My final blog for the Effective College Teaching: Using Technology to Support Learning is a reflection on what I learned about utilizing and sustaining technology in higher education. One of the most important new ideas I learned about was the creating faculty initiatives to sustain technology, and hopefully keep up to date, not just with technology, but with innovative, creative and effective pedagogical strategies that engage learners. I am particularly interested in higher education and liberal arts courses that are delivered online and are asynchronous. So the idea to keep up with and ahead of the potential teaching and learning tools out there is important to the future of online teaching and learning. It is one thing to jump into a technology and offer a workshop, but it is quite another and a significant improvement to create workshops that are under the umbrella of faculty initiatives. The training and support is more forward thinking, broader, inclusive, and encompassing of the goals, mission, objectives and strategies of a long range initiative targeted to support the faculty and reach students (Kenney, Bannerjee, & Newcombe, 2010).

The second most important thing I have learned and am continuing to learn about are the ways we can use social networking to teach, reach and engage our students in tradition or online classes. I have stated over and over again that the online classroom discussion forum is now over 20 years old and we need to find new ways to engage our online students. I am not suggesting we abandon online class discussions entirely; but we don’t want it to become too predictable, reflect a lack of pedagogical innovation as we follow the status quo so that online discussion becomes busy work aimed at securing virtual attendance. If we don’t innovate, online discussion will loose its positive benefits to help students interact, construct knowledge, engage and learn from one another- it could soon become the equivalent of a same old boring class lecture delivered over a 20 years period.

My colleagues shared many useful tools and strategies in the discussions of technology. The two most immediately helpful and interesting were an online source management system called Mendeley. This awesome free system is going to be very helpful for me to storage, manage and keep track of all my sources and pdf files in one place (Mendeley, 2015). I am so thankful to Megan for this suggestion and it came just in time as I start my doctoral study soon and my source library and storage system is getting out of control.

The second helpful suggestion and sources were related to assessments and having students create digital student portfolios as assessments and a way to show students growth and learning, their specialization and professionalization in their field. I would probably use portfolios in courses if I were teaching students specializing in their major. However, if I was just teaching a survey or general education class, I would use this concept in the form of student journals submitted digitally. I gained many new ideas for assessments that were more about assessing students understanding and skills, which I prefer over submitting quizzes and tests .

Teri

References

Buus, L. (2013). Perspectives on the integration of Facebook into higher education. International Conference on e-Learning: Kidmore End: Academic Conferences International Limited, 437-443. Retrieved from Walden Library databases.

Kenney, J.L., Bannerjee, P., & Newcombe, E. (2010). Developing and sustaining positive change in faculty technology skills: Lessons learned from an innovative faculty development initiative. International Journal of Technology in Teaching & Learning, 6 (2), 89-102). Retrieved from Walden Library databases.

Mendeley (2015). Retrieved from https://www.mendeley.com/