Getting Started Teaching With Technology
Fall brings sunny days, cooler nights and students back to campus. But students aren't the only fresh faces; every year the University welcomes new faculty members to its ranks. As the newcomers settle in they receive e-mails, brochures, and other information about opportunities for professional development. For those who want to integrate technology into their teaching, they may not know where to start. One place is the Digital Media Center (DMC), which offers services and programs for both new and more seasoned instructors.
For their insights on how to get started teaching with technology, we interviewed four faculty members who not that long ago were new to campus: Lesley Craig-Unkefer and David Rapp, both assistant professors of educational psychology; Gillian Roehrig, an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction; and Eli Sagor; a forestry Extension educator. We also consulted with Peter Dimock, School of Social Work , who has worked with the DMC for many years.
Craig-Unkefer, Rapp, Sagor, and Roehrig participated in the Next Generation of the Professoriate Program, which is sponsored by theOffice of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost (OSVPP) and the Office of Information Technology (OIT) and implemented by the DMC, a unit of OIT. The program is designed to help new faculty members develop effective teaching strategies for the technology-enhanced classroom. Roehrig and her colleagues Leslie Flynn and Bhaskar Upadhyay are now participating in theTechnology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) Grant Program (also sponsored by OSVPP and OIT and managed by the DMC). Dimock has developed many projects through this grant program and the DMC Faculty Fellowship Program, and by consulting with DMC staff members. He is now developing a faculty guide to teaching, partly in collaboration with the DMC. Some of what they learned from these experiences and their continuing involvement in TEL efforts is summarized below.
Take Advantage of Collaboration Opportunities
One of the greatest benefits of participating in DMC programs that these faculty members cited was the opportunity to meet new people and learn from their peers. A simple e-mail announcement led Craig-Unkefer, Rapp, Roehrig, and Sagor to sign up for their first program. Craig-Unkefer, a self-described "tech inquisitive," was eager to meet others who shared her enthusiasm. She was not disappointed: she found new friendships and a mentor in her colleague Susan Rose. Rapp also enjoyed connecting with other tech-savvy colleagues and the opportunity to work with Frances Lawrenz, his department chair and mentor in the program. He so enjoyed the program meetings with his cohort group that he wished there were even more such opportunities. As she develops and teaches courses with an online component, Roehrig has found these and other forms of collaboration to be invaluable, and has come to rely on a network of support. She consults with her TEL Grant Program project co-investigators, College of Education and Human Development IT fellows, other support staff members, and her teaching assistants. As a former programmer, she is tempted to do all the work herself but has learned that getting a course online involves team effort.
Dimock advised other faculty members who are learning about or continuing to teach with technology to connect with colleagues and take advantage of the resources available. "Faculty have a tendency to emerge from our catacombs only for meetings and class, so it's hard to get together to share our ideas." Rapp concurred: "You need to look online and find out about opportunities. Go to the DMC Web site; read newsletters from the U. New faculty get so much information that they don't know what to do with it, but there are nuggets; look out for these because they are very useful."
Know Your Students
The University is a big place. It stands to reason that faculty members would have different attitudes toward and experiences with new technologies. More often than you might think, these attitudes and experiences are diametrically opposed to each other.
On the one hand, Craig-Unkefer was surprised to learn that her students were not as curious about technology as she had assumed, even seniors who were required to take two technology courses as part of their programs. Some students were downright techphobic, resistant to using the computer for anything but writing papers. She responded with an incremental approach. She waited until later in the semester to require participation in synchronous online discussions, at a point when her students were generally more comfortable in their interactions. She engaged in intensive preparation for the use of various technologies and took into consideration that "there are going to be glitches." In those situations, she added, "you can't ask students to do eighty things at once because they are going to rebel."
On the other hand, Roehrig is working with students who are quite tech savvy—as experienced science teachers, they are accustomed to using a range of technologies in their work and on their own. Access is an issue: "We wanted students to look at videos, but access is a problem if they don't have broadband. If we want them to send video clips of their classroom, it gets even trickier because they might not have the tools they need. I have a camcorder, but I can't lend it to them because they're in Chicago ."
Whether students are tech-enthusiasts or tech-phobic, their feedback as crucial for making improvements and adjustments. Dimock reported that even students with high-speed connections who were knowledgeable about computers became frustrated when things didn't go entirely as planned.
However, "in spite of their frustration . . . they realized they couldn't do it any other way. They gave me good feedback. They told me I shouldn't throw it out because it's valuable; it simply needs some adjustments." Along those lines, Roehrig commented that the use of technology in the classroom "is never seamless the first time, but even the face-to-face classroom never is."
Use Technology Judiciously
While some instructors may always feel uncomfortable with technology-enhanced teaching and communication, the problem does not lie in the use of technology as such, but in use of the wrong tool, the wrong strategy at the wrong time. The key, then, is making judicious use of new technology.
For Sagor, although the use of technology in natural resources work is fast becoming high priority at both the national and local levels, the Internet is only one way to reach his target audience. Sagor works with Minnesota 's family woodland owners, some 150,000 private individuals and families who own about 7 million acres. Although many of them live in the state, many are located all over the country. In its efforts to provide woodland owners with the information they need to make good decisions about the management of their land, the University of Minnesota Extension Service reaches them through mailings, Web sites, and face-to-face workshops. As Sagor explained, "Developing online classes is not the first thing we do. We create a foundation. We provide high quality information and some communication tools," with the goal of encouraging woodland owners to come to a workshop. After all, he said, "People make decisions to change their behavior not by reading, but by talking to peers, meeting people, and learning something." While a woodland owner might be motivated to attend a workshop after reading about it on the Internet, and to take advantage of informational resources on the extension service Web site, "there is no better way to learn about forests than to walk through the woods with someone who is knowledgeable and experienced."
Craig-Unkefer similarly said that while some uses of technology can enrich student learning, it depends on the situation. On one hand, conducting discussions via UMConnect Meeting is a great way for instructors to keep classes going when they are physically unable to be on campus, whether they are traveling for a conference or on a brief leave. On the other hand, conducting discussions at a distance requires significant adjustments. Since students will type their answers rather than speak, she plans to keep questions short, simple, and to the point, and to do the work necessary before hand to make sure students will be prepared to use the technology without too much trouble.
An expert on multimedia and cognition, David Rapp offered further insights about the judicious use of technology. Technology- enhanced teaching offers the opportunity to present material in a multimedia format—rather than relying on the written text or the spoken word, instructors can now develop presentations that incorporate visual images and interactive experiences. According to Rapp, while multimedia is beneficial because it presents the material from multiple perspectives, and students engaged with multimedia will be more excited about learning something, there are potential pitfalls. He cautioned that merely using a fantastic visualization is not enough; instructors also need to contextualize their presentations carefully. Students need support: they need a direction, goals, and guidance to sort out the information. Rapp adds that research on multimedia is heating up; scholars are taking more interest and more funding is available.
