Keeping them coming...

Supporting Learning 2.0 with a Technology Enhanced Teaching Certificate Program. University of Illinois.

I mentioned this earlier but a few additional points worthy of passing on. This is a truly collaborative venture between their Division of Instructional Development, the Centre for Educational Technologies and the University Library. It kicked off about three years ago when the when they went on a retreat and established their common goal of supporting and improving student learning. This gave rise to Learning Technology Teams - instructional technologists-educational developers and librarians working together in Faculty facing units - formalising what sometimes ,but not often enough, happens naturally. It's taken a while to get this working but seems to be having an impact now.

Emerging from this collaboration came the idea of the new course. They already do a range of new staff courses but they are not specifically focusing on technical fluency for teaching. Apart from stuff mentioned earlier - they also pair each course participant up with an instructional adviser - how scalable this is remains to be seen - so far they only have 5 staff on the course. They're also looking at how they can recognise and award merit to those staff who are already part way on their journey with technology enhanced teaching - possibly through reflective portfolio and a selection of the other activities.
http://www.oir.uiuc.edu/Did/Certificates/Technology.htm



Faculty Ideas about Technology: The Pedatechnical Impact of 2.0
Purdue University
Shared their experience of introducing a new programme called FIT (Faculty ideas about technology). http://fit.itap.purdue.edu Having touted round new technology with few takers they decided they needed a more pedagogically driven approach and a more formalised process for introducing new technology to help them to understand where to channel their resources (ie developers time), accessibility issues, technical infrastructure to support the new tools and most critically, its potential benefit to LTA. Their goal is 'To evaluate technology in the light of what they already have and to tie learning theory and pedagogy directly to the technologies'.
To cut a long story short - after a few false starts they have developed a methodology that they think works. Focusing in one 'teaching problem' at a time they have something called 'fit n sit' sessions where faculty, learning technologists and staff from their LTI equivalent meet. Through this they identify pilot classes where different technology solutions are tried and evaluated. Often linked to a blog with a 'celebrity' guest blogger talking about how they have innovated around a teaching problem using this technology. They then produce a 'white paper' through Google docs where everyone who feels they have something to contribute can -academics/lti/it/etc - that then is used to inform decisions about future implementation and resourcing.
They feel that the scheme is a success as it: engages those who have shied away from technology before, formalises the evaluation process, based on valid user requirements and provides a collaborative forum for feedback and policy development. Their plan is to have 7 fit n sit sessions per semester. Also looking at a student version where the focus is their learning problems and the team help identify potential solutions - we'll see - tho looking at the blog - as usual a woeful lack of comments/participation from faculty - but this one sounded really interesting...

http://fit.itap.purdue.edu/?p=8#comments