Using Technology in Teaching Using Technology in Teaching William Clyde and Andrew Delohery Yale University Press New Haven and London Copyright © 2005 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Designed by Sonia Shannon. Set in Bulmer type by Integrated Publishing Solutions. Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan Books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Clyde, William.
Using technology in teaching / William Clyde and Andrew Delohery. Includes bibliographical references and index. Education, Higher—Computer-assisted instruction. College teaching—Aids and devices.17344678—dc22 2004023495 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To my dear wife —W. To Jodie, whose sensibilities make all things possible —A. Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction xi Chapter One: Communicating with Students 1 1 Sending Information to Students Between Classes 2 2 Making Last-Minute Changes and Canceling Class Meetings 2 3 Leveraging the Value of Good Questions (and Answers) 8 4 Students Contacting You Between Classes 13 5 Students Submitting Work 19 Chapter Two: Distributing Course Materials to Students 25 1 Handing Out Your Syllabus 26 2 Adding Readings at the Last Minute 39 3 Providing Access to Supplementary Material 41 4 Making Up Canceled Classes 47 5 Distributing Graphics, Videos, and Audio Materials 50 Chapter Three: Promoting Collaborative Learning 54 1 Fostering and Extending In-Class Collaboration 55 2 Facilitating Work on Group Projects Outside of Class 67 3 Building Networks of Collaboration for Learning from Peers 70 4 Fostering Peer Feedback 74 5 Assessing and Managing Team Performance 75 Chapter Four: Helping Students Learn Through Experience 77 1 Experiencing Visual Environments 80 2 Experiencing Strategy 86 3 Experiencing Calculations 93 4 Experiencing Technology 97 5 Interacting with Experts and Practitioners 98 viii Contents Chapter Five: Clarifying Linkages Within Your Course 102 1 Linking the Mission Statement and Objectives 103 2 Linking Activities and Assessments to Objectives 106 3 Linking Activities to One Another 118 4 Linking Activities and Objectives to the Real World 121 5 Linking Activities and Objectives to Policies and Resources 124 Chapter Six: Improving Student Writing 129 1 Increasing Writing Opportunities 130 2 Evaluating Writing Assignments 144 3 Collecting and Returning Writing Assignments 151 4 Identifying Plagiarism 151 Chapter Seven: Developing Student Research Skills 155 1 “I Can’t Find Any/Enough Information” 156 2 Poor Source Review 160 3 Encouraging Higher-Order Thinking 166 4 Reviewing Progress 170 5 Helping Students Avoid Plagiarism 173 Chapter Eight: Using Assessment and Feedback to Improve Learning 176 1 Identifying Points of Student Confusion 177 2 Teaching Students to Self- and Peer-Assess 180 3 Improving Student Presentations 185 4 Assessing and Managing Team Performance 188 5 Collecting Student Feedback on Course Activities 188 Chapter Nine: Gathering Course Learning Materials 193 1 Identifying and Organizing Supplemental Resources 194 2 Student Access to Specific Resources 201 3 Practice Tests and Quizzes 204 4 Supporting Learner-Centered Learning 208 Appendix 213 Glossary 217 Notes 225 Index 227 Acknowledgments We begin by thanking all of our colleagues at Quinnipiac University, from whom we learn new things about teaching, learning, and technology every day.
In particular, we are in- debted to Rich Ferguson, Frank Villa, Judy Villa, Maureen Schorr, Frances Rowe, Gary Pandolfi, Richard Beck, Joe Jasinski, David Vance, Vin Buccino, Sally Nagy, Lynn Dorsey, Stephanie Caruso, Phil Devit, Cindy Gallatin, and Josh Kim for their endless ideas, experience, and enthusiasm—and for providing many valuable suggestions for the book. At Yale University Press, we would like to thank Jean Thomson Black, Molly Egland, Heidi Downey, and Laura Davulis, whose thorough and careful work made this book a reality. We also thank the reviewers, whose many constructive comments and observa- tions made the book more accurate and useful. We would like to thank J.
Alex Schwartz, who helped get this project started. We are very grateful to Frank Villa, Judy Villa, Frances Rowe, David Clyde, Paul Clyde, and Bill Keep, each of whom spent many hours reviewing the manuscript and of- fering important changes, corrections, and improvements. The manuscript would never have come together without the expertise and careful work of Radhika Ippatoori, Alyson Heffernan, and Jonathan Potokin, who transformed the text and images into the formats needed for publication. Finally, we thank our families for their patience and support—and the joy they give us each day.
Introduction Can you recall. • Standing at the copy machine five minutes before your class begins, hav- ing just discovered a reading you’d like to get to your students today. There are three people ahead of you in line to use the copier—which just ran out of paper. • Watching television on a Friday night when a preview comes on for a pro- gram, airing on Sunday, that relates to topics you will discuss in class Mon- day morning.
