One of the common concerns that faculty have when thinking about using digital technologies in the classroom is how much time they would need to spend in training an entire classroom of students on the same tool. This task can be made more complicated given the varying student levels of technical expertise and comfort level with digital tools. Should you walk students through every step of the process of setting up and formatting a blog, perhaps giving up valuable class time in doing so, and knowing that some students already have those skills and may be turned off by that handholding? Or should you just give a broad overview to the class, hoping that students can figure things out on their own? And how do you deal with the 40th question about how to change a blog theme, or format a wiki entry, or add an image to a visual presentation?
Rather than seeing varied student skill and comfort level as an obstacle, why not leverage that expertise in your classroom? Identify those students who have previous experience with the technology in question (blogs, wikis, video editing, etc.), or those who are just generally comfortable with learning and using digital tools, and ask them to serve as “tech mentors” for the rest of the class. If they agree, let the rest of the class know who their tech mentors are. When students have a technical question, they go to the tech mentors first. Only if they don’t know the answer would they need to come to you.
There are real advantages to this process for students and faculty alike:
- Students may prefer to ask a fellow student a seemingly obvious question than the person responsible for evaluating them.
- Student mentors might be available (read “awake”) at midnight, when the faculty member is not reachable.
- Less time needs to be taken from class reviewing basic functions.
- You can learn quite a bit from the mentors about how well the technology is working in the class.
Assuming you’ve been convinced, there are a few items to think about before implementing:
- Be sure to clarify that the tech mentors are there to address questions of technology, not answer questions about how the project/assignment is done. Those questions should still go to you. [We’re not talking about using students as Teaching Assistants here.]
- Have conversations with the tech mentors at various points throughout the course. If they’re running into the same problem over and over, a class-wide review of that issue might be in order.
- Consider how you might reward tech mentors for their time and effort on behalf of their fellow classmates (and I don’t mean money). In my experience, you don’t necessarily have to offer anything formal. Most students are flattered to be asked and eager to share their expertise. Still, you might offer extra credit or work it into your syllabus as an additional grade. It is also the kind of stand-out experience that I try to work into recommendations for students.
Anyone else deploy their students as fellow teachers in the educational technology process? [Image by flickr user kandyjaxx. (CC-licensed)]
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14 Responses to Deploying Students as Tech Mentors
Terry Brock - August 17, 2009 at 11:25 am
Another benefit would be that it may help students interact with each other outside of class, which may develop a better community within class…
Eszter H. - August 17, 2009 at 10:54 am
This is an interesting idea. You’re definitely right that not all students will have the skills and we can’t assume that they’ll pick them up easily. If anything, one might wonder if there are enough students qualified to be tech mentors. But let’s assume there are.
I’m still left wondering about the rewards. It doesn’t seem fair just to have these students spend extra time on helping others without some compensation of one sort or another. However, something like extra credit seems tricky as it seems extra credit should be available to students equally. (That is, whenever I offer extra credit options, they are for things that anyone can decide to do. If not then there is inequality in access to the extra credit, which seems problematic. After all, someone shouldn’t be punished for not having the opportunity to earn extra credit just because they lacked a skill presumably not required for the course.)
My point is: I appreciate the general idea, but how to implement this remains unclear.
Tonya Howe - August 17, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Jeff raises some excellent questions about dealing with technology in the classroom, and I’ve been struggling with some of those very issues–in my experience, most students know how to use some technologies, but often not in an organic way, if that makes any sense. Facebook, check; twitter, check; iMovie, check. But the learning curve becomes steeper when students are asked to use a tool they’ve not specifically encountered. A WordPress blog, instead of blogger; Windows Movie Maker or Final Cut Express, instead of iMovie.
I used to give brief overviews (or prepare a video tutorial), then post them online for later reference, and simply say “Have at it,” “I’m here for any questions,”and the IMC contact can help, as well. This worked for about half of the students, consistently, but when it didn’t work–and in some sense, it always didn’t work for a large percentage of the class–I found myself having to give lots of extra credit work and/or alternative projects. Which became problematic for other reasons.
This term, I’m teaching a first-year seminar in which (thanks to a colleague at GWU!) students will collaboratively create film commentary tracks based primarily on analysis and close reading. There is, clearly, a strong tech component here, and because of the nature of the course, I’m building “use of technology” into the course grade. I’ve been assigned a peer/student mentor, who seems to be fairly adaptable with technology, and one of her tasks will be to function as a first stop for students who are feeling adrift, even after our hands-on time and visits to the IMC. But in terms of rewarding this kind of “tech mentor”–a great idea!–that has been taken care of by the first-year program.
Do your institutions offer “student technical assistants”? Could a student in IT or CS get a 1-credit “lab” for attaching herself to another course as a tech mentor, or could the department create a student assistant position specifically for student use of technology in class? The problem with this may be that the student assistant wouldn’t be in the class all the time…. However, I love the idea of working this kind of experience into any recommendation letters.
