In January, I accepted a co-op position at Central Connecticut State University in our campus’ Instructional Technology Design and Resource Center. The plan was simple; figure out a way to inject new technologies into the classroom in a non-obvious way. As Profhacker readers are sure to recognize, lots of really interesting and effective tools are available online, most of them cheap or even free. However, when I asked Professors why they did or didn’t use a particular tool or service, and they all came back with similar answers: they weren’t familiar with the tools, they didn’t know what was out there, they didn’t see the point, and they didn’t trust the price.
The last two were particularly hard for me to grok. The first point I can almost understand: five years ago, Youtube was but a twinkle in the eye of it’s owner, Myspace ruled the Social Networks, and “tweeting” was still something only birds do. The turnover rate in technology (specifically online) is huge, so investing in any one tool when it could be just a passing phase? The second was was a particularly hard pill to swallow, particularly to an undergrad student: “What do you mean Free is Bad?”
I figured the best way to encourage Faculty to use these new tools would be a workshop designed to gently introduce them to the basics of some of the fundamentals of online tech. I had a pretty serviceable list going when I had a conversation with a fellow student about my work, and – to my shock – my classmate showed interest in creating a Podcast! He asked if he could sign up, and I rushed back to my boss with a new plan: hybridized workshops for Students and Faculty. Make students knowledgeable and they’ll eventually request to use their newfound tech in the classroom. Make faculty knowledgeable and students will be using the tech as assigned. It’s a two pronged solution, and it’s worked very well so far!
I am interested in hearing feedback from the Profhacker Community at large on this idea. I’ve run a few so far, and – despite low attendance – it has actually gone great, with lots of really interesting questions flying back and forward. The Workshops – titled the Digital Seminar Series – can be found here. Each one is about 30 minutes long, with a basic one-on-0ne session afterwards. Here’s a list of all the currently run workshops , along with a brief description:
Digital Communication: Why would I want to use Facebook vs. Twitter vs. Email vs. SMS?
Podcasting and Multimedia Creation: What is a Podcast, and why would I want one?
Social Networking: How can Social Media and Social Networking help me work better?
Understanding Web Site Construction: How is a web site made? How can I make one cheap and easy?
Wiki’s and Wikipedia : What is a Wiki? What is Wikipedia really good for? Is it the Fifth horseman of the Apocalypse?
How to put your brain online: What is Cloud Computing? Why would I want to use it?
Blogging : What good are blogs, anyway? What’s all the fuss about them?
Understanding Digital Copyrights: If I put something online, is it still mine? What are the Creative Commons?
Managing your Digital Reputation: How do I make sure the “me” online is someone that is hire-able/professional?
What do you think, Profhacker? What would do you think would benefit students and faculty in such a way? Would you like to see more come of this – for example, a screencast of each Workshop, or a podcast on each topic? Let me know in the comments!
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11 Responses to Creating Workshops for Students and Faculty
Tanya Roth - March 9, 2010 at 2:50 pm
I’ve linked my school’s workshop series on teaching effectively with technology as my website. This program, originally designed as a once-a-year workshop held for grad students at the end of the school year, has been around since 1997. In 2009, we expanded the program to include other topics (as the website reveals). Since its inception, we’ve focused on free online tools.
While this has been focused on grad students, every other year our teaching center offers iTeach (http://iteach.wustl.edu, I believe). This one-day symposium is designed to highlight new technologies and teaching methods – but is not devoted exclusively to technology. This year, we followed that with a brief faculty workshop designed to introduce some of the basic tools – Google Docs, Wikis, Zotero, Dropbox – we avoided Twitter, simply because we thought that would likely be over our participants’ heads (it was).
We had really good turn out for this, and we’re searching for ways to expand and improve the ability to reach out to faculty (we’d love a postdoc opportunity, but that doesn’t seem likely given financial considerations right now).
The key seems to be: start slow, start small, and be patient. You might consider approaching this not from tools, but from pedagogical issues – collaboration, for example. Our theory with the Graduate Student Technology Workshops is that the best approach is to start with one’s pedagogical goals, then determine what tools may (or may not) fit those needs.
Some of the things you’ve mentioned aren’t necessarily “for classroom” use (IE: professional presence falls into our job search workshop, and you might find it similarly useful). Whatever the purpose, perhaps centering around specific goals is one way to go.