You would like your students to know about it so they may watch it. • Reading student papers with a strong suspicion that some of them contain large amounts of plagiarized materials. • Assigning readings to be covered next class. Before students come to class you want to make sure they have read the material, and to find out which concepts from the readings most confused them so you can use class time to clarify.
Our lives as faculty are full of everyday frustrations, challenges, and unrealized po- tential. While we have worked out solutions and strategies for dealing with many of these, it is clear that, given the right tools, we could be more efficient and effective. Technology now offers an increasing number of intuitive, reliable, “ready for prime time” tools to help faculty do the things they do every day. The strategies described here do not depend on the software or hardware you are using to access these tools.
Whether you are using a Mac or a PC, Blackboard or WebCT, WordPerfect or Word, Outlook or an AOL email account, what matters is that you have access to Email, the Internet, threaded discussions, online assessments, and the other basic tools used in this book. This book is not for the technology innovators, nor is it for the skeptics. It is for the 75 to 80 percent in the middle: the mainstream faculty who are using some technology but have not had the time to explore the variety of technologies now readily available, or to contemplate how these technologies might help them meet challenges they face daily. You can read this book cover to cover or piece by piece.
It might be thought of as a guide for doing what you already do in ways that may save time and make you more pro- ductive and effective. We expect that you will often use it to look up what you’re trying to do—preparing class materials, giving students feedback, or helping students become re- searchers—and to explore the options technology offers. xii Introduction This book is not about pushing a paradigm shift. Faculty resistance to such pushing was made clear in an overheard lunch-table conversation.
One faculty member, com- plaining about the pushiness of another faculty member, was heard to say, “Paradigm, paradigm, paradigm. All he ever talks about is changing my paradigm. If I hear him say paradigm one more time, I’m going to. ” Faculty naturally don’t like to be pushed, and they anticipate that learning everything they need to in order to “shift paradigms” (should they want to) will take more time than they have.
This book will help you use technology as you need it, to do better and more easily what you are already doing. Rather than attempting to use a whole package of course- altering technology, you will see how specific instructional activities and tasks might be more easily and more effectively accomplished by using pieces of technology. Little by little, you will be able to decide which tools fit your needs and how to use them—and even be better prepared to consider shifting paradigms, should you decide to. The Problem Increasingly, faculty wrestle with the idea of incorporating technology into the classroom.
We’d like to think, indeed, we are increasingly told, that technology will help all parties concerned: • ourselves, by expediting traditionally cumbersome tasks; • our students, by taking advantage of more and better learning opportuni- ties; and • our academic community as a whole, by simply facilitating the exchange of information. Faculty are responding to the attention being paid to instructional technology by ex- perimenting more and more. However, with the glut of technologies on the market and the recognition of early innovators, it is easy to forget that technology is only a tool. The focus often seems to be on technology rather than our teaching objectives.
We often feel that we are asked to change our teaching styles and methods to accommodate technology rather than to use technology as a tool to accomplish our goals. Yet, despite the acclaimed ease propounded by so many software developers, we remain frustrated, feeling that the successful use of technology requires time and energy beyond our resources. Still, we listen to what others are doing. We notice our peers on the cutting edge of this technology—some more vocal than others—and are aware of the increasing attention their use of technology receives during department meetings and in newsletters.
We also notice the level of technology proficiency that our students bring to the classroom, where they fully expect us to offer opportunities supported through technology. Administrators love to promote the use of technology to prospective students and to accrediting organi- zations, and they appreciate the wealth of data that can be gathered through institutional Introduction xiii use. Faced with so much optimism, we think, “This makes sense. I really could use some of this technology.” Hypertext—a word or phase in a docu- ment, presentation, spreadsheet, etc., that is So we begin to ask questions, or we begin to push but- linked (via hyperlink) to additional informa- tons and open icons on our computer that we have tion, often something on the Internet.
Hyper- never used before. text is almost always underlined and in a dif- ferent color from the rest of the text. When And so the avalanche begins. Just a little at first, of you click on a hypertext word or phrase, you course, because we really do think that technology can are automatically taken to the additional in- formation on that term or phrase.
You can offer something for us; after all, so many have told us return to the original passage (where you how easy it can be to use and how worthwhile will be found the hypertext) by clicking the Back the investment of a little time. Tempered by our sin- button on the browser screen Browser—a program that lets the user cerely progressive attitudes, we hold at bay the growing view a list of files and folders and/or their stress produced by our learning curves. We notice that contents, most commonly Web pages Chat Room—a location on the Internet or one question leads to another, that one answer leads to on a network that users can visit to Chat; three more questions.