It also might be useful to think about offering tech mentors some part of any presentation or publication that emerges from the course; for instance, I’m teaching another course in which I’m going to try to get my students to participate in creating an Omeka archive; while their participation won’t be mandatory, I will make it clear that should I present the project at any academic events, they will be featured as participants. This has the added benefit of stimulating interest in the scholarly community–like Terry’s point about interacting with each other inside and outside of class.
On a tangent, it seems to me that one of the things we are doing when we incorporate technology into the classroom is teaching a kind of adaptability and lateral thinking that is often invisible, but implied, in more traditional courses and assignments. Hmmm.
Julie Meloni - August 17, 2009 at 2:45 pm
I don’t think that last part is a tangent at all — it’s coming right back around to the need for play in any kind of literacy. For instance, you mention a steeper learning curve when students use tools they haven’t encountered, like a WP blog instead of a Blogger blog (or vice versa). If students take a moment to play around they’ll quickly note the similarities — the concept of the post, the title, the comments, the visual vs source editor, the ability to tag and categorize, etc. Something that really hit me (and my co-instructor) in a class last semester was students’ resistance even to the concept of play (let alone actually doing it). It “didn’t look the same” and therefore could not possibly have any similarities to anything they were used to using, and therefore wasn’t worth their time. I consider that to have been a big critical thinking FAIL, which is totally a different topic, but back around to my point: play leads to adaptability and adaptability leads to someone more prepared for “the real world” and the workforce, so even if it’s not an explicitly stated objective, incorporating technology goes a long way.
Jason B. Jones - August 17, 2009 at 2:53 pm
I have been teaching the wikified class notes assignment long enough, and have convinced enough colleagues to try it, that there’s now a cohort of students who I can deputize for some low-level hand-holding. I don’t really reward that explicitly.
But, this summer, when I taught a class with iPods, I brought in an undergrad for tech support. He and I are incorporating that work into an independent study and some other related projects. (So, to rephrase that somewhat more clearly: he was a student not registered for the course, but with whom I work regularly.) We’re trying that again this fall.
It’s worth saying he does almost no work beyond helping folks in class and helping think of cool things to do: He’s not a TA in the sense of being involved in the grading, or leading discussions. Rather, he’s using the experience to come up with ideas for things he wants to do . . . for example, an iPhone/iPod app. (Actually, I imagine he’ll chime in on this thread soon . . . )
Matt - August 17, 2009 at 4:54 pm
I would think that setting up some sort of “tech support ticket” system for students to submit their questions, then the mentors would get a certain bonus depending on the percentage of the tickets they complete successfully.
Not exactly a fully fleshed-out idea, but that was the first thing that came to mind when I read this.
jmcclurken - August 17, 2009 at 11:39 pm
I held off responding to the initial comment by Eszter to see if others had some ideas about the issue of student “compensation” and I’m very glad I did. There are some great suggestions here about the ways students can add to ed tech teaching and the ways they can be rewarded for that effort.
My initial response to Ezster’s concern about student payback is simply to note that I don’t think formal class credit (extra or otherwise) is absolutely necessary, unless the burden is significant. But let’s assume that it would be a lot of work for the tech mentors.
[For this response, I'm going to set aside those student mentors who would be directly compensated in other ways (paid tech support from IT; independent study credit outside the class; department student aide) simply because I was proposing using the people taking the class itself as mentors.]
First of all, if it’s a great deal of work helping out their classmates, I think spreading the burden out among several tech mentors would help ease the workload.
Second, there are few other potential rewards for student mentors that I can think of (in addition to those mentioned above by me and other commenters) that wouldn’t have to take the form of extra credit in that class:
– Take those students to lunch when you meet throughout the semester.
– Offer them a chance to “force add” to a future closed class that you teach. [This would be a significant incentive for some at my school.]
– Have them present their work themselves at our annual teaching & technology conference, Faculty Academy.
There are certainly others, but I’m going to try one or two of these out this semester.
Alex Jarvis - August 17, 2009 at 11:59 pm
Great post.
I’m the Student that Jason mentioned above, and I am interested in looking at our iPod touch assignments in a more usual class (as opposed to the summer class that it was previously introduced to).
The idea of a Tech Mentor has always been something I have tried to posit myself as, but I am mostly weird: I do it more for the techno-evangelism than for any sort of reward. I can’t speak for Jason as to why he took a liking to me in my academic career, but for being outspoken and greatly interested in technology prior to my TA years, I was invited to things like panels with visiting authors, tips and information urging me to participate in academic achievement days, bouncing ideas of off each other for assignments, papers, proofreading resumes, cover letters, drafts, and eventually, TA’ing for a pilot project classroom and joint NEH grant applications (and guest posts in suddenly popular blogs about supercool potential iphone apps… coming soon!).
There is no easy way, I would think, for a Professor to explain these benefits immediately. Instead, the best ones are the ones that would do it anyway; those who would intuitively help out their struggling classmates for the good of their tech-aware future as opposed to for credit.
And then, of course, you jack their class participation grade up a large notch.
