• Fallibility of Technology?  Cajun Academic Humor - Boudreaux Story/Demo

• Goals

• Why Bother?

• Interactive Activity - Identifying Instructional Bottlenecks, etc.

• Visions Worth Working Against (VWWAs)

• Visions Worth Working Toward (VWWTs)

• “You are not alone!”  Collaborative Change

• Examples

• Next Steps

• Feedback from Participants

 

GOALS

• Introduce some ideas, and demonstrate some examples to help you make more comfortable, useful choices with respect to improving teaching and learning (with technology) – in part by helping you recognize and resist over-zealous claims and threats.
• Encourage you to acknowledge some successes in your own teaching, identify at least one area for improvement, and consider using a simple cycle and related resources, including a template from <<http://www.tltgroup.org/profacdev/home.htm>>.  The cycle:

1.      Find, describe, and try a low-threshold improvement

2.      Use assessment to guide further improvements  [and prepare for problems]

3.      Deepen your own understanding as you help colleagues make similar improvements

4.      Identify and obtain additional resources if necessary

• Provide an opportunity in which you can talk with each other and with me at least a little.
• Get to know some of you at least a little and learn more about this institution
• Collect some useful feedback.

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Why Bother? 

Info Tech as Excuse and Means to ….? [It’s not really ABOUT technology!]

What should you preserve, change – what is especially valuable at your institution?  Ask Fundamental Questions again, again, ….AND PROVIDE FORUM FOR OTHER ”DANGEROUS Discussions”

Delivery vs. Engagement;  Course vs. Textbook;  Linear vs. Winging It [NOT]

New Paradigm - Extending Boundaries of Classrooms, Workshops in Time & Space

When did I “begin my presentation”?  When will it be finished?

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INTERACTIVE ACTIVITY

Describe “Fundamental Questions".  Use instead:

1.  Describe something you did as a teacher during the last few months or years of which you are proud.

2.  Describe some aspect of your teaching and/or your students’ learning that you would like to improve.  This could be an “instructional bottleneck” – a very specific topic or skill or concept that many of your students find more difficult or time-consuming than you like.  Or, it might be something to do with communication patterns, motivation, deeper learning,…

[NOTE:  If you have not been teaching courses recently or will not be doing so soon, answer these questions as if they applied to some other activity in your professional life in which you help someone else learn in some way.]

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Visions Worth Working Against

Reveal Emperor’s Clothes approx every 5 years:  Be skeptical about extremely cynical or romantic claims;  trust your own (all of you – including your students) observations;  respect knowledge and experience of faculty and professional support staff and academic administrators and students and….

Myth of ONE WAY – to “put your course online” [pure text, pure linear, same interactions for every learner]

Myth of the eager self-directed learners +

[What would happen if every student and every faculty member were actively and fully engaged in every course?  Communicating with each other every day?

Joys & Sorrows:  Patti Briggs example:  “Are you still with me?”

Teachers of Online Nursing Courses on verge of collapse!

Solution:  Develop realistic expectations - Accept partial reinforcement;  develop group work skills; …?]

Myth of the teacher-independent instructional resources [“learning objects” ugh!]

è  A textbook is not a course;  an online textbook is not an online course!

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Visions Worth Working Toward

“Hybrids always win!”

Limited resources [$, time] + Too many attractive tech. T/L options

+ Too many “improvement” options

è  Need incremental, permanent, universal, meaningful, comfortable, incrementally inexpensive (dollars, stress, time) “Low-Threshold” professional development

è Collaborative Change

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“You are not alone!”  Collaborative Change

Need diverse advisory group to set and revise priorities;  guide professional development and support services;  demonstrate mutual respect, civil discourse, constructive collaboration AS TIME PERMITS, AS INSTITUTIONAL PRIORITIES REQUIRE

 [W/S + N/D]; 

Unless info. tech. becomes a central feature [high priority, high budget] of FPU, need LTA incremental approach –

Basic steps + LOCALLY SHAPED collections + tips from buddies

Basic Step #1:  Match some of your “favorite problems” with new options

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Examples

You have probably already made major changes in past 5 years!  Word-processing, Email, PowerPoint, Web-browsing… and BEYOND?  Previous were ALL TEXT, MOSTLY ASYNCHRONOUS, MOSTLY LINEAR

New Paradigm [Really!] - Non-Linear Web-Based Presentations – E.g., this one!
NOT “Winging it”!  Can you “wing it” online?  Extending Boundaries of Classrooms, Workshops in Time & Space;  When did I “begin my presentation”?  When will it be finished?

NEW:  Audio, Dangerous Discussions  – Deirdre Cobb-Roberts

NEW:  Collections, Open Source/Course

Harvey Project

NEW:  LTAs of the Week;  Collections, Peer-Reviewed, Collaborative Tools

   Hot Potatoes- Online Crossword Puzzles – Shallow, Deep

   Research Tools

   MERLOT – Show LTAotW # 38 "Becoming a MERLOT Member"

NEW:  Big, Excellent, Flexible, Expensive, Time-Consuming, …[Narrow/Deep]

  Valley of the Shadow <<http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/>>

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Next Steps

[See Websites

<<www.tltgroup.org/profacdev/home.htm>>

<<http://www.ruthk.net/educator/sevenprinciples/index.html>>]

• Support “Compassionate Pioneers” to make improvements

• Assess [prepare for problems]

• Help colleagues

• Get more resources

• Be tolerant and supportive of trial and error – as long as people are learning from failures

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GET FEEDBACK FROM PARTICIPANTS FROM THIS SESSION!
Feedback Form (PDF version)
Results help revise workshops and plan next steps.

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