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Tuesday, December 07, 2004
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MORE ON THE GLORIOUS HIGH-TECH UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE
In a recent post, UD quoted Newsweek magazine on the wondrous holograms and high-tech goodies which await the lucky American university student of the future [see UD post dated 12/4/04]. And of course she's talked a lot from the early days of this website about the fad for distance learning [see in particular, UD post dated 11/21/03]. Everybody's excited about these dynamic innovations which are bound to make everybody's classroom more dynamic and innovative: "Faculty need to switch among learning modes within the same instructional period," writes one technology enthusiast. "That means switching from lecture, to team interaction, to individual reflection and study, to hands-on building or experiment, and back again, in the same or adjacent spaces. Everything we’ve learned about how we learn points to this pedagogical flexibility as critical to effective learning. From the faculty perspective, this is no easy recipe. In fact, the impediment to building technology-enabled spaces that you might mistake for comfortable lounges or labs, depending on the time of day, is the cultural history of the professoriate. Now that’s another challenge." Hm, yes. The cultural history of the professoriate is a challenge. Take professors like me, for instance. We think that most of the sparkling technological features of the pedagogically flexible classroom - laptops, powerpoint, television, distance learning, chatrooms - are one big stinking poopoo platter. I'm holding my nose now, writing about them. But university administrators LOVE this shit, and they're always trying to get us to use it. Luckily, we professors were not born yesterday. Some of us are in fact quite bright, and even crafty. We have read our Gandhi. To see us in action, consider this article in today's University of Michigan student newspaper: PROFESSORS STRUGGLE TO BRING HIGH-TECH TEACHING AIDS INTO UNIVERSITY CLASSROOMS By Jonathan Cohen, Daily Staff Reporter December 07, 2004 The University has invested in technology and equipment, such as web-based ctools, in-class responder units and online video library software. But students say the University is not instructing the teachers on how to use this technology properly, or in some cases at all. LSA sophomore Stuart Wagner said PowerPoint slides often are not prepared well and teachers aren’t given proper classroom support. “In Econ 101, the teacher’s laptop didn’t boot up, so I went up there with some other students to help. It took 20 minutes of class time to get it to work,” said Wagner, a member of the Michigan Student Assembly. The Educause Center for Applied Research — a Colorado-based nonprofit organization that promotes informational technology in higher education — released a national survey last month that found that professors nationwide use technology poorly. After surveying 13 schools across the United States, such as Ohio and Miami universities, findings revealed that students believe most professors are not technologically proficient. The University says it provides IT instruction for faculty but does not require them to use it. Kim Bayer, who runs the instructional support for LSA faculty, said the University puts on a weeklong conference with more than 100 technology workshops called “Enriching Scholarship” every year. In addition, there are online manuals, a resource center and training workshops offered throughout the year. But these resources go to waste if professors don’t utilize them. .... The Educause center suggests that most professors surveyed aren’t willing to research new technology on their own. The firm queried professors at Brandeis University, Wesleyan University and Williams College who did not use technology such as class websites, online chat rooms or online grading for assignments. Of the 184 professors surveyed, 24 percent said they didn’t have the time to learn the technology. Twenty-seven percent said they didn’t know about the benefits, 17 percent said the technology was inappropriate for their classes and 23 percent said it wasn’t worth using. Unlike most professors, tenured University geology Prof. Ben Van Der Pluijm took the initiative to acquire an in-class responder unit for his geology lecture. Each student can answer his questions by punching buttons on an electronic answering device at their seats. The responses are further discussed in class. Van Der Pluijm said he requested the unit because he “wanted to make the large classroom setting more interesting and engaging.” .... Stephanie Teasley, the director of the user support and design lab for Ctools — the University’s web service for online coursework — said she agrees with Pluijm that technology should be more readily available to professors. “There is a void of knowledge about how technology should be used in the classroom,” she said. LSA students say their professors do not use the simplest technology, such as PowerPoint, effectively. Wagner said “you can fix the problem by teaching teachers how to create an effective PowerPoint presentation.” Some students say professors have more trouble with equipment at the beginning of the semester but adjust to it as the semester progresses. “Technology slows the class down,” LSA sophomore Jeff Leibovitch said about his musical composition class. “Now, it’s fine, but at the beginning of the semester my professor wasn’t used to the equipment.” LSA sophomore Ely Key also said professors have difficulty. “There just always seems to be some type of technical difficulty. Sometimes you go into class and the professor seem to have no idea what he is doing,” he said. James Hilton, associate provost for academic, informational and technological affairs, said there are instructional services offered to teach technology to all University faculty, but a lot of training is upheld by each college individually. “I don’t mandate if faculty are going to use (new technology). Some of the tools are going to work really well for some faculty and some will not,” Hilton said. Bayer said it is very difficult to “match the right technology to the learning activity. It can take years to master the “sweet spot,” she wrote in an e-mail. .... “Some of the faculty are getting pretty good at this stuff. … However, it’s a process that doesn’t happen in one day,” he said. |