EDUCAUSE | Faculty Development

Supporting Faculty Adoption of Emerging Technologies: Wanderlust or Creating a Campus Roadmap?

llarsen — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:52:17 -0500

Supporting Faculty Adoption of Emerging Technologies: Wanderlust or Creating a Campus Roadmap?

Julie Little, EDUCAUSE, Moderator
Dolly Young, Associate Professor of Spanish, University of Tennessee,
Jean Ann Derco, Executive Director, Educational Technology, University of Tennessee
W. Gardner Campell, Professor of English, University of Mary Washington
James Groom, Instructional Technology Specialist, University of Mary Washington

Closing General Session
2008 Southeast Regional Conference
Jacksonville, FL
June 4, 2008

The phone rings. The caller begins with the familiar, "I've been thinking..." and the rest of the conversation centers on how to pilot an emerging instructional technology. Faculty who are early adopters of technology are experimenters and risk-takers; they broaden the landscape of effective teaching and learning with technology. Yes, they push the envelope, but they also offer partnership for identifying what's scalable and sustainable for broader use. The panelists for this presentation shared their campus perspectives on adopting emerging technologies from Web 2.0 to virtual worlds, their successes and challenges, and the partnerships they've formed.

Knock, Knock Who's there? Idea... Idea who? An Idea who's time has come!

Julie Little provided an introduction to frame the panel discussion.

Gardner Campbell led off the panel. He is an early adopter. He asked for innovations and new technologies so often that he said he was made an administrator so he'd understand what it's like to deal with early adopters.

He discussed his beginning tries with blogging using b2evolution blog technology. He was constantly in conversation with IT support and he still needed a better blogging tool so he tried WordPress MU (multi-user) Spring 2007 and did RSS for ELS Blogs for his course. Campbell stressed the need for IT support agility. A casual hallway conversation and Groom immediately installed it for him to try without any commitment. See http://umwblogs.org/wiki/index.php/WPMU_Feeds_from_ELS_Blogs.

The use of the tool inspired Campbell to think differently about the final product. He said most term papers are actually pretty bad. So he used the blog for the first half and other students blogs as the second half. Students used each other as resources and also took each other seriously as colleagues and thirdly, they began to understand research/inquiry. They now saw library books and materials as sources for inquiry.

The project morphed into an opportunity for anyone in the department and then for the entire campus. It turned into a tremendous student publishing platform

What kind of innovation was this asked Campbell - just a hallway conversation that bubbled up, but no pressure throughout the process. He asked "How do we get to the ideas before they disappear?" We need quick response.

Jim Groom responded from his perspective as the IT support person. He tried playing with WordPress as a quick solution. Everything at UMW was on an external server and so they could play as in a sandbox. His job was to think about the space and unspoken contract that everyone blogged. Working with faculty can be very exciting and gives us the ability to imagine ways to work and communicate differently

Instructional Technology is for the moment we are in and also is changing radically

They started with only a few using the blog in the beginning and now up to 1300 blogs in a year. When you sign up for a blog site you have your own space and you control it. - so it has something like the flexibility of the full Internet. Students can have as many blogs as they want for all of their classes and use RSS. It's not like blackboard but rather user created and everything can be brought into a communal space where you can see a whole course's conversation. It provides a syndicated framework for thinking about teaching and learning. It is also a sign of trust between faculty and students.

Groom engaged with the students and became a partner and peer in the class. Over 15 weeks of participation to the degree that he was part of the learning process.

Class articles on Wikipedia were created - 3 were featured and more were labeled good articles. Each group took a Latin American novel and built the article from it.

He said great things can happen at essentially no cost. The Featured Article Team at Wikipedia came in and helped with training how to use it.

Learning happens on the open web. Communities are defined and the IT support person's role in it can be significant.

Jean Derco described the University of Tennessee a bit. They have 27K students and a total of 1915 FTE teaching staff.