Aeon Elpis - March 9, 2010 at 3:59 pm
I think a lot of folks (both faculty and students) are reticent to take technology workshops for two reasons. First, they may not know what the terms mean (or only very vaguely know), and signing up to take a workshop about a technology about which you know nothing at all has a very high risk factor. You could end up spending an hour learning about a technological tool that you will never use.
Second, most people want to know why something is relevant more than what something is. I have found students are much more open to technological innovation and experimentation if they understand the purpose and pedagogical reasoning behind that experiment.
So, I would suggest titling your seminars differently (although I think aiming at both faculty and students is inspired!). That is, try emphasizing what the technology can do for you. This works for the more advanced topics, too. “Want to post things online, legally? Come learn how to avoid being sued for copyright infringement!” Etc.
sciedgrrl - March 9, 2010 at 4:18 pm
As I cancel my email to Tanya to ask if she has seen the post yet
I really like the idea of putting the students and faculty together, and I’m interested to hear how the combination was received by faculty. It seems that a lot of workshops offered (not yours) end up with a “preaching to the choir” schedule in that the workshops are offered most often for undergraduates (who may have never experienced dial-up internet), then graduate students (who may have always had access to something like a word processor), and finally faculty (who end up hearing about brand new tools/applications at EVERY workshop because the workshops are so infrequent).
Obviously, I agree with Tanya about starting with a goal and focusing your workshop around it. :)
Something that was also quite useful in our workshops was the discussion portion–completely away from the technology that we were going to present. Have the participants discuss what technology they currently use and what goals THEY have in mind for the tech that you are presenting. This gets people discussing the issues early, before they are behind a computer screen, and gives you an idea of the knowledge base of your audience. It also makes a post-workshop discussion more helpful because the participants will feel more comfortable discussing things with each other, and you will have a better idea of how much information was useful to them.
TonyS - March 9, 2010 at 4:47 pm
I really like the idea of combined workshop for faculty and students and I wish that was an option at my school, unfortuantely they think of funds/services to help faculty and those for students as completely separate things that are each tracked and justified in their own ways…
It is worth considering that there are some faculty who will be more comforatble among colleagues as opposed to mixed in with students, but the conclusion there is to offer workshops in lots of different formats to get the people with different goals/expectations/
Dave Eubanks - March 9, 2010 at 4:48 pm
We at the U of Maryland Center for Teaching Excellence are a few years into offering 3-day summer institutes for faculty interested in using new(er) technologies (http://www.cte.umd.edu/sti), and among the many lessons we have learned, here’s one that’s critical. Whenever possible, try to find real live instructors who have used these tools in real live courses (and in your case, students who’ve used them, too!). They can anticipate and respond to all sorts of concerns that might not occur to those developing the workshop. They can also temper the temptation to see a tool as a panacea. That may be nearly impossible to do with some of the relatively new things you’ve mentioned, but many of the tools our faculty express interest in have been brought to their attention by colleagues who have used them.
If there’s any way to sustain a community working with these new tools over the course of a term or year, they become very valuable resources for each other. What a great opportunity for students and faculty to talk about teaching…
Cindy Jennings - March 9, 2010 at 4:50 pm
Best of luck Alex & ProfHacker on finding the magic formula here. Nice idea about aiming to engage faculty AND students.
You are quite right on your ideas about why faculty might not embrace the affordances of technology in their teaching. It is a thorny issue – difficult to nail down to one or two (or even a few) things though. I am constantly searching for what will bring colleagues to the table (or workshop, or website, or seminar, or informal conversation, or x______________ (you fill in the blank).
I have been revisting the whole idea of faculty development programming a lot lately as I begin to plan events for next academic year. There are some pretty good points made in this piece from EDUCAUSE Quarterly by Ann Taylor and Carol McQuiggan: http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/FacultyDevelopmentProgrammingI/163099
Here’s my take: A BIG issue is time, plain and simple. Learning to use a new technology takes time (you mention that above). Faculty are already stretched quite thin in addressing their respective role enactments (teacher, scholar, and finding a service niche). And, as noted by Aeon Elpis above, it is important to help people be successful with technology by showing them what it can do for them – quickly. All that said, probably the most important issue (at least imho) is that in order to even consider low(er) threshold technologies requires that a faculty member be thoughtful in selecting that tool ….using it if (and only if) it MAKES SENSE in their own approach. That’s the part that stops a whole lot of people…because there is simply not TIME (I already said that, I know), or the inclincation, to do the pre-requisite THINKING about teaching that is necessary for succeeding.
