Common Culture Created/Supported/enhanced By The Academic Library On Campus

Common Culture Created/Supported/enhanced By The Academic Library On Campus

Introduction

What kind of assistance should a college or university provide to professors when they reevaluate their courses and curricula in order to harness the genuinely revolutionary potential of technology to improve learning? This article outlines four crucial tactics that have helped the university community accept the promise of technological technologies to facilitate significant pedagogical advances. Key success elements are identified and specific examples of each technique are given.

In almost every topic or discipline, the potential of information technology to improve teaching and learning has been proved in recent years. At the same time, a greater variety of user-friendly software has become accessible, and the majority of teachers are now at ease using word processing applications, e-mail, and the World Wide Web. College courses are increasingly employing technology, with 44.4 percent using e-mail and 36 percent using presentation handouts, according to the 1998 National Survey of Desktop Computing and Information Technology in Higher Education.1

These relatively common uses of technology in the classroom in higher education, however, still fall short of utilizing the true potential of technology to make real-world situations accessible, aid visualization, facilitate student collaboration, support analysis and synthesis of information, simulate complex environments, and provide continuous feedback.2 These “deeper” uses of technology necessitate conceptualizing the teaching and learning process in a different way and call for the use of more sophisticated software.

According to educational research, new information develops through the act of connecting new concepts to what we already know and investigating how ideas are related to one another; new knowledge is not transferred but rather formed by the learner. Additionally, knowledge is created by learners as they work to make sense of their experiences and compare their understanding to that of others, particularly teachers or more experienced peers3. Technology can improve learning by encouraging the active processing and application of new concepts as well as by giving students the chance to discuss concepts with their peers outside of the classroom.

The tendency to see technology as a way of enhancing our current instructional approaches rather than starting from the “ground up” is one of the barriers to integrating technology into our courses in ways that maximize the impact on student learning. Instead, we need to look back to our fundamental student learning goals for a specific course and brainstorm ways to assist students to reach these goals, keeping in mind that active involvement and dialogue about idea are important. Since their main focus is on teaching and learning rather than technology, the majority of faculty members find this style of thinking to be stimulating. How can a college or university effectively support this effort to rethink courses and curriculum in order to harness the truly revolutionary potential of technology to boost learning?”

Success unquestionably requires effective technology and support for its usage. Without a strong information technology infrastructure, no faculty person, department, or campus will be able to fully realize the promise of educational technology to improve teaching and learning. Access to PCs and the Internet for students both on and off campus, multimedia-capable classrooms with Internet access, training, and technical support are all necessary. Faculty must also have access to hardware and software for the development and usage of educational applications. These components, however, are not enough to bring about the necessary revolution in teaching and learning.

A very helpful picture of the elements influencing individual technology adoption is offered by Jane Marcus of the Information Technology Systems and Services department at Stanford University. According to Marcus’ model, adoption depends on the resources that are available, how valuable the innovation is viewed, and how well adopters communicate with one another. Empirical data from her dissertation study supports the model and shows that social and contextual factors are just as crucial to promoting technology adoption as are resources.4

These parameters’ significance was further highlighted by later studies at. In order to determine the variables that might affect the utilization of new instructional technology on that institution, faculty members were questioned. The requirement to be certain that technology will improve student learning was the most crucial element found. Compatibility with the subject matter, benefits over conventional instruction, increased student interest, knowledge of materials in the discipline, compatibility with already-existing course materials, and support from higher administration, chairpersons, and deans were additional significant social and contextual factors. Faculty members were also asked to rank the significance of various technology use incentives. Unsurprisingly, stipends, student and administrative support, and released time were crucial incentives. However, faculty also emphasized the significance of understanding that their efforts will be acknowledged by the university community, count toward promotion, and result in tenure.

Four Essential Techniques to Aid Faculty in Technology-Assisted Pedagogy Rethinking

The design of campus programs to assist faculty in rethinking pedagogy and utilizing technology in ways that have a major influence on student learning can be informed by this kind of research on learning and on the adoption of technology. Duquesne University has been working on creating a comprehensive, campus-wide program to do this for the past nine years. The following sections provide instances of how the techniques have been applied at Duquesne while outlining the four main tactics of the program there.

Encourage faculty to research the effective use of educational technology by peers at their institution and by peers worldwide in their field.

The communication with adopters, a social component Marcus highlighted as crucial in increasing technology adoption, can be facilitated by giving faculty members the chance to learn about effective uses of educational technology on their own campus. Faculty can talk on how technology affects motivation and learning in students, how much labor goes into creating and implementing applications, and how valuable they are thought to be. Faculty members frequently have the conceptual flexibility to comprehend how a colleague’s technological use might be altered for use in their own field (for instance, a historian might have little trouble visualizing how a philosophy colleague’s use of computer conferencing might be modified). However, it is clear that there are disciplinary differences that make it challenging to envision how specific technological applications could be transferred (for instance, a chemist could question whether the philosophical colleague’s use of computer conferencing would be helpful in understanding physical chemistry). For this reason, it is very beneficial to give faculty members the chance to learn about the technology used by peers in their field at other universities (for instance, a chemist might easily be persuaded that a symbolic and numerical software program like Mathcad would enhance learning in physical chemistry).

The faculty development center and computing center at Duquesne have collaborated over the past nine years to offer a wealth of chances for faculty to learn about how colleagues at Duquesne and elsewhere have used technology to improve student learning:

Technology-based education fairs. Each fair asks five or six faculty members who are utilizing technology productively to give a presentation. The intention is to include presenters from various fields, a variety of educational applications, and projects with varying degrees of expertise. Each presenter will show their work at a workstation in a manner akin to a poster session. Attending faculty members are welcome to speak with each presenter for as long as they like. The amount of time necessary to design an application, the impact on student learning and motivation, and the level of competence required are all issues that are frequently brought up.

