Paths to Our Mission: Path One
Posted on April 27, 2009
Filed Under ETS Mission
Please take a little time to help us think critically about our organization and cite examples of where we are doing well and areas where improvement is needed. Please leave thoughts in the comment section below. I thank you in advance!
Creating opportunities to engage faculty to further their use of technology for teaching and learning.
Related Resources
- Jun 18 2009: Paths to our Mission: Path Six (3)
- Jun 01 2009: Paths to our Mission: Path Five (1)
- May 18 2009: Paths to our Mission: Path Four (3)
- May 11 2009: Paths to Our Mission: Path Three (5)
- May 07 2009: Paths to Our Mission: Path Two (5)
- Apr 23 2009: New Form of Organizational Reflection (0)
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Through our new TLT Fellows program we are gaining new insight into the needs of faculty and are working to align our projects to emerging trends in teaching and learning. Last summer we hosted Dr. Carla Zembal-Saul in an exploration of blogs as portfolios. This summer we will host four fellows — Carla will return, Dr. Chris Long, Dr. Stuart Selber, and Ellysa Cahoy. These Fellowships tend to lead to new opportunities to meet faculty and engaging in conversations in a discipline specific way. See more at the Fellowship page here on the ETS site.
The Blended Learning Initiative courses allow instructors to learn additional technologies for teaching, some of which can be transferred to other courses.
The Teaching with Technology certificate encourages a new generation of instructors to experiment with new technologies in the classroom. The capstone portfolio allows instructors to review tools used and reflect on their effectiveness. Portfolios completed this academic year are listed at http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/twt/portfolios.
Technical documentation is another aspect of our services which assists instructors in implementing technology.
Through the Hot Team process, we explore new ways for technology to be used to enrich teaching and learning. Hot Teams typically include one or more faculty who have expressed an interest that matches the technology that we are exploring. For example, Chris Long was having his students create weekly podcast summaries for his course. When we started a Hot Team to investigate the use of Grassroots Video, we invited Chris to participate.
We use physical events, such as the TLT Symposium, and virtual spaces, such as the TLT Web Site and the TLT Symposium site [2008] [2009] to highlight faculty stories. These faculty represent a diversity of academic disciplines, colleges, campus locations, and technical backgrounds. We use these stories to show other faculty how their peers have been successful in using technology to enrich teaching, learning, and research.
The Educational Gaming Commons, via stimulation of research, application and education utilizing games and virtual environments, is reaching many faculty to further their use of technology for teaching and learning. The bigger projects are listed at http://gaming.psu.edu/Projects, but we also have many informal meetings with faculty that lead to new efforts to utilize gaming in the classroom in small ways.
Starting this summer, we will implement a faculty engagement initiative where we will build a game for a class, and create instructional materials for an existing game or related technologies for another class.
The Electronic Learning Support Specialists (eLSS) at Fayette, York, and Schuylkill/Lehigh Vally continue to engage faculty in many aspects of education technologies.
eLSS provide numerous training and support activities. All eLSS provide hundreds of individual consultations each year. Workshops on a variety of topics from ANGEL to Web 2 tools are regularly offered. eLSS also work to coordinate teaching and learning opportunities from other Penn State units, such as the Schreyer Institute Luncheon Series and the Penn State Digital Commons.
At the curricula level, eLSS are involved in various support and development activities, including Blended Learning initiatives, Emergency Management scenarios in Second Life, and Problem-Oriented Animated Learning Modules for Introductory Computer Science.
Beyond training, eLSS support to their local campus includes Digital Commons support, a variety of classroom support, Adobe Connect support, web page development, and Student Response Systems support. eLSS provide outreach and services to the larger University community as eLearning Advocates, providing Faculty Senate updates, serving on numerous committees, and active participation in various meetings and events. Beyond Penn State, eLSS are involved in several initiatives, including ESL grant development, adding resources to Merlot, and presentations to local K-12 school systems.
Through the Faculty Brown Bag lunches, Digital Commons has found an opportunity to meet, discuss and share with faculty from several different disciplines.
