Sharing Effective Innovations AAC&U
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Virtually Anywhere Sharing Effective Practices for Innovation in Liberal Education Nancy Millichap and Rebecca Davis National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE)
description
This is Nancy Millichap's and Rebecca Davis' presentation from the breakout discussion session "Virtually Anywhere: Sharing Effective Practices for Innovation in Liberal Education," January 22, 2010, AAC&U Annual Conference, Washington, DC.
Transcript of Sharing Effective Innovations AAC&U
Virtually Anywhere
Sharing Effective Practices for Innovation in Liberal Education
Nancy Millichap and Rebecca DavisNational 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 programsNo Yes
Maybe
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 – [email protected]
• Rebecca Frost Davis – [email protected]
