Where how to start with technology?
-Michael J. Welker, Instructional Designer, Distance Learning Dept.One of the big obstacles to useful technology integration is to avoid the tendency to let the tools themselves “drive the bus.” Excessive emphasis on the tool itself can derail you from success and meaningful use of your time and your students time and instead become a disruptive force. In an edible metaphor from the TLT Group, Steve Ehrmann warns against surrendering to the “rapture of technology,” cautioning that: “For a variety of reasons, institutions and programs tend to focus just on the new technology itself. That’s bad. To put it metaphorically, you must have yeast to bake bread, but if you buy only yeast, you’ll never produce bread. …” (Ehrmann, 2002). Palloff and Pratt (2007) put their cautionary against this siren song in a straight forward way, stating: “Regardless of the technology used, it should never serve as the driver of the learning process but should be viewed as the vehicle through which learning occurs”(Palloff and Pratt, 2007, Building Online Learning Communities. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass)Despite mail room urban legends and computer software vendors delusions of grandeur, the silver bullet for using technology for teaching and learning success is not to give ourselves and our learning design decisions over to some wonderous Mechnical Turk, whether it be Blackboard or Twitter or the ballyhooed widget du jour. The biggest bang for the buck is to be found in focusing on the design and learning objectives and let that drive what tools need to be adapted to your instructional ends to achieve your learning objectives. Below are some specific resources and methods to help you do just that.
Identify one specific improvement for one specific course using technology
(Adapted from the TLT Group "Why Bother" Faculty Workshop Template)
Take out a sheet of paper/notepad/napkin.
Make two headers on the paper:
"Bottlenecks" = Difficult topic or concept, process or activity, etc.
"To Replicate" = Successful practices or activities or processes etc that you want to expand/replicate
Think of and identify three specific items for each of the headers in a specific course you have taught before and will be teaching next quarter or the near future. (For inspiration, you may want to see the TLT Group's "Why Bother" article categories [PDF])
Select one of the items you wrote down in either of the columns that you believe would offer the most "bang for the buck".
Explore the Teaching Tools area and/or contact the DL Department (419.545.0808 | dl@ncstatecollege.edu) to consult on an appropriate tool and training to achieve your specific targeted improvement.
Implement the targeted improvement in the class next quarter.
Survey students and collect other course data to see if your desired improvement worked as intended.
Either refine your technology implementation for the next time you teach, based on your data or if happy with it, go back to your paper from #1-4 and select the next item to implement and repeat #5-7 above.
Resources:
TLT Group Resources about Designing Surveys for Students
Effects of Technology on Classrooms & Students (Dept.of Education Study)
Research on the Effects of Technology on Teaching & Learning (WestEd)
Use technology to implement one of the Seven Principles of Good Undergraduate Education
In 1986, Chickering and Gamson distilled down the common themes to all the then existing "Best Practices" literature about undergraduate education.Since they published those Seven General Principles of Good Undergraduate Education in 1987, subsequent studies and research have reinforced these are very good things to do as educators. So choosing one of the 7 principles as your first objective for utilizing tehcnology in your teaching is not a bad idea.
Resources:
TLT Group Ideas for using technology For Each of the Seven Principles
Ohio Learning Network's Seven Principles Resources Site
University of Florida 7 Principles Getting Started Site (Click "Getting Started" tab)
Examples of Implementing Each of the Seven Principles (Michigan State)