Bill Guinee - March 9, 2010 at 9:09 pm
Your link to the workshops (“here”) doesn’t lead anywhere, and I would really like to see them.
Aaron - March 10, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Thanks for this post, we’ve actually been doing the same thing at the University of Wyoming.
Sponsored by the IT dept. and the English Dept.’s Interactive Media Lab (which I help run) we set up The Edu Mac (http://theedumac.com). Our stuff focuses a bit more on Macs, but web tools like Google Docs are cross platform.
We’ve had a very hard time convincing people to attend. We do weekly workshops based on requests for information (be it program or tool specific, or just a “is there a better way to…” kind of questions). We try to invite students, faculty, or staff.
It’s been helpful to some, but the biggest problem we’ve run into is getting people out of there offices to come to the events. We often get responses like “Wow, that sound like a great thing to do, can we set up a talk for next semester?” or next year, or at some indeterminate point in the future. Academics works on a semester time-line, I get that, but scheduling stuff so far in the future means that by the time it’s presented it may be out of date, and it doesn’t help you now.
All those troubles put out there, I’d love to hear what you’ve been doing to drive interest to your program, and, I would love to offer to pool resources. As you can see on the site, we’re trying now (using Camtasia and ScreenSteps) to build a database of how-to’s for the technology we talk about. We’d love to be able to do the same along-sdue your talks!
Also, for anyone else who’s interested, each week (well, not this week or next week- spring break, but starting again on the 24th) we board cast our talks on uStream, we also take questions from the uStream chat window, so anyone anywhere can ask us questions during or after the presentations.
We’d really enjoy the chance to work with other schools! I had wanted to wait to build a list of contacts, but then this article… what great timing :D
Let me know what you think,
~ Aaron
Wayne Morse - March 10, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Some of the key aspects for success have been mentioned in previous comments: time required; other faculty as peer-mentors; ensuring the technologies are easy to learn and scaleable; multiple pathways to learn about the technologies; and providing the faculty/instructors the know-how to choose a technology that might help get them to their objectives. We use the analogy of a technology tool-belt. Empower the faculty to choose which of the many tools at their disposal might work for their particular objective. Providing time during the sessions for discussions that may be on tangents to the main topic will help them associate new knowledge to familiar stuff. We offer a range of sessions during the semester as well as summer seminars for both faculty and graduate students.
A new approach we are trying (and that seems to be paying dividends) is providing seminars tailored specifically for groups of graduate student instructors during the semester. Not only does this empower the graduate students, they become evangelists for the appropriate and sustainable use of technology within their departments and to the faculty they work with.
Linda Campbell - March 10, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Eric,
That seems like a good idea! Do you have any material you could share from the workshop, e.g., pedagology, the schedule, instructional text, and how it is taught? I wouldn’t mind looking into seeing how our own Centre for Teaching & Learning could run those workshops for faculty / students…
Thanks for sharing.
Derek Bruff - March 16, 2010 at 12:11 am
Most of the points I was going to make here have been made above–how important it is to feature faculty “panelists” in workshops, the need for discussion time to help participants start to apply ideas to their own teaching contexts, the value of focusing on pedagogical problems or opportunities instead of technologies. I still think I have something to add to this great discussion, however…
Several people mentioned above the difficulty of interesting faculty in coming to workshops on technology. As Cindy said, time is a huge factor here. However, there’s also the fact that it’s tough to be interested in a workshop on technology X if you have no idea what technology X is. One way to help potential participants develop an interest in particular tools is to use them effectively in other settings.
For instance, we use clickers in our new faculty orientation to see what preconceptions the new faculty have about our students. This is a productive use of the technology, and, as a side benefit, it introduces new faculty members to that technology. As another example, I used Prezi in a workshop recently that wasn’t about presenting or lecturing. Prezi worked well as a presentation and facilitation tool during the workshop, and several participants asked me after the session to tell them more about Prezi.
I ran a workshop on teaching with clickers recently in which I asked participants what leads them to try out a new teaching method or technology. I was guessing that “a recommendation from a colleague” would be the number one answer. Nope, it was “experiencing it as a learner myself.” That led me to see the value of using technologies in workshops on other topics as a way to interest faculty in trying those technologies out.