for permission to leave the country. Government offices were open only in the mornings, and I sometimes had to traverse the rubble of bombed buildings to get to the right people. I hit an impasse when the government demanded documentation that NIRT refused to provide on my behalf. With nothing left to lose at that point, I threatened to take my story to the throngs of people who were leaving Iran and make my issue as public as possible. That did the trick. It had taken 2 weeks, but I was finally issued an exit visa.

I returned from Iran bolder and even more prepared to identify and speak up against injustice where I found it. I went to work for an evaluation company as a Project Director overseeing a nationwide study of minimum competency testing programs that was funded by the now defunct National Institute of Education (NIE). The project was complex, involving over 50 interviews of state and local testing officials across the U.S., and we had a year to get it done. I learned to bill my hours much as lawyers and consultants charge for their time, and I commanded some time from almost everyone who worked at this small company.

At some point, it came to my attention that the principals of the company were billing some of their time to my project, despite the fact that they were not contributing any work to it. The company president also communicated periodically with the NIE project officer, making commitments outside the project’s scope of work and then forgetting to tell me what he had promised. Yet I was held accountable for both the work and the budget for the project. The situation came to a head when the work exceeded the resources available and I estimated that we would run out of money and time before the project was completed. I wrote a memorandum to my supervisor outlining the issues, and I titled it Too Many Chiefs and Not Enough Indians.

My action earned me a summons to the president’s office and the threat of being fired, but the memo had the desired effect. I got the resources I needed and earned the respect of my superiors for standing my ground. Then, one year to the day after I began my position there and to the great astonishment of the company president, I resigned. I could not see a future at a place where my values were inconsistent with practices I saw.

I worked for a short time in Albany, NY, directing a large instructional development project for the Office of Mental Health, and then accepted a faculty position at Florida State University (FSU) in the Instructional Systems (IS) Program.

Where No Woman has Gone Before

I am the first woman to be hired into the IS program. I am the first woman to be hired into my department at FSU. I am the first woman to serve as program leader and then department chair in my department. I am the first woman to become a named professor in the College of Education. I am the first (and still only) woman to serve as Dean of the College of Education at FSU. There may be some other firsts as a woman professional that I am not remembering, but you get the picture. These firsts are germane because the expectations for women are still different than they are for men, and women continue to fight for equity in the workplace, even in the presumed enlightened environment of academia.

I have written elsewhere about my career (Driscoll, 2016), my journey into higher education leadership (Driscoll, in press) and the people who mentored me along the way (Driscoll, 2016). In many respects, my trajectory was typical of many leaders in higher education – academic program leader to department chair to associate dean to dean. Less typical, perhaps, are some of the challenges I encountered along the way that exposed gender disparities and implicit expectations of women in the academy, challenges that ultimately led me to once more leave everything I had known and take a chance on myself.

The gender expectations were clear from the beginning. During my third year review, which took place a month or so after I had married, my department chair wrapped up his assessment by saying, I hope that your progress toward tenure won’t be interrupted by your wifely duties. Seriously? This was the 1980s. I was shocked but had to remember the context. I was still the only woman in the department at that time and undoubtedly the youngest faculty member as well.

Then in the early 1990s, three events led me to resign from FSU and accept a faculty position at Arizona State University (ASU). First, a new president had come to FSU, bringing with him a faculty member whom the IS faculty were asked to tenure. This faculty member had no research publications and he was earning exactly twice my salary (we were both at the rank of professor). There were only two votes against tenure. One was mine.

Second, for several years, I had been consistently performing better than my colleagues on annual evaluations, but I learned that my salary increases were not keeping pace with theirs (in Florida, salary data are open records). In 1992, I ranked first in the department, but the dean assigned me to the low merit category for a merit raise. I asked my department chair if he had recommended me for high merit; he said yes. So, I asked the dean why he had assigned me to low rather than high merit, and he said, Well, the difference is not much money. Not the point.

Third, ASU began recruiting me, and I immediately informed both my department chair and dean. I knew that a common way for faculty members to increase their salaries is to secure a counteroffer, but I hadn’t sought out ASU—they had approached me. In view of the first two events I’ve described, I was seriously considering the opportunity they offered. The department chair expressed his dismay at the possibility I might leave and promised to do what he could, but he said it would be up to the dean and he doubted he would have much influence on the decision. The dean told me there was nothing he could do until I received an official, signed offer from ASU. I told him that if I negotiated an official offer in good faith, I was leaving FSU. And I did.

Like standing up to the evaluation company president, this was another example of speaking up to power in the face of injustice. I could not tolerate being treated unfairly so I made the choice to leave. My choice also defied the expectations of my colleagues, none of whom believed I would actually leave FSU, especially since my husband grew up in Tallahassee and we were avid sailors. As I took the bold step of heading to the desert once more, I stood in the doorway of our home on