Sharing Effective Innovations AAC&U

Virtually Anywhere
Sharing Effective Practices for Innovation in Liberal Education
Nancy Millichap and Rebecca Davis
National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE)

NITLE
An initiative working with 128 liberal arts colleges and universities, as well as with partner organizations and consortia
Helping liberal arts colleges explore and implement digital technologies
Concerned with the integration of technology into teaching and learning

NITLE Network

Plan for This Session …
In a discussion of videoconferences that faculty have used to share their teaching innovations …
We’ll show two clips from a session
We’ll share their impact as faculty development
We’ll invite discussion of such sharing on your campuses
We’ll pull you back together for a final discussion

The Problem? A Vicious Circle …

One Solution: Sharing Classroom Innovations Digitally
At NITLE colleges, faculty lead short interactive videoconferences over the Internet on their pedagogical practices
Brief (60 to 90 minute) presentations reach faculty in their offices
22 such programs over past 2 academic years, in several series

Experience a Virtual Event
Highlights, Notes, Tags, & Comments: Teaching Critical Reading of the Internet with Diigo
Social Bookmarking & Website Annotation
Gabriela Torres, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Wheaton College

Why Faculty Lead
Gain recognition, exposure for pedagogical innovation without expense, time commitment of conference attendance
Discuss innovations with interested peers (campus colleagues may not share the specific interest)
Develop connections with other early adopters – eventual goal is to forward inter-institutional collaboration

Why Participants Take Part
Opportunity to gain fresh ideas without leaving campus
Opportunity to engage in discussion with peers from other campuses who share an interest in the innovation/technology being considered
Easy to fit into busy professional life

Professional Development Preferences
Evaluations of these programs, recent surveys of faculty, observations by academic support staff suggest that
faculty today care about specific affordances of technology, not technology in general
faculty learn most readily from other faculty

Response to these programs
Topics are rated highly
Mean, 4.38; median, 5
Time is the scarcest resource: faculty want immediately useful information directly available to them

Representative Topics
Teaching with Blogs
History Engine: Tools for Promoting Collaborative Education and Research among Students
Imagining the Unseeable: Molecular Visualization with UCSF Chimera
Technology and Less Commonly Taught Languages
Digital Identities: Maintenance, Boundaries and Ethics for Students and Faculty

Responses to Technology
Ease of use of technology
Mean, median responses were both 4 of possible 5
Likelihood of attending future videoconference programs

MIV Sessions as Campus Resources
Are webcams scary? Not so much …
Some groups participate as faculty/campus “brown bags”
Recordings, whiteboards available after the program for review, sharing

Discussion: Sharing Innovation
Innovative Practices on your campus
Small groups of 4-6 each
Take 10-15 minutes to discuss your question
Share results with the full group

Questions, follow-up?
NITLE – www.nitle.org
Nancy Millichap – nancy.millichap@nitle.org
Rebecca Frost Davis – rebecca.davis@nitle.org

Sharing Effective Innovations AAC&U

by millichap on Jan 29, 2010

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