Meal Bytes. These brown bag lunches frequently feature specific professors who have successfully incorporated technology into their teaching, from virtual cooperative learning groups and electronic portfolios in occupational therapy to the visualization of earthquakes in geology and student projects requiring the use of import/export rate databases in global economics. A variety of faculty members attend each of these seminars, and many of them can see how the concepts discussed may apply to their particular field.

real-time teleconferences. The manufacturers’ satellite downlink programs give Duquesne professors access to the most cutting-edge applications of educational technology. Participants immediately debate potential applications of concepts provided during the seminar within the Duquesne University setting after such a downlink. Staff from the faculty development center and computing center are resources for this debate.

Workshops for teaching. Regular workshops on a variety of subjects, including critical thinking, cooperative learning, and problem-based learning, are provided by the faculty development center. When applicable, the content of these seminars discusses how technology might be used to accomplish the desired educational objective. For instance, a structured, threaded discussion can encourage critical thinking, cooperative learning groups that meet online can go beyond the confines of the traditional face-to-face classroom in terms of time and space, and information gleaned from online sources combined with class discussion can help students solve problems. Aside from these workshops on general pedagogical subjects that cover tech-related ideas, there are also sporadic workshops that specifically address technology-enhanced education. One instance of this was the workshop on “Teaching Online Using Computer Conferencing Software,” which was presented in the fall of 1996 by the first professor at Duquesne to instruct a completely online course. She discussed her use of discussion, case studies, and small group work in this workshop and provided proof that the students had achieved the course’s objectives.

Encourage each faculty member and department to consider the learning objectives they have for their students and how technology may be used to support these objectives.

As was already mentioned, the most popular applications of technology, such as email and presentation software, frequently serve as “add-ons” to existing pedagogy rather than utilizing its true potential to change the teaching and learning process. On the other hand, encouraging faculty to specify their fundamental objectives for a course liberates them to think more imaginatively. At the end of the course, what do they want pupils to be able to do? What key ideas in a given course are the “bottlenecks”—those that many students find difficult to grasp? What kinds of activities and tasks will aid students in achieving the objectives of the course? These kinds of inquiries serve as the foundation for thinking about alternative, technology-based strategies to assist students in achieving course objectives, such as drill-and-practice tutorials for fundamental skills, computer conferencing to foster critical thinking, or multimedia to improve the visualization of key ideas. Similar to this, an academic division may think about the overarching objectives for program graduates and how technology might be included into lessons to guarantee that students do, in fact, achieve those objectives. For instance, journalism students may need to learn how to do Internet research, assess the reliability of sources, and design Web pages. How will these competences be validated and in what courses will they be developed?

This “ground up” rethinking of courses and potential technological applications is encouraged at Duquesne University by both schools and departments as well as by individual faculty members. Such thinking has the potential to lead to considerable curriculum reform in schools and departments. Here are a few ways Duquesne has encouraged pedagogical rethinking.

Technology integration across the curriculum at all schools. The K–12 National Standards for Arts Education will be incorporated into the Duquesne School of Music curriculum and will be expanded to include collegiate students. The School of Music has reviewed its courses, noting the goals and content of each course as well as the technologies that could be used to increase attainment of learning goals. According to the guidelines that come with the standards, “the curriculum should utilize current technology to individualize and expand music learning… However, technology should not be used for its own sake, but in order to achieve the goals of music education”6. A theory lesson, for instance, doesn’t necessarily need to use technology, but using a synthesizer module, music notation software, and computer-assisted instruction to improve ear training skills could improve student learning. A focus on relevant faculty development opportunities was offered by the school’s strategic use of technology, and “Computers for Musicians,” a mandatory freshman course, was developed to acquaint students with the technology they would encounter in later courses.

Online education course about distance education. Duquesne pilot tested a course on online teaching and learning in the fall of 1998. Participants included 17 professors and administrators, and all coursework was completed online utilizing FirstClass computer conferencing software. This method allowed instructors to take on the role of a student while also reflecting on the teaching/learning process and creating their own course. Participants also read articles from the Web and “lectures” given by the instructor in addition to the book. When people asked questions like: “What do you view as the role that you are likely to play as an online instructor? they posted answers.”Do you consider this as having a distinct function from that of a successful in-person teacher? “What do you anticipate will change for you in your online teaching setting, and why?Another assignment asked participants to think of ways they might be able to use technology to implement a variety of instructional strategies that could be used in an online setting, such as small group discussion, collaborative learning, problem-based learning, case studies, simulations, and project-based learning. Participants in a separate “metacognition” conference had access to a virtual classroom where they may consider their own experiences as students. For instance, they might have mentioned how challenging it is to summarize the opinions of the 16 other participants or made an educated guess as to why social interaction varied based on the topic and assignment.

Summer Technology Teaching Institute. Duquesne has provided a summer institute for faculty during the previous four years. Applications that outline a project that a faculty member would like to work on using technology to improve some area of student learning in one of his or her courses are required for participation, which is competitive. Faculty who finish the five-day institute are awarded a $1,000 stipend and are required to present their work both inside and outside of their own school. An overview of available technologies is covered during the instructional design session on the first day of the program. A significant portion of faculty members modify their instructional strategy, technology preference, or both as a result of these seminars. It is crucial that instructors arrive at the institute with a clear understanding of their educational objectives because only then can institute staff members help instructors determine the most effective ways to accomplish those objectives.