Instructional Technology Interest Groups – EDUCAUSE2007

I came in a little late and unfortunately missed the opening discussion, but we split into groups and discussed issues that confront instructional technologist at each of our tables. Here are the themes that came up.

• What is an instructional technologist? instructional technology?

• Instructional technologies are a diverse group encompassing faculty, staff, and students.

Need a comprehensive listing of opportunities in the IT field.

Faculty and Professional Development

• Different mechanisms for conveying information (wiki, bulletin board, asynchronous conference).

Surprising how many people are here. Perhaps it is because of a need to work together with people of like mind. We are often our own person at our institution.

• Who is going to do this, how are we going to get this done? 20% of the people do 80% of the work.
• Need to find the things that you have a passion about to pull this group together.

Administrative structure – a lot do tech support in conjunction with instructional, some do only instructional.

Force technology on Faculty?

Diverse backgrounds … few have background in instructional technology.

Ideas for future

• Resistance from the institution we are working for and dealing with this.
• Executive Champion from the school
• Web page clearing house for new learning techniques.
• How does new technology actually help me teach?
• Whitepaper? Other things to notify the CIO about.
• Explorer’s Reward – Reward for implementing new technology.

Getting Faculty members to change the mindset and consider other pedagogies to enhance their teaching. We really have to address the organizational culture. Get faculty member’s heads engaged in what the future can be (reading material first). Examine for their curriculum, for their careers, for their students. What do the students need when they get out. How can we design instructional activities to accomplish this.

Project Management

Training (for staff, ourselves, and for students)

Emerging Technologies – when to pick them up and use resources.

Communication: email list, discussion boards, EduCause Connect, publishing your interest and your skills). Agree on Tag set – interest in … skills… easy to search. Tag for this group. ‘Insttech’ – tag for this session. Social networking, using a tool that is already there.

Sharing information about what other Universities are using… we need
a big list of who is using what for what type of information… Usage
considerations. Source for information…

Emerging Technologies like the Novint Falcon and Haptic devices.

Technologies that embrace disabilities and take that into account.

Learning Spaces:

• People are eagar to see good examples of good learning spaces.
• Go out and take pictures of good spaces
• Put in flickr and tag it as ‘learningspace.’ (Make sure you fill in the description field when possible).

Where to go from here:

• Create a profile on Educause Connect
• Post thoughts with the tag ‘Insttech’
• Will create an Educause Wiki – contribute.