This project uses a comparative case study approach to examine the interaction of information technologies with faculty activities, which it characterizes as virtual values and faculty work. It explores three questions that address virtual values. How do information technology and intellectual property intersect research and service? How does information technology structure and value faculty teaching? How do these new developments feature in student socialization? To answer these questions it looks at academic units that produce technologically intensive intellectual property, that organize on-line and hybrid (on-line and conventional) instruction in ways that "unbundle" faculty work, and that produce and use technology saturated materials. These new virtual environments may change values associated with the traditional tripartite faculty work role of research, service, and teaching as well as alter student socialization processes. The value sets associated with the tripartite role are normative guidelines for faculty work (research, service and teaching). If new sets of values emerge around faculty work as information technology is increasingly utilized in universities, it is important to know what they are and how they intersect traditional values. Similarly, if these new technologies and uses influence students' socialization, it is important to know about these changes also. What do these products say about gender? Does information technology change what counts as knowledge?
The research uses a multiple case study design, with primarily qualitative, comparative methods. The points of comparison are by institutional type, field of study, and level of education. Field work encompasses several site visits to three or four universities of different types, control, and mission, focusing on three to four fields of study that cut across engineering, science, and social science, at two degree levels, bachelors and masters. Several graduate students are to be involved in construction, testing and administration of the field instruments and interpretation of results. Study results should clarify ethical and value issues involved in introduction of a new mode of production into faculty work. Results will include presentations and publications in a wide variety of scholarly and practical outlets. Besides a scholarly audience, this information will be of use to faculty and administrative policy-makers at the institutional level.
Exploration of the intersection of intellectual property and information technology will show when market values and traditional values complement or contradict each other. Looking at ways in which technology intensive research is deployed as service will speak to changing conceptions of the public good. Service for free and service for fees may both serve the public, although the different types of service may be directed at differing constituencies with different needs. Studying the various parties involved in unbundled information technology instruction will identify the embedded and explicit values in this mode of instruction production, including differing conceptions of quality. Examining the ways in which technology intensive products and processes influence student socialization, including the ways in which they affect knowledge claims, will let us see how future professionals may serve their disciplines and society. Attending to the embedded and explicit gender values in technology saturated educational materials will contribute to understanding equity issues in the virtual socialization process.
