Goals of TLT Group Work

Table of Goals and Services l Help Us Improve l Let Us Help Your Institution

Historically, technology in education has been supported through a Big Push (often with a grant), techno-centric, or "laissez faire" (focus mainly teaching how to operate the hardware/software). Or the institution may focus on teaching and learning but may find that its support services mostly reach the same few faculty, time after time. The results are often the same: few faculty discover ways to help students learn better and technology that becomes obsolete without ever fulfilling the hopes raised when the institution bought it.

In contrast, The TLT Group's services are designed to help institutions support improvement of teaching and learning (with technology) in ways that are:

Incremental and low threshold steps that can be conceived or learned in minutes; done with little extra effort (and often time-saving thereafter), zero or low "cost" in dollars and stress); usually different 'small steps' for each member of the academic staff.
Widespread and Frequent (large numbers faculty and staff each are able to make more such small steps, more frequently, resulting a quicker pace of improvement in large numbers of courses)
Cumulative. Over a period of years, the sum of many of these tiny improvements, across many courses, can gradually affect who learns at the institution (access) and what they have learned by the time they graduate. and
Supported with collaboration across boundaries (departments, levels, institutions).

We refer to this centralized support of 'bottom up' change as 'thinking small.' If you are not already familiar with these services, take a look at the table below. It includes links to more detailed descriptions of TLT Group services. If you'd like a narrated slideshow as an explanation or preview of the table below, click here. If you have suggestions for additional ways in which institutions can support improvement by thinking small, please let us know by emailing info @ tltgroup.org.

Dimension of Improvement	TLT Group Services supporting this dimension
Incremental and low threshold	Collections of Low Threshold Applications and Activities (LTAs) (e.g., our LTA collection; our '7 Principles Collection of TLT Ideas; discount on MERLOT subscription).
Incremental and low threshold	Watch *FridayLive!* (free webcasts at 2 PM ET most Fridays); many of these webcasts focus on LTAs
Widespread and frequent	Help you harvest LTAs from your own faculty and share those ideas among all interested faculty;
Widespread and frequent	Brief hybrid workshops to engage more faculty (including peer to peer support)
Widespread and frequent	Help you train undergraduate student technology assistants with IT and consulting skills to help faculty improve TLT in their courses
Widespread and frequent	Reward and support compassionate pioneering among your staff.
Cumulative	Work with faculty and staff to develop consensus about learning activities and goals that are important to advance as the sum of each person's individual steps forward (e.g., improving retention? improving undergraduate research? developing learning communities? making learning more 'authentic'?)
Cumulative	Use on how people can use Flashlight Online and other assessment techniques to illuminate progress and problems. The core questions, "is the sum of what we're doing, over time, also beginning to add up to something larger? Why or why not?"
Culture of Evidence	Flashlight Evaluation Handbook: help staff learn techniques for gathering evidence in order to improve practice.
Collaboration Across Boundaries	To help improve coordination and address conflict, help your institution organize an appropriate form of Teaching, Learning, and Technology Roundtable.
Collaboration Across Boundaries	Help organize or upgrade a virtual TLT Center (close collaboration among units that report to different VPs and provide overlapping services to faculty)

Interested in TLT Group subscriptions? Click here.

Want service in depth: a long term relationship to help your institution improve in many of these dimensions? Call us at 301-270-8312 or email us at info @ tltgroup.org for a conversation to discuss options.

PO Box 5643
Takoma Park, Maryland 20913
Phone: 301.270.8312/Fax: 301.270.8110

To talk about our work
or our organization
contact: Sally Gilbert