What Jeff (jmmclurken) says is about right: these kind of things really bolster the power and perceived ability of any one student to manipulate his academic environment. A good many of them would likely stare into the middle distance if asked to share lunch with their professor, but a good few would jump at the chance to be ‘let in’. As is always true, look for the nerds.
And I would like to reiterate: After TA-ing the class and previously working at the School’s Computer lab: there is a vast overestimation in the skill level the average student has in any given technological medium. Do not make the mistake of assuming they can navigate an ipod for anything other than, I don’t know, coldplay or something.
Eszter H. - August 18, 2009 at 8:05 am
This is an interesting discussion. However, I don’t think anyone’s addressed my two main concerns, namely: (1) making sure that the instructor isn’t extracting free labor from some students (i.e., the tech mentors) while (2) also ensuring an equitable playing field for extra credit in the course. Of course, it may well be that we disagree about these being important factors in the classroom in which case we’ll just have to agree to disagree in our approach to teaching and compensation.
When I was in college, I TA’d a Computer Literacy course, but that position then became my work study job for the duration so I was being compensated for the effort. While it may be that some students don’t feel the need to be compensated, I think it’s fair to assume that those are students who are already better off and have the luxury to do work for which they get no pay while others may have to rush off to their jobs to make sure they can stay in school and thus cannot offer to help for free.
Jason B. Jones - August 18, 2009 at 8:46 am
I may have said this too obliquely: One way to do it is to uncouple the tech mentor from the course in question. So, it’s still a student (so it’s a peer), but that student is not competing for extra credit with other students. There’s also less risk of the rest of the class deferring to the tech mentor as a content expert.
Then, you just have to figure out how to compensate that student–but there are a variety of ways to do that: support for their own research; actual money; independent study credit . . . . the exact contents of this list would vary according to the opportunities at various campuses. (For example, in addition to course credit, I’ve helped Alex get a faculty-student research grant, which helped him go to #thatcamp. Also, while he’s helping with this project, he gets to use a school-purchased iPod Touch, which lets him have a shiny gadget while maintaining his anti-Apple bona fides.)
Jeff McClurken - August 18, 2009 at 9:27 am
I also want to clarify that I’m not talking about exploiting students for no compensation. It’s something I’m very aware of and I would watch carefully. But I think it’s wrong to discount the value of experience gained by these students.
On the question of fairness of extra credit offered, I often have a couple of opportunities for credit apart from the tech mentor one.
I’d also point out that we often evaluate students on skills and content knowledge that are at varied levels coming in to the class, but perhaps that is a point of difference between our teaching philosophies.
Finally, since I’ve had a number of graduates get jobs based in large part on tech skills learned or honed in our classes, I think the compensation in this case may be merely deferred.
Kris Peleg - August 19, 2009 at 6:10 am
I’ve had a lot of success with opening a Q&A board for students to ask each other questions. It’s not limited to the tech questions, but often the board evolves into discussions of how to get things done. They aren’t shy about asking another student, the discussion goes on without me (esp during the night) and another nice aspect is that students who aren’t necessarily saying much in the class meetings are finding a niche as mentors outside of class.
William Patrick Wend - August 20, 2009 at 2:53 pm
The composition course I am teaching this fall is meeting in a lab every Friday, so I have been thinking a lot about the different levels of tech savvy I will encounter and how to deal with them. I like the idea of having tech mentors in the class, but also agree that giving extra credit for that might be unfair. When I am on campus next week I am going to research whether or not students are required to take any general computing classes to gauge the potential skill level I will see in my classes.
David Jarrell - December 22, 2009 at 5:17 pm
I’ve come across this quite late after it was posted but I know Jeff – and hoping that counts for something! My question applies to variation in tech skills in an intro biology course but not at the level of online tech (blogs, wikis, etc) but with software. As with intro biology courses in most institutions, we have many sections but labs are taught from a common lab manual (and with a common philosophy – critical thinking and problem solving). One of the largest issues arises from assignments that require the use of Excel (and the fact that some are using Excel 2003 and other 2007). We provide direction sheets but while some have no trouble completing the assignments, others present us with graphs that show either 1) a lack of understanding of Excel and/or 2) a poor understanding of what the graph should actually look like. After reading the various posts, I’m thinking that I should ask the students who have them to bring their laptops (our labs are not setup for projection systems) to lab so that those with more comfort can work through the process with those that are tech-phobic (quite high at my institution that serves a high percentage of students with financial needs and without personal computers). Anyone have experience with this twist?
ALSO, I deal with huge variation in background in this course (test scores range from 30′s to 100 on every test and distributions are often U-shaped). I have instituted daily quizzes in lecture as an incentive to study more consistently and students overall appreciate this “nudge”. Again after reading some of the responses… is there a way for me to team up groups of students to set up blogs/wikis (MINIMAL experience here with wikis)/etc where students would get some credit for posting/answering each others questions on lecture materials. Maybe something like the yahoo questions pages where the original asker votes on the “best answer”. Ideas/suggestions?