As a busy distance education professional, I am sure you are asked to hold faculty development workshops. In such workshops, the concentration is usually on technology. Inclusion of technology is important in two respects:

1. Faculty need to know how to work with it.

2. Faculty need to know how it changes the culture of their work.

While the first point is covered well in most workshops, the second point is neglected.

When faculty learn technology skills and try to engage in a distance education practice they quickly find out that this method of work is very different than what they are used to. They may shy away from a sustained involvement in distance education. They may set-up an online course, nurse it for a while and when the novelty effect wares off, they would abandon it.

This behavior, in fact, matches their culture of work, although it might look bizarre to the distance education professional. Faculty are solo workers. They are craftspeople who experiment with ideas in their classrooms, use them for a while and go on to a new idea. In doing so, they do not need to coordinate their work with anyone but themselves. They use technological tools as long as it is under their personal control and does not require the help of anyone else. Technologies, such as television, Webcasts, or learning management systems, on the other hand, require standardization, and division of labor. It is very hard and time consuming for one individual to use any of these technologies individually for a sustained period of time. Technology might also demand centralization of some work processes in the administration, or the campus media technology services. In short, faculty must synchronize their work with the work schedule of the others when they engage in distance education, something that they rarely do as part of their normal practice. While 1. Standardization around certain technologies, 2. Specialization by dividing certain tasks to specialists, 3. Synchronization of work processes with others, and 4. Centralization of management when it makes sense and provides economy of scale makes sense for the distance educator; these cultural norms are interpreted as encroachment in their academic freedom by most faculty.
As a faculty development workshop provider, you are not just asking the faculty to learn how to work with WebCT or Blackboard, you are asking him/her to change the culture of his/her work. Successful workshops should include training on these cultural changes and discuss standardization, specialization, synchronization and centralization with faculty as well.