Her unit does Blackboard/Centra administration, assists faculty on their projects and they provide faculty grants at no charge.
They have a student technology research assistant program called START.
Workshops, podcasting, events are held
They do research and evaluate emerging technology
They also do contract projects and external grant work

Derco said that faculty say they want:

I want to see more faculty presentations
I need to see things for my department
I want face-to-face

but then they don't come

They changed their focus to faculty who want to do things and participate.

She started working with Dolly Young in 1999 - on a grant for an online Spanish workbook. There have been many formal and informal efforts since that time. In 2008, there was a Project RITE grant (also a campus pilot) to look at synchronous learning options - 5 pilots and one was in 2nd life. Dolly Young and Doug Canfield "Angling for language acquisition with TACLE" was a look at leveraging Second Life. [more information is available at http://edtech.tennessee.edu/rite/2008/young.shtml]

Young discussed the project. Just chatting informally with informed people is valuable to the language process. They wanted to know how technology can help with learning language. They needed opportunities for students to have language experience. They have 2 thousand Spanish students, so anything tech needs to scale for the large group.

They did 4 Second Life tasks integrated into the curriculum of six sections of intensive Spanish 111-112 (6 hour credit)

All Faculty are thinking about how to get students to think at a higher level. They hoped that these 4 tasks in Second Life would do that.

The tasks had to have a problem-solving element, be interactive, use collaboration, and a specific purpose.

Data collection
"Immediate perception of the task" questionnaires were used at the end of the semester to discover the students' perceptions of effectiveness of the technology in the learning experience. 22-40% were neutral about it. At least 50% had problems with the headphones or other technology issues such as problems hearing their avatars when talking, teleporting issues (too many students) and did not enjoy learning how to use Second Life.

But 50% said:

Task was interactive
Rather speak to student partner in class
Recognized how much they learned.
Enjoyed the first task best - students had to meet their avatar partner in a Second Life university location and set up an interview.

Level of proficiency in foreign language had to be considered.
But they were able to integrate Second Life into the curriculum

Students obtained the appropriate Second Life orientation.
A lot of time was spent designing avatars.
Mostly the students were either neutral or found the Second Life tasks somewhat fun.

The students did need to speak in the Second Life environment and in Spanish.

Implications:

You must ensure the technology works - even the headphones!
Projections of the amount of time, effort and money needed to write, set-up, design, implement, and assess new technology applications should be realistic - it's as much the role of the researchers as the administrators

Derco mentioned that 50% were interested in using Second Life

Questions and Responses

Q What do you do for students who don't blog?
Campbell: They only get credit for doing the blogs - otherwise no credit.
There is no opting out.

Groom discussed authentication for the blogs. There are policies on archiving, no single sign on for WordPress. There is no personal information so there are no FERPA compliance issues. Each tool is separately managed by the student - simply a set of publication tools. They have to activate their account against their email address.

Their work takes on a life of its own. They can put it on the UMW system or another. He did say that spam is your nightmare on blogs.

Q Derco and Young were asked to further discuss the Second Life project.
50% said they didn't like it. But the other 50% didn't say that.
In the feedback the understanding was that most of the issues were technical.

They had to hold students accountable for the tasks so they had them print their virtual chat.

In these settings there is no "back of the classroom" where they can hide out. They must participate.

They like the fact that how much time they put in reflects their results.

Groom mentioned that it was good that the UMW students can take their work with them when they leave.

There is a conception of space issue rather than a technical issue - the community aspect is important.

Q How are we supporting the "innovation seeds" in our faculty?

Second Life involves a lot of skill. Having a package where everything is already built and you can count on having it without change would be very helpful. Building staff capacity to support the faculty is very important.

UMW - Come to each faculty member as "ready to have a conversation." Personal relationships can happen at UMW because the faculty is small. These informal conversations forge useful understanding of what needs to be done.

Q Do you have advice for promoting good scholarship within these new social networking tools?
Campbell responded that the growing variety of publications and events supports scholarly learning. We need to rethink what constitutes scholarship? It needs to count as inquiry and sharing.

