Teaching with Technology

“A teaching philosophy is a self-reflective statement of your beliefs about teaching and learning. In addition to general comments, your teaching philosophy should discuss how you put your beliefs into practice by including concrete examples of what you do or anticipate doing in the classroom…They are written for two particular audiences. The first is search committees, since teaching philosophies are increasingly becoming part of the academic job search dossier. The second audience is yourself and your colleagues. In this case, the teaching philosophy serves a formative purpose—a document that helps you reflect on and improve your teaching.”

University of Minnesota, Center for Teaching Excellence (http://tinyurl.com/akf9yd)

Introduction
The pervasiveness of information and communication technologies within everyday life mandates a conscious exploration, from the perspective of the scholar-teacher, of their current and potential roles within higher education.  A teaching philosophy, which both structures approaches to teaching and learning and invites repeated reflection on those symbiotic processes, furnishes a compelling context for such exploration.

The precise nature of our perspectives on ICT-enriched teaching and learning is less important than, first, the intellectual clarity of our approaches and the evidence we provide to support those approaches.  Second, equally vital is the congruence between our teaching philosophy as a whole, and the teaching and learning with technologies components.  Just as your teaching philosophy can guide your curriculum and program development, the design of your courses, the composition of your syllabi, the creation of your assignments and your planning of student assessment and self-assessment, so too the teaching with technologies component can support your re-assessment of older technologies, guide your evaluation and integration of the new, and prepare you to plunge creatively into the as yet unknown.

The artificial intelligence researcher, Natalie Dehn, proposes a model of creativity that may prove helpful in conceptualizing a philosophy in such a fast-moving field as ours.  For her, creativity integrates:

• sensitivity to unforeseen opportunities, when one has the good fortune for them to arise
• willingness to be distracted from what one was doing, if something better comes up
• a process of successive reformulation, dramatically increasing the probability that useful opportunities will arise
• a  sense of direction that serves both to keep the author usefully occupied in progressing towards her goals and to provide a new environment in which fortuitous opportunities are likely to arise.

The visioning and revisioning of a teaching with technologies philosophy, then, as with any creative work, has to be an iterative process. While a philosophy informs and transforms our work, the contingencies of our work can also completely transform a philosophy.   Thus, we need to have a clear concept of our philosophy but an equally strong readiness to revise it in the light of new knowledge and experience.

The Assignment
Many of you have already started to develop a coherent teaching with technology philosophy in your mid-semester assessment, and to define the relationship of technology-enhanced teaching and learning to your overall philosophy of teaching and learning.   Others may be working on, or have completed, teaching philosophies in previous or concurrent classes, or as part of professional job searches.  Thus, you may choose between two options for this assignment:

• submit a complete teaching philosophy into which you have integrated your teaching with technology philosophy (in the form and medium of your choice)

or

• submit a free-standing teaching with technology philosophy (in the form or medium of your choice)

You may also want to envision your teaching with technology philosophy in more than one format, such as a text for the traditional reader (of whom there are many in the academy, for example) and, say, a multimedia piece in which you enact and perform, rather than describe, your philosophy.  You do not have to create multiple versions for this assignment, though.  You just need to indicate, if it is not immediately apparent (although it should be), whom you envisage as the target audience for your philosophy.

As always, I would urge you to be more adventurous than you may believe you really want to be as your thinking on the teaching with technology philosophy and its presentation evolves!