Teaching with Technology

“If you wait until you think you really know a new technology, you will never teach with it”
&
“Start with what you want to teach, and then work out the best technologies to achieve your goals”

Virginia Montecino

Introduction
Inventive and successful teaching and learning emerges from experience, from research, from reflection and from one’s own “What if…?” moments.  While we often think of those moments of inspiration as bolts from the blue, or strokes of luck, they too emerge, if less consciously, from the nexus of research, experience and reflection, what we might call reflective practice.  They are not accidents, although they may feel that way.

In addition, for those of us interested in, or passionate about, or even just experimenting with, teaching with information and communication technologies, the ability to link our teaching innovations in this field to credible, relevant research and to evidence of student learning is particularly important.

Colleagues and administrators may be skeptical of the efficacy of our proposed (or actual) innovations. We may need to make a request to our university or college for additional resources, in terms of space, infrastructure, equipment, etc.  We may need to argue that a particular course or workshop we are desperate to attend is a productive use of scarce departmental resources.  Those who award permanent posts and make decisions on tenure may simply dismiss our hard work as a learner, as a theorist, and as a classroom innovator as “being good with computers,” as if that were a divinely-endowed ability requiring no effort at all on our parts.

Our students form another important constituency. We should be able to provide them intellectual rationales for the learning of new softwares or platforms. We should justify the unfamiliar or unusual work required to complete an assignment or progress through a course or learning community. We need to think about, and communicate to students, issues of equity, ethics and collaboration.

Thus, those of us who teach with information and communication technologies are often required to make our teaching research and practice much more transparent than colleagues outside this field are required to do.  To offer you practice in this process of “making visible,” our intellectual work as teachers and learners, I have integrated the teaching assignment for this learning community with the research “paper” (although you may present your analytical research “paper” as a tradition paper, a web-text, a multimedia presentation, a video, etc.).  Here are the nuts and bolts.

Teaching Assignment
Each pair will design and deliver a thirty- to forty-five-minute “class” which will exemplify the integration of information and communication technologies into teaching and learning.  You may want to teach something within your field.  Or you may want to focus on a particular platform, tool, or approach to teaching and learning which might relate to higher education as a whole, such as online or distance education, or may cross disciplinary boundaries with ease, such as video, digital story-telling, podcasting, capitalizing on social networking tools and presence, etc.

Remember, though, that the purpose of the “class” is not primarily to teach a particular technology, but to meet a teaching and learning objective via the integration of information and communication technology. You may create your own teaching materials or capitalize on resources available online, or mix the two.  Remember, too, that inventiveness and originality re just as important as technical know-how, and sometimes even more important.  Successful teaching and learning can emerge as dynamically from what you do with what little you know as it can from extensive knowledge.

Timetable for Teaching Assignment
Seminar meeting prior to your teaching session

• Distribute any readings/viewings (short) & and brief statement which identifies the class (or kind of class) to which your teaching session is targeted.

Teaching Session

• Enlighten us….

Seminar meeting after your teaching session

• Submit an individual reflection on your session (c. 500 words)

Research “Paper”
Think of the iceberg as a metaphor for the relationship between the teaching assignment and the research analysis.  Your teaching is the 1/10^th of the iceberg visible above the water, while the research analysis is the 9/10ths below the surface that supports the tip.   Through your research analysis, you should locate your teaching session within the context of the literature on teaching and learning with information and communication technologies, and on teaching and learning per se as relevant.  Try to think about the following contexts (by no means an exhaustive list) as you develop your research analysis:

• On whose work are you building (work within your discipline or field, or work within the larger community of teaching with information and communication technologies)?
• To what extent are you either being forced to cross boundaries, or choosing to do so (and why)?
• What are the key theories and concepts that inform the design of your teaching session, and why do you prioritize those?
• Why do you think your integration of information and communication technologies will achieve your aspirations for student learning more successfully than other pedagogies?  What relevant examples already exist to support your suppositions?
• What assessment (if any – time may well be a constraint here) did you integrate into your teaching session and why? Alternatively, how might you plan to assess the success of your innovation?  What models for assessment already exist that might apply to your work and how might you adapt them?

Format of Research “Paper”
You may present your research analysis in any medium you choose, as long as you can articulate the full extent of the research that supports and shapes your teaching session.  You may also want to think about a specific audience for this research analysis, as it is often very hard to communicate successfully in any medium without a clear audience in mind.

Therefore, you might want to imagine you are persuading a departmental chair or committee to support your work.  Or you might want to compose the analysis as the intellectual justification in a grant application for financial support for your work. Maybe you are synthesizing your work for an annual review where you already teach.  Or perhaps you have been charged to share your successes with a group of skeptical peers, or communicate it to a group of colleagues eager to learn from your learning and experimentation.  Find an audience and persuade it!

Timetable for Research “Paper”
21 April:            Complete draft due in seminar for peer review
5 May:                Final due as component of electronic portfolio