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Re-imagining forum on educational technology

by on March 28, 2011

Feel free to post here with reactions to today’s technology forum.

6 Comments
  1. Bill McKinney permalink

    Several interesting lines of conversation….technology and student course evaluations, how tech based classes are evaluated as opposed traditional, uses of tech to enhance teaching and learning.

    • As Elaine Blakemore stated at an earlier Red Balloon forum, there are four basic factors included in well-constructed student evaluation instruments. Based on my own study and the work of Raul Arreola and others, I say there are six, but they overlap completely with the four Elaine gave. The point is that these factors don’t change when teaching moves online, though how the teacher implements these aspects of a course does. The evaluation instrument used for an online course need not be wildly different from the one used for face to face. What usually happens is that in the course of developing a good online course evaluation, weaknesses in the face to face instrument surface. The ideal case is to revise both, at the same time achieving some sort of convergence, so that the characteristics of teaching are the same no matter the delivery.

      On another related point, I and other staff members have spent quite a bit of time looking into course evaluation processing for both paper and online data collection methods. IPFW is really missing out on opportunities to be able to -effortlessly- analyze course evaluation data vertically, from different levels in the hierarchy and horizontally across the institution, within a department or a program or across teachers of the same course. Course evaluation systems such as Class Climate, Explorance, and an Add-on to the -real- Blackboard allow for a sophisticated data analysis across the institution that would provide us with this capability, in addition to saving many mostly woman-hours of labor. (It’s still Women’s History month, remember.)

  2. Bill McKinney permalink

    A fundamentally important question…how does information technology have a fundamental impact on faculty roles? Rewards?

  3. Bill McKinney permalink

    What about learning outcomes?

    • A topic not mentioned today was evaluating the impact of the use of technology in teaching, on faculty roles, or on institutional performance. Our speaker at the April 8 Technology Showcase, Dr. Malcolm Brown, will address this subject in his talk entitled “Seeking Evidence of Impact: Towards evidence-based practice”. He will also lead work sessions to start some of us on a systematic investigation of the effects and consequences of our use of technology. Don’t forget to register at http://www.ipfw.edu/celt. Three attendees will be selected to receive iPad2s to use in their teaching, and you must attend to be eligible to participate. See you there!

  4. Bill McKinney permalink

    Great conversation about learning spaces and technology.

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