Faculty Development Tips and Talking Points:
Computers, the Internet, and networks in the classroom. . .
1) Help us to promote both student centered classrooms and active learning strategies by enhancing collaboration, interaction, revision, and publication.
2) Help us to focus on point of need learning by engaging students as individuals.
3) Help students to work with a variety of media (text, images, sound, and video) when doing classroom assignments.
4) Help faculty members to expand their ideas of what constitutes classroom assignments. They can include interactivity, collaboration, images, video, sound, and much more. They can also have students create living resources that are used by other classes as well as internet users world-wide.
5) Help students to do collaborative work because
- students with busy schedules can meet in a virtual environment to get work done;
- students can share work and critique work without multiple copies (as well as do instant revisions to "try" things out);
- students can easily share work in different group configurations from the whole class looking at one paper or project, to small groups, to partners-all in one class period without producing multiple hard copy drafts;
- students can extend group activities beyond classroom walls (if published on Internet, students can read and do work at any time in any campus computer lab or at home);
- students can create large scale projects in groups with multiple copies, a practice that was difficult and expensive with hard copies;
- whole class projects can be completed and revised many times without the cost and waste of hard copies;
- class projects can survive the class and be used and revised by the next class.
6) Help students and faculty members to extend classroom conversations beyond classroom walls (moos, muds, forums, newsgroups, chat-rooms).
7) Help faculty members prepare for class because
- they can use reactions to assignments done online before class to find out what students do and do not understand;
- they can access archives, museums, exhibits, video collections, sound libraries, and much more;
- they can use software to produce multimedia presentations for students.
8) Help students to do multiple drafts of papers and projects. Digital copies emphasize the fluid nature of texts while dispelling the sense that the typed version is final version.
9) Help faculty members and students to use immediately the products of in-class work. Students can post work done in class to the network or Internet so that the whole class can view it.
10) Help students to do sequenced assignments. With computers it is easy to build large projects in steps.
11) Help students with research projects. Not only can students get a good start on doing library research, but they can visit archives, museums, exhibits, video collections, sound libraries, and much more. Students can also use online resources to get current materials and articles for projects.
12) Help students to publish for a wider audience. Publications on the Internet can be read by people from around the world. The Internet can also be used to find more highly specialized audiences.
13) Help students to use portfolios. No large paper mess with a webfolio (digital work stored in an online folder) and both teachers and students have access to it at any time (as well as other students) to make comments and revise.
14) Help faculty members to distribute materials and write more extensive assignments and teaching aids:
- handouts can be used over the course of a semester;
- class syllabi and materials and be easily updated;
- class lectures and presentations can be published.
15) Help faculty members manage the class: attendance, grading, assessment, testing, and so on. They can use technology to do the repetitive mundane task, allowing more time for interaction with students on subject matter of the course.
16) Help faculty members and students interact. E-mail, MUDs, MOOs, forums, chat rooms, listservs and other technologies make it easier for instructors and students to communicate.
17) Integrate technology slowly into the classroom. Create a resource that can be augmented every term and integrate new technologies as they are mastered.
18) Partner with graduate or undergraduate student to build classroom or discipline based resources. This student should know technology, but be within the discipline.