Using Technology to Support our Pedagogical Goals

1. Using Technology to Support our Pedagogical Goals Faculty of the Whole Meeting Teaching and Learning Circle (TLC) April 14th, 2008

2. Pre-Session Reflection Questions Prior to the FOTW meeting, we invited you to reflect upon two questions: • What are some pedagogical challenges in your teaching that technology might help with? (Many of us won’t have the technology background to actually know what’s possible, but we encourage you to think big. What would you like technology to do?) • In what ways are you already incorporating technology? Are there specific forms of support that would help you to incorporate more or different types of technology?

3. Session Overview • Brief Introduction • Series of Snapshots • HT-100 – Fischer • A-205 – Murnane • T-529 – Fishman • Physics 11 – Mazur • Reflection / Assessing Your Preferences for Moving Forward with Technology • Resources • Follow-up Session on April 30th, 12:00-2:00.

4. To Think About… • How do the innovations address issues of learning and teaching that I also share? Can I envision ways of adopting them to my own purposes? • What promise and potential pitfalls come to mind when I visualize applying these innovations to my own teaching?

5. Pedagogical Challenge: Helping Students Learn Necessary Background • Feature: HT-100: Cognitive Development, Education, and the Brain, Kurt Fischer, Howard Gardner, and David Rose • Video-Chapters of Lectures • Challenge: Avoiding using up class time to cover lecture material to free up time for discussion and going in depth. • Solution: Move a lecture portion of instruction on-line so that students can interact with it outside of class. • Example: Ecology, Ethology, and Epigenesis

6. Pedagogical Challenge: Helping Students Learn Necessary Background • Feature: A-205B: Microeconomics: A Policy Tool for Educators, Dick Murnane • Policy Memo Tutorial • Challenge: Avoiding using up class time to cover required background information to free up time for course substance. • Solution: Develop a tutorial to offer instruction that is needed but is not the substance of the course material; also making it possible for students to work at their own pace and revisit as needed. • Example: Policy Memo Tutorial

7. Pedagogical Challenge: Helping Students Learn Necessary Background Other Examples: • S-030: Intermediate Statistics: Applied Regression and Data Analysis, Judy Singer, SAS Tutorial, Example: Working with Polychotomous Predictors in SAS • A-306: using Assessment Data to Improve Education, Kathy Boudett, Excel Tutorial, Example: Creating Pie Charts

8. Pedagogical Challenge: Bringing the World into the Classroom • Feature: T-529: Learning Technologies Across the Content Areas, and T-545: Engagement and Learning: Technologies that Invite and Immerse, Barry Fishman • Using Elluminate • Challenge: You want to bring in outside expertise, but asking them to travel is a large commitment in terms of time and expense. • Solution: Bring the guest speaker in via Elluminate. (Guest can speak to the class, write on a whiteboard, and use PowerPoint, web sites and any other desktop application.) • Visit Elluminate session.

9. Pedagogical Challenge: Bringing the World into the Classroom Other Examples: • S-553: Researching and Writing a Critical Literature Review, Eileen McGowan and Deborah Garson, Virtual panelist for an in-class discussion • T-527: Developing Curriculum for Deep Learning, Stone Wiske, Virtually brought in an alum to talk to class

10. Pedagogical Challenge: Increasing Active Student Processing in Class • Feature: Physics 11, Eric Mazur • Using Clickers • Challenge: Knowing what students are thinking in real time so that you can teach to it and actively engaging the students in building understanding in a large class. • Solution: Use clickers to: • Incorporate “real-time” question and answer interaction • Poll students to get overview of opinions and ideas and to use this information to guide lecture and discussion focus • Analyze, compare, and look for patterns in response data over time • Use in class time to engage students in model critique and building

11. Pedagogical Challenge: Increasing Active Student Processing in Class • “Somebody once told me that the lecture is a process by which the lecture notes get transferred to the notebooks of the students without passing through the brains of either and that’s what used to be happening in my classroom.” – Eric Mazur • “The idea is to get beyond this passive transfer of information where the students says, “I’ll try to understand it later” to start the process of model-building in the classroom where I can help them develop the right models.” – Eric Mazur • Caldwell, J.E. (2007). Clickers in the large classroom: Current research and best-practice tips, CBE Life Sci Educ 6(1): 9-20.

12. Eric Mazur Video

13. Pedagogical Challenge: Increasing Active Student Processing in Class • Other Example: A-127: Civic Identity and Education in a Multicultural Context, Meira Levinson, Used clickers to elicit student feedback during class. Student responses: • “Clicker results are a good starting point for deeper discussions.” • “It was fun to feel like we had quickly co-constructed something and then could immediately wrestle with the displayed ideas.” • “I appreciate the effort that went in to trying something new in the classroom.” • “The clicker exercise was very revealing, but after our follow-up discussion, I wish I could go back and change my answers!” • “Comparing past and present results has been interesting.” • “Displaying the results seemed to facilitate observations that might have been difficult to detect in a traditional discussion.”

14. Other Interesting Examples… • S-553: Researching and Writing a Critical Literature Review, Eileen McGowan and Deborah Garson, Blog Tool for Online Journals • A-412: The History of American Higher Education, Julie Reuben, Uses an Online Interactive Timeline • A-117: Implementing Inclusive Education, Tom Hehir, Teaches in the physical classroom using Elluminate so students with vision problems can bring up the session on their laptops. Is working to add speech recognition software to provide a nearly real time, close captioned box at the bottom of the interface.

15. I am most interested in follow-up focused on: • further examples of what is possible. • an in-depth look at one particular innovation. • in-depth discussion with colleagues about the issues that technology raises. • other Please feel free to send me any thoughts that you have about the follow-up session.

16. If we did an in-depth session, I am most interested in: • ways to increase students’ background preparation. • ways to use distance learning. • ways to increase student processing, such as clicker technology. • other Please feel free to send me any thoughts that you have about the follow-up session.

17. Other Resources • Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning | Teaching with Technology • FAS Instructional Computing Group • Brief Best Practices Essays • Project Portfolio • Presidential Instructional Technology Fellowship (PITF) Program • HGSE Teaching and Learning Circle (TLC) (access via myGSE | Faculty Resources & Courses • Learning Technologies Center | Instructional Technology

18. Connecting Forward… What is one thing that you could do to take a next step towards integrating technology in service of learning in your classroom?