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Championing Emerging TechnologiesCreated by Donald Carter (Northern Arizona University) on February 22, 2008
Championing Emerging TechnologiesLearning Circle ELI 2008 Annual Conference Tuesday, January 29, 2008 ====================== Facilitator: Vincent Doogan, Director, Student Technology Services, New York University Scribe: Don Carter, Director, e-Learning Center, Northern Arizona University Attendees: about 15 in a circle in a reasonable size room for this activity
Introduction by Vincent, and to “kick-off” gave a personal example of a 2nd Life project.
Vincent’s suggestions and issues were the following:
How to be or become a champion?
What is a technology you would like to bring or are bringing to campus?
Questions: 1) How do we engage students, early? · Is there, does anyone have, a formal process to involve students? · An advantage is that maybe students will push/encourage faculty adoption. · It was suggested when considering some innovation or emerging technology consider all the constituent groups and both how the innovation will affect them and how they may assist in its adoption. o Students § Prospective – can we engage potential students § Current – to devise pilots and give early feedback § Former – to reflect on recent experience and what might be enhanced as well as what could both prepare current students for the workplace and connect them to potential career opportunities o Faculty § Pioneer/Innovators § Laggards § Big middle o Staff – resources as interested and experienced users, as well as affects on novices who engage with students and faculty, and demands on IT support staff 2) How do we develop critical mass/interest for both beginning and sustaining new technologies 3) Pioneers – are their ideas and interests extensible? Keys are publicizing such as showcases, support their efforts to begin the mainstreaming that will promote increased adoption. 4) Often there is central IT suppression until a project can become institutionalized. So then, how to start…skunk works. 5) We need to develop ideas and communities to support/empower Librarians, Instructional Designers, Pioneer Faculty & students as resources and initiators of new ideas and projects. These generally are new roles. 6) How do we encourage "seasoned" faculty teaching core or pipeline courses to experiment or to use new technology or techniques for learning? 7) Even with good infrastructure, that students appreciate and use, how do we get faculty buy-in and use. Especially how do we promote new roles through technology for teacher, collaborator, facilitator, and learner? 8) Small Colleges have special issues because the role of the librarian or instructional technologist/designer must by necessity wear many hats. 9) College/University Marketing has a role to play as innovator and may attract and promote new thinking within students and new faculty and staff. 10) Is all this at odds with traditional Face-to-face Liberal Arts College core value of personal faculty - student relationships? If not, we need to identify and develop how technology deepens those relationships and provides new opportunity for collaboration within those relationships and new ones across departments and institutions – Web 2.0 such as DIGG, Scholar, Google Docs. 11) Do we celebrate and promote technology as social and playful, not always serious academic resources. 12) With wide variety of new technologies, how do we develop the support and help desk infrastructure and expertise for a quality experience? 13) Course resources and activities were fragmented before Course Management Systems (CMS). There are administrative gains from a CMS’ collection of tools, but may not realize added learning value or learning gains. Is there a difference between a Course Management System and a Learning Management System? How do we move from course centric systems and activities to more holistic learning systems and support? 14) How do we, or can we, match our personal and professional interests with those of the college or university given the predominant current culture of most faculty? 15) With different institutions having various organizational structures are there models or organizational associations to accommodate the various roles and services provided to academics by Instructional Designers, Assessment Specialists, Librarians, Academic and Career Advisors? Where do these technology innovators in service units fit in a technology rich world? Some of the issues are: Alignment, Leadership, job descriptions, roles, and possible overlap or gaps. 16) What new technology can be sustained given limits and recent reductions for financial support and resources for training. How do we adopt new when we are stretched supporting what we already have. 17) How do we redefine teaching and redesign learning activities? 18) What alternatives might there be for Course Management Systems that have become so comprehensive and, to many, too complicated to be useful? 19) Showcase success stories 20) Cutoff abusive users – can we and how does one do that? 21) Is the Course Management System reinforcing bad habits?
The group then continued after the scheduled time trying to make connections and networking with a strong desire for some answers to what was mostly a session filled with lots of questions deserving of answers.
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