Faculty and Instructional Technologies

The meaning of "student" is evolving at Duke University in response to many institutional and faculty outreach efforts. This trend is mirrored at many of Duke’s peer institutions. We see the concept of "learners" expanding beyond traditionally enrolled college students to include community participants, youth enrolled in talent programs, and continuing education students. At the same time, the realm of academic services faculty use for teaching has grown beyond traditional institutionally provided services such as Blackboard to encompass Flickr, blogs, Twitter, and any new technology available to faculty for free. How can we address the expansion in student population and in resources? How do you extend your institution’s computing resources to people outside your campus? How do you extend your local service concepts and policies to the end-user commodity-driven applications that are within any faculty’s reach? Lynne O'Brien and Klara Jelinkova will discuss the issues, concepts, and solutions surrounding identity management proposed and implemented at Duke University.

Leveraging a faculty learning community has helped me do things I didn’t know how to do with technology, including podcasting my lectures.

A dynamic information base aids research into existing technology practices among faculty and fosters partnerships.

Given the demands of teaching, service, and research, faculty are today expected to embrace learning technologies along with everything else, challenging the institution to help them make sense of what works and how to work it.

This paper describes a four-step needs assessment process that institutions can use to determine the gaps between current and desired states of technology infrastructure, facilitating rapid decision making. The framework described focuses on aligning learning outcomes and technology tools and can help institutions compare the current state of technology infrastructure with a desired state to best meet identified learning outcomes.

CMC\'s FITness program 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.

Educational technology support plays a critical role in helping faculty add technology to their teaching.

Asking whether technology improves learning may seem straightforward, but the answer is not simple. The challenge begins with defining assessment and is compounded by the complexities of people, technology, and educational organizations. This paper clarifies technology assessment by exploring the definitions, methods, and realistic expectations it can address.