Young asked: What is scholarship? More importantly for most faculty is teaching students to think. She asked "How can we get students to learn without feeling the pain?" 70% do not go beyond the 2nd year. Students need "games" and rewards. Are we to support something that is fun?

Often, the amount of investment doesn't match the payoff...from the Administrative standpoint there is always the question - do we need more technology or more faculty? It is wonderful to have easy to use techniques but not all is approached that way.

Derco said "Don't push faculty to use anything" They have Blackboard for those who want to use it though certain departments, like physics, tell the faculty "you must have a Blackboard site."

Campbell recommended the Trent Batson article on innovations in the Web 2.0 environment. Can We Trust Students to Learn in Web 2.0? [http://campustechnology.com/articles/63593/]
We need a technology innovation unit not just a support unit. Some will always be tasked with operations but we must still have the innovation, technology or not. We need to do it together and always thinking about being innovative. Otherwise, what is higher education about?

Young depends a lot on research. She wants to know if there was a gain in learnig.

Groom talked about the notion of data and innovation saying we won't ever really know what is effective teaching and learning. Everything is changing radically and if we don't do it someone else will. Failure is okay - - it's a learning process...

Little noted the enthusiasm of the panelists for their work and encouraged the audience to continue this conversation with them after the conference.

Learning Circle: Innovations in Faculty Development

cborn — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 17:32:14 -0600

faculty learning communities tied to the mission of the university
alternative modes for outreach (underground movements)
food, alcohol
brown bags, enticing by doing short tech intros over the period of lunch
require fac to submit proposals for summer development projects
core literacies for technology
faculty come to the table when tech solves a problem, so how do we create those problem spaces
what you call it matters, 'workshop' is a dirty word, call it 'faculty prep'
developing online learning communities to compliment faculty learning communities
engage librarians in faculty development
need to build long term trust relationships with faculty before they will engage in the risk-taking of exploring new methodologies
Theme-based events to create ambience at workshops (e.g. Indy 500)
getting faculty to present their work to other faculty, getting them to talk to each other about what they do
helping faculty to understand where to go for what kind of help
Digital Fellows, recognized by the institution - oooooh, I like this!
talk w/faculty about how tech tools can also fit into their research or other publications/presentation (faculty seem to value most recognition by others in their disciplines)
Incentive to faculty: learning more about tech will help you give good academic presentations
Poster sessions at the end of a faculty development cohort completes it's work

Faculty/Staff Cultural Divide

focusing on tech innovations within a particular field
specialize as staff in a certain dept or area of research
presenting ourselves as a support service is contributing to the divide, use different language
open up partnership to others, grad students or TAs
Teaching a class makes a difference, makes you 'one of them'

Media Fluencies:

If teachers are not media/information fluent, who will teach the students to be?
Does tech fluency requirements need to differ by discipline?

Unworkshops:

help teachers help students learn
5 minute starters/teasers in existing faculty meeting

(side thought: what do we really know about the tenure review process? Do we need to really understand it so that we can help faculty do their research/publishing, therefore influence their teaching?)

Teachers as Learners, Learners as Teachers: Reflecting on the Digital Disconnect

cborn — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:19:58 -0600

Jeffrey S. Nugent, Associate Director, Center for Teaching Excellence, R. Martin Reardon, Asst Prof and Joan Rhodes, Asst Prof, School of Education, Virginia Commonwealth University.

Study conducted by these people exploring research on how ...

http://www.educause.edu/ELIStudent%2FFacultyQuestionnaire/10538

"In the midst of other priorities, scholls can choose to view this emerging pressure for change from their student body in either a positive or negative light. On the positive side, through the growing use of the Internet outside of school, educators have the opportunity to expand their reach and to engage students in new and thoughtful ways. On the negat.....

Quote from Pew study, called The Digital Disconnect.

Key Findings:

disconnect between how students use the internet for school and how they use it during school, under teacher supervision

...too fast for me to type

Key Questions:

How do students and faculty prefer to learn new tech?
What tech are they using? In waht contexts?
Is there a disconnect between how students and faculty use these tools?