During these lunches faculty are encouraged to discuss ideas, show student examples created through Digital Commons, and answer questions on how to get started.
Our success is evident in the enthusiasm and energy shared by those who attend, the lines of communication that have been opened and relationships that have developed.
Building these relationships is crucial in all aspects of where Digital Commons is, and where it is going.
Christine Masters teaches large enrollment sections of Engineering Mechanics 211 and 213. She started out just using clickers, but has refined her skills and added new techniques. I have worked with her over a period of two years. Currently she is using the clickers in lecture class and small group homework teams to help her students interact with and tutor each other.
Another professor in Engineering started by allowing students to purchase eChapters of the textbook. The next semester, he did not require a text, but provided a syllabus with the course topics listed and allowed students to decide their own text and text format. He started using Google apps in class and added a cohort from Spain who has worked collaboratively with his class at UP on design documents in Google apps. Now, he wants several faculty colleagues to create a wikiText.I have worked with this faculty member since last summer.
Sometimes, faculty just need to know there is support available and someone to talk it over with.
We have used a project engagement model to work with faculty to design and develop innovative online teaching and learning experiences. Along with our instructional design, media development and technology services, we also provide important project management functions to keep projects on track.
We worked with the Biology department to redesign its Biology 12 wet-lab course for the Spring 09 semester. The resulting solution included learning objects delivered via the Blogs at Penn State platform. Additionally, ETS integrated this solution into ANGEL, so that additional course material and functions (such as assessments) would be available for faculty to further manage this course.
The ETS blogs team worked with ETS Faculty Fellow Carla Zembal-Saul to conceptualize and develop a pack-it-up feature which enables student blogs to be submitted to an assessment management system and create an archive of a student’s portfolio development over time. This will have a wider impact as the system becomes available for students in any academic program.
The Blogs teams have engaged with faculty at events such as the Smeal Techfest, ITS training service’s Winterfest, and blogging event at DuBois campus. Also, the blogs team engages in consultation and collaboration with faculty on use of blogs in specific courses, such as with
Dr. Chris Long (PHIL 298H http://www.personal.psu.edu/cpl2/blogs/powerforce/) and Dr. Matt Jackson (COMM 180 http://www.personal.psu.edu/elc134/blogs/cramer/2008/12/fa08-summary—comm-180-projec.html )
The TLT Symposium highlights the ways our faculty members are expanding the notions of teaching, learning, and research through the inclusion of various technologies.
The Symposium is a place for faculty to come together and share ideas, network, find out how to become involved with us, and hear talks from some of the leading voices in Education.
We are working with the Schreyer Honors College (SHC) to investigate the use of the Penn State blogging platform to support personal publishing on academic advising, personal reflection, and personal content management.
To keep up with the pilot group and their blog postings, you can look at or subscribe to the PSUHonors tag at http://www.blogs.psu.edu/search. Other categories (tags) that are being used in this project are: academic excellence, civic engagement, global perspective, honor, integrity, and leadership.
In our English 202C redesign project, student are using the Blogs at Penn State platform and Digital Commons studios to creat online portfolios, use multimedia to enhance assignments, and reflect on their development through individual and course blogs. What was a paper resume is now an interactive professional Web space. What was a paper set of instructions is now an audio and/or video “how-to” guide. Where once students would have only limited interaction with each other, they now provide constant feedback, link to additional resources, and create a community of information that expands beyond the classroom.
See http://blogs.tlt.psu.edu/projects/english202/ for more information on the project.
We’re working with Dr. Matt Jackson on reaching his goal of creating an “open classroom” for students both inside and outside of Penn State. He is currently running a class blog in his Comm. 180 class to determine each student’s participation grade. Students are required to submit new entries, comments, and/or new resources to blog at least six times per semester.
Students can also choose to maintain their own blog (with a minimum of one reflective entry per week) for extra credit. By the Fall 2009 semester, Dr. Jackson hopes to do away with the course textbook and rely solely on resources generated by the class and posted to the blogs.