Faculty Personas

The primary form of the faculty persona is the teaching professor at a university, college, or trade school.

Main characteristics

• 30-50 years of age
• Categorized as Digital Immigrants - they have migrated to technology
• Have experience and are comfortable with some technology but may or may not understand how it works
• Phone, email, and written document are primary forms of communication
• Spend a significant amount of time in the academic environment
• Are concerned about education and learning from both philisophical and professional perspectives

Peter Professor

Peter represents the teaching faculty. He teaches five classes on English and liturature per semester in the department of Humanities in the college of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Community College where he is trying to get tenure. Peter is passionate about students learning and appreciating language and literature, and is knowledgable in pedagogy if somewhat green in its application. Peter has concerns about using technology for learning, but has heard about and experienced some successful applications of technology to improve student learning. Peter believes that technology should be subservient to learning, never the other way around.

Rebecca Researcher

Rebecca represents the researching faculty. Rebecca does not teach any classes but spends all of her time in leading biomedical research for a large, R1 university. She has three main goals: 1) to make advances in the biomedical field, 2) to become a recognized authority and leader in the biomedical field, and 3) to demonstrate and document enough progress to bring in additional research funding to her intstitution (more precisely the biomedical department). Rebecca works on a team with other reasearching faculty and has several postgrad students assisting her research efforts. Rebecca finds technology useful and welcome when it enables her to achieve her goals.

Owen Oldschool

Owen represents the longtime faculty member who is opposed to modern changes in the university, education, and pedagogy. Owen is a senior, tenured faculty member in his department with several decades of teaching experience. For better or worse, Owen holds to and practices the philosophy of education from a previous age. Owen sees the decline of the education of modern students and he decries the modern practices both inside and outside of the school. Owen has refused technology almost in total. He still has a phone with a cord at home, does not use a computer, prefers a book over the Internet, would rather hand-write a letter than type an email, and when he goes to the bank, Owen goes inside and interacts with the teller rather than use an ATM.

David Dean

David represents the dean faculty member, the head administrator of a department or college. David is the dean of the college of Applied Sciences at a large univeristy and reports to the provost. David supervises the academic affairs of the college such as hiring, promotion, tenure, and evaluation. David takes his role seriously and views himself as the champion, defender, and (whether he conciously notes it) owner and final authority of his college in the university. He is cautious of policies made outside of his college that affect the inside of his college, and realizes that he operates in a highly political environment.