Used an ELI Discovery Tool Survey to collect data on how students and faculty use tech. 5 Questions about preferred modality, responses made on a Likert scale. Students were analyzed by gender, faculty analyzed by rank

Scale:

Least preferred way to learn
Not preferred
CAn learn this way if needed
Preferred
Most prefferred way to learn

Not much difference between male and femail students. Similarly, not much difference between different ranks of profs.

How does the student preferences compare to faculty preferences: very, very similar. Graphs are stunningly similar.

Personal v. Academic Use of IT

nine Pairs of Questions, respondents asked to respond to both "Educational use" and "personal use" on: created/contributed to blogs, web pages, podcasts, IM, wiki, etc

Male and Femail students similar in responses. Big difference in Ss use of technology in the academic environment vs. personal use. Ss use tech much, much more in personal life than in their academi lives.

Faculty report that they are not really using a lot of tech in their academic lives, and almost the same amount in their personal lives.

Another perspective of Digital Technology, added all tech uses together into one scale of 18.

(paper handouts apparently available somewhere...)

Group work/discussion on reactions to research.

The Learning Space

jjorstad — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 23:16:19 -0500

www.jjorstad.blogspot.com

September/October EDUCAUSE Review Now Available Online

cluckett — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 12:07:34 -0500

The back-to-school issue of EDUCAUSE Review, focusing on faculty development, is now available online. Read articles from Gardner Campbell on experiencing a “computer romance”; Patricia McGee and Veronica Diaz on getting a handle on all the latest learning technologies; Anne H. Moore, Shelli B. Fowler, and C. Edward Watson on designing change for faculty, students, and institutions; and Joel L. Hartman, Charles Dziuban, and James Brophy-Ellison on assessing roles in shaping and supporting the assimilation of IT into the teaching and learning process.

EDUCAUSE Review is also available via RSS feed. Click the orange RSS icon on the EDUCAUSE Review home page to access the XML required to subscribe.

Podcast: Faculty Development and the Net Savvy Student - An Interview with Brad Cohen

gbayne — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 14:00:30 -0500

In this podcast, we feature an eight minute interview with Bradley A. Cohen, Assistant Director and Coordinator for Curriculum Development at the University of Minnesota. This interview was recorded at the 2007 ELI Fall Focus Session in Boulder, Colorado where Mr. Cohen presented a session entitled, "Faculty Development and the Net Savvy Student".

Brad Cohen discusses the digital divide and shares guiding principles the University of Minnesota uses to deliver an integrated suite of faculty development programs designed to help faculty meet the needs of net savvy students. The University of Minnesota's approach is informed by the data routinely collected from their students and faculty, the literature, and their practice.

An Interview with Mike Malsed, Claremont McKenna College

gbayne — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 17:51:22 -0500

Claremont McKenna College's FITness program (Fitness In Technology) allowed faculty to rapidly integrate teaching with technology and help struggling students catch up. Grants from the Mellon Foundation and the Fletcher Jones Foundation funded specialized programs to help students meet faculty expectations of their technical knowledge, skill, and application. It's a unique approach that garnered unanimous faculty buy-in.

In this 14 minute interview with Mike Malsed, Assistant Director for Student Technology Services at Claremont McKenna College, he discusses the development, implementation, and success of the FITness program. The conversation was recorded at the EDUCAUSE 2007 Western Regional Conference in San Francisco, California where Mike was delivering a presentation entitled, From FITness to Fantasy Congress: The Growth of FITness Within Faculty and Student Projects.

EDUCAUSE Western Regional: On the Cutting Edge with Social Software in the Learning Process

llarsen — Wed, 16 May 2007 21:42:53 -0500

Summary:

On the Cutting Edge with Social Software in the Learning Process

Panelist(s)

Peter Beyersdorf, Assistant Professor, San Jose State University

BJ Fogg, Director, Persuasive Technology Lab, Stanford University

Nancy Mackin, Adjunct Professor, The University of British Columbia

Sandra Rotenberg, Access Services Librarian, Solano Community College

Session moderator: John C. Ittelson, Professor, Director, California State University, Monterey Bay.

