TELab Provides Faculty With
Resources for Building Technology Enhanced Learning Materials

By Judith M. Brooks

 

The TELab's goal is to collaborate with faculty for the development of pedagogically sound learning materials, while providing direct access to specialized equipment and software.

In close collaboration with the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and the Center for Innovation in Leaning, the TELab opens the door to a broadened understanding of how technology can be used to achieve sound pedagogical processes into teaching processes. Offering supporting workshops, the TELab provides a way for faculty to create specific approaches to achieving the task at hand.

The TELab can provide a sufficient transfer of technological expertise to faculty so that they can become comfortable with the technology in order to apply it appropriately to teaching. "We are not here just to do workshops; we meet with faculty members and discuss their needs, then help them to apply the right technologies and/or direct them to the appropriate resource (another word for resource?) to support their needs," explains Diana Bajzek, TELab Director.

As an initiative of the Division of Computing Services and the Office of the President, the TELab needs to have the appropriate resources to augment the necessary collaborations with faculty, departments and divisions of the university to create and carry out pedagogically-sound, technologically-enhanced learning strategies.

Such strategies that are imperative to learning enhancements include: project-based learning in an information-rich environment; collaborative learning when communication can be synchronous and asynchronous; learning at the pace and time frame of the student's choosing; learning marked by continuous improvement of a piece of work; improved student to faculty and student to student interaction; and enhanced feedback.

These objectives should also include resources to study which teaching/learning strategies are best (including those that without technology would not be feasible) and to study which technologies are best for supporting those strategies.

The TELab is currently beginning a collaborative effort with other departments to create a technologically enhanced Library Information System Tutorial. However, the possible outcome of this project is hard to assess due to limited resources.

Another project involves teaming up with the Biology department to create scientifically correct animations, which will enhance the students' ability to visualize difficult concepts.

While these efforts are certainly worthwhile, the appropriate resources still need to be in place in order to support the activities and their outcomes.

Bajzek stresses that without the appropriate collaborations with faculty and the necessary resources, technology alone cannot create enhanced learning environments.

The TELab offers a convenient location where faculty can come together to learn new skills involved in technology enhanced learning. Offering workshops that focus on why the faculty member can use a specific technology to achieve or support a specific teaching strategy, the TELab then completes that understanding with how to use a technology.

Workshops like "Web Pedagogy" are provided which focus on exploring ways in which faculty might use the web to enhance the learning experience for students. By looking at examples of course materials on the web, in addition to interactive web learning experiences, the faculty can see more clearly how the technology is used to enhance learning. The workshop also offers an arena for faculty to talk with peers who are currently using various web technologies in their classes.

Other workshops offer faculty the ability to become familiar and then comfortable with specific technologies useful for carrying out their teaching strategies. "Digital Story Telling" is offered where the participant will use tools like Adobe Premiere and file formats like Quicktime to easily create digital story vignettes to describe and explain concepts and ideas in more than words alone. The workshop covers techniques and procedures for standard digital video that would be essential in capturing and editing video clips to be used digitally from disk, CD, or web.

It is the TELab's goal to help faculty become comfortable and knowledgeable of the technologies appropriate for their needs, and to collaborate to create enhanced learning experiences. As Mark Twain put it, " I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." In today's scenario, it is too easy to let glitzy software applications and the temptation to use a technology by itself interfere with our students' education. But, when applied correctly to pedagogically sound teaching strategies, technology, as a teaching device will enhance the learning process.

 

February 1999

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