|
Last
summer, CTE, with support from the Office of the Dean for
Undergraduate Studies and the Office of Technology Information,
piloted a three-day institute for faculty interested in enhancing
teaching and student learning through the use of pedagogies that
involved new technologies. The Summer Institute produced several new
pedagogical initiatives that enhanced the classroom experience and
learning for both students and instructors and paved the way for
further educational innovations using new technologies. The purpose
of the institute was to introduce faculty members to the wide array
of instructional technologies available to them at UMD – such as
ELMS (Blackboard), clickers, wikis, and KEEP Toolkit – which they
could then integrate into their fall courses. One of the goals of
this pilot program was to
| Jun Yang (OIT) demonstrates
clickers |
make
it a collaborative, year-long community of practice that included
opportunities for continued group dialogue beyond the initial
three-day training session. To that end, participants met twice
during the fall semester to discuss their challenges and successes
with these technologies. This spring, faculty members will share
their experiences with a larger audience at the annual Innovations
in Teaching and Learning Conference (http://www.oit.umd.edu/twt/)
held on campus.
This
program involved technological initiatives across several
disciplines, including American Studies, English, French, Japanese
and Kinesiology. While participants were eager to learn about a
variety of technologies, many were particularly interested in the
pedagogical possibilities of ELMS.
Faculty from the English Department |
|
used ELMS for a variety of purposes. Professor Linda Kauffman used
the
|
"The
Summer Institute produced several new pedagogical initiatives
that enhanced the classroom experience and learning for both
students and instructors and paved the way for further
educational innovations using new technologies." |
program to digitally store a large collection of classroom
resources, such as articles, visual texts, and selected readings.
Professor Laura Rosenthal was
interested in exploring ELMS as both a repository of visual
resources and an in-class workshop tool, and Professor Jonathan
Auerbach experimented with the ELMS discussion board and used the
program for on-line quizzes.
The foreign language faculty
explored how technologies could help students improve their fluency
and practice their writing skills. Professor Andrea Frisch of the
French and Italian Department used a wiki to create a collaborative
on-line environment in her upper-level French course, to give
students practice in writing French as well as editing peers’ work.
Miki Kashima of the Japanese Department posted audio and text files
on ELMS using the Wimba tool so that her intermediate students could
| Linda
Kauffman, Laura Rosenthal, Jonathan Auerbach, and Dave Eubanks (CTE) |
practice composing full
sentences in Japanese using auditory prompts outside the classroom.
Participants who taught large
lecture classes experimented with technologies
|
|
to facilitate a more intimate atmosphere in these classes and
monitor students’ progress over
the semester. Professor Sheri Parks of the American
Studies Department used KEEP Toolkit as a simple digital portfolio
program to create
| Sheri Parks,
Deb Mateik,Miki Kashima, and Spencer Benson (CTE) |
a more coherent class
identity by dividing her students into small groups and having them
complete end-of-semester e-portfolio projects. In her entry-level
Japanese class, Professor Lindsay Yotsukura offered students the
option of completing a digital portfolio that presented their
individual development as Japanese learners over the semester.
Other projects developed by
CTE’s Summer Institute participants included using student classroom
response devices (clickers) as a classroom assessment tool.
Professor Marvin Scott of Kinesiology used clickers as part of his
in-class exam reviews. Other faculty were interested in
transitioning from an older didactic technology to a new one, a goal
that Professor Jason Kuo of Art History and Archeology accomplished
by shifting from using traditional 35 mm slides to digital images in
his Asian art survey class.
Announcements of the application for the 2008 Summer Technology
Institute (May 27 – 29, 2008) will be released later this semester;
watch the CTE web site for information. If you have questions or
want more information regarding the 2007 or 2008 institutes, please
email David Eubanks, Assistant Director, at
eubanks@umd.edu. |
