The importance of faculty attitudes in the planning for instructional development

Instructional development has been a recent innovation in higher education, responding to the needs of the new American model of universal higher education. Misconceptions and misapplications of instructional development have been frequent, especially its confusion with media service. A fundamental obstacle to success in any instructional improvement program is hypothesized to be lack of concern with faculty attitudes in the planning of methods to serve them. This study discusses the background of the problem and reports on a survey designed to investigate faculty attitudes toward instructional development on one campus. Tentative conclusions are drawn in order to guide further study. The data presented appear to indicate that there is a need to rethink the basic model of instructional development as currently used when applying it to the unique circumstances of higher education.