I'm from the University of Pretoria in South Africa. The problems we experience are similar in several instances. I will not give such a complete reply as some did and will not report on a specific project because most of the projects are very similar.
Academic staff although appointed to lecture must also do research--publish or perish. Several publications will definitely place you ahead of your peers especially those that devote all their time to effective teaching techniques to such an extend that they do not have time to do research and publish. I have tried to convince these excellent lecturers to develop IMM and then publish about the project, but it is often not the kind of publication that get lots of attention. How does one convince academics to spent so much time on the development of IMM as subject matter experts?
On the other hand we find academics who arrive with stars in their eyes and dreams of developing an IMM program that will revolutionize the field--only to disappear again after they realize the amount of time involved. Yes, like Russ Pennell [30 Sep 96] said in his comments on faculty commitment, often the young ones are eager to help but department heads do not buy into it and the young eager lecturer drowns under the workload. Many reasons for not completing are stated, but it is a major problem.
Interaction levels are low. IMM almost becomes electronic page turners. When we can not convince faculty to be creative about interaction, we seldom take on such a project; but, in some cases, we will continue if the academic can tell us how the completed product will be used in the end. They often supply worksheets and other assignments that are created around the product. That is fine as long as it is done and monitored.
Yes, the academic members are often over-ambitious.
Funding is always a problem. We do all the development free but new subsidies, etc., are putting pressure on resources and we might have to charge for our services soon. Whether faculty is going to budget for IMM programs is still to be debated.
Yes, we are lucky, some of the projects did finish and are in use.
Design faults always surface afterwards because academic staff members, as subject matter experts, need to adapt to the way the instructional designer works and vice versa. The ideal situation is, however, to do a second project with the same staff member because then everyone knows what is expected.