2007 EDUCAUSE Western Regional Conference
Wednesday, May 09, 2007

San Francisco, CA

Abstract:

Social software has created exciting new dynamic possibilities for teaching and learning. What are the uses of wikis, blogs, podcasts, Facebook, and the like, and how is academia incorporating them into teaching? This faculty panel will address social software and pedagogy while sharing their experiences from the point of choosing a software, implementing it, and assessing its value to the learning process.

Session Notes:

John Ittelson began by saying that the future is coming faster now and it is harder to predict the future. He recommended that attendees review the NMC/ELI Horizon Report which can be downloaded from http://www.nmc.org/horizon.

Peter Beyersdorf

Peter is a physics professor who podcasts all of his classes and is responsible for helping other faculty use podcasts to enhance their courses. He is always trying to find ways to get content to students 24X7. Students do attend the classes and the podcasts are used to enrich the class. The podcasts are engaging and the students appreciate their ability to interact with the topics. The enhanced audio files have drawbacks such as still images and the fact that pointing to points on the slide can’t be done so he supplements with small videos on experiments and lab work. Peter has been using podcasts for the past year. A student survey indicates that they rate the podcast above the value of the textbook and just slightly below the face-to-face.

BJ Fogg

BJ is the director of the Persuasive technology lab at Stanford and is a psychologist

He is most interested in how computers can change what we can do and how people interact emotionally with the computers. BJ has invented “YackPack” that has a widget-like intercom on the webpage via a wiki page. The walkie-talkie channel has a push-to-talk feature. His students use the “YackPack” to communicate 24X7 rather than email. BJ believes in the power of voice in connecting people.

Nancy Mackin

Nancy teaches in the First Nations Studies program where she has a tremendous amount of information that is oral or visual based. She finds students are more and more interested in anything “not print” and so found that teaching with a 3D open source metaverse has been ideal is engaging her students. With her course content and interviews with tribal elders, the students create buildings in the metaverse. The students are more engaged and their work captures more content throughout the course which is shared via the metaverse development. Students had a wide range of technical capabilities but the “ancient spaces” software allows different expertise levels and supports the interdisciplinary aspects of the course. In addition, there is a strong inter-generational aspect with the tribal elders sharing with newer generations. (http://ancient.arts.ubc.ca/features2.html)

Sandra Rotenberg

Sandra is a community college librarian who has been teaching online for six years in an asynchronous environment. She and her students missed face-to-face interactive and so she added synchronous spaces such as chat space and conference meeting rooms. She described her experience with CyberOne, where Second life was used as a teaching tool. The whole class was online in Second Life. (It was aimed at law school students, extension students, and anyone else – Sandra was one of the “anyone elses”) Describing herself as a generation past ‘gaming,’ she was surprised by her experience in Second Life. It was intimate and seemed to work as a tool to replace the usual face-to-face interaction. Sandra began to do her “office hours” in Second Life and found that as many students came to office hours in Second Life as come in person – about 25%. Her surveys show that students are excited about the Second Life component and the ongoing interactivity via it.

Sandra did indicate that there are some negatives. There are students who don’t participate because they “don’t have time,” the learning curve is steep for many, and they need a good computer and good broadband and graphics card that they may not have. The college has a 60 seat commons where they can use an appropriate computer but many of the online students do not come to the campus.

John Ittelson

John talked about the wide–range of technology and the use of it in the classroom.

He felt that, as educators, what are we trying to do is to take the class outside the room and work towards life-long learning. Much may have started as entertainment but has been found quite useful for education.

Q&A

Question:

The way students can have an experience in a different time means that we’ve made geography less important. Is there a way that these tools can give students an experience that they can’t get otherwise?

Responses:

Nancy Mackin responded that the intergenerational aspect is supported in her situation is a way better than the traditional classroom.

