talking to faculty about talking to students about learning technology

Malcolm Brown's article Learning and Technology — “In That Order”  should be mandatory reading for us in the Ed. Tech tribe.

We all have stories we tell about how this or that tool can aid in teaching or learning.   Among these stories should be an emphasis on "going meta" - or "going to the balcony" and explaining to students what the learning goals were each time a new technology or tool is used.  

 

Malcolm's article has been ringing in my ears this week as I talk to faculty about Blackboard tools.  I've made it a point to spend more time engaging faculty in how they will talk about the tools with their students.

    

Getting students engaged in the "why's" of course design / development / delivery is probably a good idea on all fronts.  This may take some time from the curriculum, but will play dividends in the depth of learning.

Comments

[Brian Reid]

I agree with Malcolm's and Josh's conclusions here - using technology to serve learning, telling the students about why it's being used.

However, I'm a little baffled about the student's example of "bad" and "good" lecture capture. To summarize: In two courses recordings were made of class periods. In a large physics lecture, full videocasts were created. The student complained that these worked to the detriment of the class, since with complete recordings, not as many people came to the lecture. In the other course, presumably a smaller one, students were doing some of the presenting and were more involved in class interaction. And since "the weekly problem sets were based on the material presented in all three lectures, the podcasts provided a crucial tool that students could use."

I'm confused about why a student wouldn't get benefit from reviewing the physics lectures in an analogous way he/she would reviewing the other course recordings. The material on the weekly problem sets and exams in the physics class would have been contained in the physics lecture recordings. (I have observed someone auditing both Physics and Astronomy classes using these full videocasts which capture what is displayed on a computer, what is written with chalk, and what is done as demonstrations. The material in class is important on the problem sets and exams!) And on the other side, why couldn't a student skip the smaller class meeting and just view the slide presentations and listen to the podcasts to do the weekly problem sets? The student's logical distinction between the two classes and the effectiveness of the class recordings doesn't seem to fly.