Quick Hits for Teaching with Technology: Successful Strategies by Award-Winning Teachers

Foreword

I am delighted to welcome you to Quick Hits for Teaching with Technology, a publication of Indiana University’s Faculty Colloquium on Excellence in Teaching (FACET). The current volume, like its predecessors, offers an accessibleanduser-friendlycollectionofapproaches,strategies,andtacticsforeffectiveinstruction,developedby master teachers both within Indiana University and across the nation. The volume explores both the advantages and potential pitfalls of using technology in the classroom. TheimportanceoftechnologytotheteachingandresearchmissionsofIUcannotbeoverstated.AsthePrinciples of Excellence explain, IU is committed both to adopting “innovative modes of teaching and learning that improve the educational attainments of students,” and to ensuring that “information technology is pervasively deployed at IU by leveraging and continuing the support of the university’s long-standing and internationally recognized excellence in information technology services and infrastructure.” Excellence in the use of technology in instruction is therefore a natural subject for an IU publication on excellence in teaching. This volume is particularly timely because information technology, both inside and outside of the classroom, is a rapidly moving target. Current and future faculty will be expected to adapt to this fluid environment in order to maximize their effectiveness when using technology as a teaching tool. The current generation of students, reared on information technology and often more comfortable with it than their instructors, increasingly expect a technologically sophisticated academic environment. One challenge facing university faculty will be to ensure that injecting technology into the classroom doesn’t merely represent the latest “bells and whistles,” but that such innovations prove their worth pedagogically. In this volume of Quick Hits, seasoned instructors, representing a multitude of academic disciplines, describe their innovative efforts to use various technologies to achieve effective, course-specific learning objectives. The use of technology in education inevitably demands that we return to fundamental questions about pedagogy — always a healthy undertaking. Virtually all aspects of course development and delivery can be altered by the technology available to faculty today. As discussed by the authors of this volume’s entries, the adoption of technology by faculty will require careful planning, identification of educational goals, anticipation of possible unintended consequences, and ongoing assessment of student learning. These are familiar issues, but the use of new technologies gives them added urgency. How and how much technology should I bring into the course or the classroom? Should I teach an online course or a hybrid? Will distance learning lead to the same outcomes as face-to-face teaching? Should I test online, and if I do, how do I ensure the integrity of the students’ work? Do online chat rooms and discussion forums afford the same kind of active learning as in-class group work? And these are but a sample of the appropriate and unavoidable concerns that instructors confront as technology becomes an expected part of the educational experience. The purpose of this volume is to equip instructors to identify and answer these questions as they relate to the technologies of today and tomorrow. The speed with which new technologies emerge means that the prospects for large-scale, systematic research on best practices are limited. The fast moving target that is technology, especially in the educational setting, may not standstilllongenoughtosupportsuchin-depthefficacyresearch,andabsolutelywillnotifwearetobeinnovators in adoption of these techniques. Thus, the faculty member who chooses to embrace new technology might best think of the classroom as a laboratory, with each topic, assignment and class period an opportunity to learn what works and what does not. Ongoing assessment of student learning outcomes in response to technology related changes in pedagogy is likely to become increasingly important. In this environment, the advice of colleagues will be particularly valuable in expanding the range of an individual instructor’seffectiveexperiencewithnewtechniquesandtechnologies.Seekingoutcolleagueswhohaveadopted similar strategies may prove similarly enlightening. This volume of Quick Hits, authored by award-winning teachers, provides just such counsel. It serves as a jumping off point for exploring the perils and promises of technology in the classroom, and I enthusiastically recommend it to you. Michael A. McRobbie President, Indiana University FOREWORD ...