Peter Beyersdorf responded that they can recreate experiences they have in the real world

Question

Accessibility, in the use of YackPack and other technologies, how do you integrate a deaf student? Also, 40% of the adult population in the US is illiterate/semi-illiterate so one has to make anything/everything simple.

Responses:

Sorenson Media (translation tool) is helpful

A student with disabilities loved Second Life because he could do everything anyone else could do.

Peter mentioned that all of his videos had to have text and that it became very useful for others as well.

It was agreed that addressing access issues helps everyone.

Question:

Re: podcasting and augmented classes – why do the students still come to class?

Responses:

Classes are more engaging with these tools. How do you motivate students to come to class and, if they aren’t coming to class, how do you motivate them to use other resources?

Re: Second Life allows Sandra to have office hours 35 hours a week when she’s at her desk and there is a real sense of community among the students who meet with her there.

Question:

What kind of overhead do you have doing the podcasts?

Response:

Peter wrote scripts to ‘alarm’ 5 min before class so the software automatically launches. It does take time. The first semester he recorded but didn’t tell them he was doing so. If they missed a class he’d send them a link. That was the start – then he built up

Question

Most faculty think technology gets in the way. How do you communicate the power of social software technologies to faculty directly? How to help them experiment and use them?

Response:

Faculty should remember that teaching is about curiosity (life long learning), collaboration (let the students help build the systems), and critical thinking. Students put their work on the web and others critique it.

The overhead can be heavy as was the case in building the metaverse space. Both faculty and students need to acclimate to the technology. Faculty might meet the students in Second Life and walk into walls together with them in the beginning. Faculty should start small and build from there. It is important to expose both faculty and students to the new technologies and prepare them for the new and constantly changing world.

Question:

How do you way process what you are doing with the social networking technologies? Which part is the important part of the learning?

Response:

Critical thinking skills are the most important – over content.

Re-assess what you want students to get out of the class – and teach them how to learn. Show them the process for how to do it.

Content is really important – but at the same time the process is important and faculty should look to their IT partners for significant support.

Teaching life long learning and critical learning and IT fluency.

Question:

Regarding social spaces: learning is a very social thing. Where is the social aspect of technology going? web2? Free tools?

Response:

There is a lot more coming in the next 6 months.

There is excitement about seeing the newest technologies and cooperatively/collaboratively finding the best solutions for learning.

International collaboration and looking at bigger issues across the world and across time is more and more important.

Students will be able to choose materials to match their learning styles and needs and that will make them more successful which is our collective goal.

Unanticipated things will make a difference. We don’t know what will happen in the space so we are obligated to be working with our students in these spaces.

Resources are available at http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=WRC07012

The session was recorded for podcast as well.

Postercast: Building Community Among Faculty

cclark2 — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 17:11:40 -0600

Kim Mooney and Sondra Smith from St. Lawrence University in the north country of New York State talk about "Building Community Among Faculty: Best Practices Online." Recorded during their poster sessions at the ELI Annual Meeting in Atlanta.

Chris Dede on Emerging Technologies and Neomillennial Learning Styles

jcummings — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 11:03:50 -0600

I interviewed Chris Dede, the Timothy E. Wirth Professor of Learning Technologies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, on some of the ideas behind his upcoming keynote address at the 2007 ELI Annual Meeting. Dede will conduct the general session scheduled for 8:00-9:30 AM on Tuesday, January 23; his topic will be "Emerging Educational Technologies and Neomillennial Learning Styles."

In this discussion, Dede explains the concept and key characteristics of "neomillennials." He also highlights the transformative effect of emerging immersive learning environments on higher education pedagogy and discusses the importance of faculty development in relation to these developments. Finally, he briefly touches on the National Science Foundation's cyberinfrastructure initiative as a significant topic he won't be able to cover in depth in Atlanta. However, he cites the November 2006 ELI Web Seminar he conducted on the cyberinfrastructure initiative as a resource for those interested in learning more about it.