Aziza Ellozy Originally published on: October 6, 2002
The Center for Learning and Teaching at AUC has just launched a pilot program (Student Technology Assistants Program) aimed at helping faculty with matters of instructional technology. If you are new to teaching with technology—or even if you are not – here are some tips that you may find useful.
• Do not incorporate technology for the sake of technology. Focus first on a pedagogical issue and see if technology can help.
• Collaborate and learn from others. A good way of doing this is to visit (and encourage your students to visit) other websites.
• Whenever possible, allow your students to have remote access to learning materials (through a course website, WebCT, internet links, or email)
• Be patient. Using computers as an aid to teaching and learning is an iterative process that requires experimentation and perseverance.
• Use technology to enhance student-centered learning. For example
▪ Promote active learning: drill and practice modules with feedback are one example.
▪ Encourage collaborative learning (some instructors have students proofread each other’s outlines, abstracts, or drafts before submission)
▪ Provide links to the latest data or literature in your field.
• Use technology to “think out of the box”. Here are some examples from the University of Michigan:
o David Porter (English and Comparative Literature) has designed and implemented the Eighteenth-Century England website, an ongoing, cooperative project by UM students studying eighteenth-century literature. To view the Eighteenth-Century England website, go to http://www.umich.edu/~ece/
o Dennis Pollard (Romance Languages and Literatures) uses technology in a variety of ways to teach intermediate Spanish courses. His Spanish webtrips site gives students in Spanish conversation the opportunity to take a virtual tour of Madrid and then do their own online research to create a virtual tour of a Spanish city. Students studying Spanish composition can go to Pollard’s website called The Essay, in which they view a classically structured Spanish-language essay and its corresponding outline; by clicking on individual
sections of the outline, students highlight key sections of the essay and see more detailed comments on the function of the essay’s various parts.
http://wwwpersonal.umich.edu/~dennisdp/CRLT.html.
o Nancy Kerner (Chemistry) created CoLABnet, a program whose full name is “collaborative laboratories through networked computers.” Students work in the lab in teams, with each using its own set of samples and/or conditions. Each team funnels its data into the CoLABnet software program, which then collects, pools, and summarizes the qualitative and quantitative data and places it into a customized databank. Students can then study, manipulate, and analyze the data in a laboratory context that simulates the scientific process. http://www.umich.edu/~chem125/.