Teaching with Technology
Teaching with technology isn’t just about staying current on the latest tools, it’s about knowing how to successfully incorporate the best tools into your teaching when and where it makes sense. This article series looks at the benefits of using technology, as well as potential stumbling blocks. You’ll also get an inside look at best practices for using technology to enhance teaching and learning – whether you teach in a traditional classroom or online.
August 2 - Using a Blog to Enhance Student Participation
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching with Technology
A sociology professor in an undergraduate introductory social problems course used a blog to “enhance student participation, engagement and skill building.” (p. 207) In the article referenced below, this professor shares her experiences of using this assignment with 263 students across four semesters.
July 22 - “I Don’t Like This One Little Bit.” Tales from a Flipped Classroom
By: Penne Restad, PhD in Teaching with Technology
The Internet flipped learning before instructors did. Want to find out something? Google it. Wikipedia it. Use your laptop or smartphone or iPad. That’s where the “answers” are. Some of us initially reacted to this cyber-democratization of information asserting, “This isn’t right! The Internet is full of incomplete and simply wrong information.” But the challenge to the classroom was more profound. It has raised questions among students and even administrators about the need for face-to-face classrooms at all, as if correct information and unchallenged “opinions” were all that was needed.
June 11 - Private Journal Replaces Discussion Forum in Blended Course
By: Rob Kelly in Asynchronous Learning and Trends, Teaching with Technology
The discussion board in Kathleen Lowney’s large blended (or hybrid) section of introduction to sociology at Valdosta State University wasn’t serving its intended purpose of engaging learners with the content and preparing them for face-to-face class sessions. She tried dividing the students into smaller discussion groups of 50 and then 20, and the results were the same: the weaker students waited until the last minute and essentially repeated what the better students had posted previously. When she replaced the public discussions with private journals, the quality of students’ posts improved, as did their grades.
June 10 - Experimenting with Facebook in the College Classroom
By: Nisha Malhotra, PhD in Teaching with Technology
While discussing the nuances of regression analysis, I saw some of my students smiling. It wasn’t a smile of understanding; it was a response to seeing a Facebook comment on their smart phone. I later learned that 99% of the students in the research method class were Facebook users, routinely checking for updates 10-20 times a day. I asked them to refrain checking their phones during class.
May 20 - From Passive Viewing to Active Learning: Simple Techniques for Applying Active Learning Strategies to Online Course Videos
By: Emily A. Moore in Teaching with Technology
From Web-enhanced face-to-face courses to MOOCs, flipped, blended, and fully online courses, videos are an integral component of today’s educational landscape—from kindergarten all the way through higher education.
May 9 - Creating the Perfect PowerPoint for Online Teaching
By: Errol Craig Sull in Teaching with Technology
While other forms of visual presentations have cropped up—such as Prezi and Empressr—PowerPoint remains the presentation software of choice. Yet many folks develop PowerPoint presentations without fully understanding all components of the software and/or presenter tricks that could make for much more effective PowerPoint presentations.
March 15 - Seven Steps to Creating Screencast Videos for Online Learning
By: Yvonne Ho in Teaching with Technology
When I first started teaching online, one of the most frustrating aspects was that I did not have access to an old-fashioned blackboard to give students a visual map of what I was teaching. I felt restricted by the text-based instruction of the discussion board and eventually began creating colorful flowcharts to teach essay structure, for example, or PowerPoint slides to explain the MLA style format.
February 19 - Using Podcasts to Address Concepts Students Find Difficult
By: Rob Kelly in Teaching with Technology
Whether you teach online, face-to-face, or blended/hybrid courses, podcasts can improve student learning, says Charles Morgan, chair of the mathematics department at Lock Haven University. Consider the following benefits:
February 12 - Using the E-Portfolio to Validate Student Learning
By: Ken Scott, EdD in Instructional Design, Teaching with Technology
Too often our students consider their work in the classroom as required assignments—not work that has anything to do with what they will be doing in the real world. Oh, maybe they are picking up some skills they might use in their future employment, but that’s about it. As teachers, how do we get students to understand that the work they do in our classes—such as team projects, community service, technical papers, and even research—is relevant to what they will be doing after they graduate? How do we encourage them to keep their materials and use them to validate their work as students? I think I have an answer. Teaching an e-portfolio capstone course for several years has given me a perspective that I believe should be the framework for validating student learning outcomes across all institutions of higher education.
October 30 - Students Say More Instructors Are Using Technology Effectively, ECAR Study Finds
By: Mary Bart in Teaching with Technology
Students are giving their instructors high marks for using technology effectively. Results from latest annual technology survey by Educause Center for Applied Research (ECAR) found that 68 percent of the more than 100,000 students surveyed said that most or all of their instructors effectively use technology to advance their academic success. That’s up from 47 percent just two years ago.
