adjunct faculty

Math professors laud 3D printing’s classroom potential [Matisons]

On 06/01/2015, in 3D, adjunct faculty, faculty, ideas, innovation, mathematics, pedagogy, teachers, teaching & learning, by Daniel Christian

Math professors laud 3D printing’s classroom potential — from 3dprint.com by Michelle Matisons

Excerpt:

The explanations were quite varied but all mentioned the need for concrete application of abstract concepts (especially in calculus classrooms). Keith White, Associate Professor of Developmental Mathematics, Utah Valley University, explained his interest in 3D printing is helping students learn how to apply math in a real world environment with a tangible outcome. White reports that 3D printing motivates his students, piques their interests, and reinforces mathematical concepts as a major bonus.

“A lot of the math we teach is procedure and skill based. It doesn’t have a lot of application, and when it does the applications are usually contrived. Students know that. They see that. They get that, and anything that we can do to make it more real, and tie it to things that actually have meaning to them would be beneficial,” White said. “I am trying to figure out how 3D printing might give learning more meaning. I think students would find 3D printing interesting, but not necessarily meaningful. So I am exploring in order to see, in the context of a developmental math course or a general education math course, could you integrate 3D printing in a way that would reinforce mathematical concepts, while simultaneously increasing the motivation and interest level of students?”

From DSC:
I originally saw this at Helge Scherlund’s blog;
so thanks to Helge for posting this item.

From DSC:
Learning is messy. Teaching & learning is messy.

In my experience, teaching is both an art and a science. Ask anyone who has tried it and they will tell you that it’s not easy. In fact, it takes years to hone one’s craft…and there are no silver bullets. Get a large group of Learning Theorists together in the same room and you won’t get 100% agreement on the best practices for how human beings actually learn.

Besides that, I see some issues with how we are going about trying to educate today’s learners…and as the complexity of our offerings is increasing, these issues are becoming more apparent, important, visible, and costly:

Professors, Teachers, & Trainers know some pieces of the puzzle.
Cognitive Scientists, Cognitive Psychologists, and Neuroscientists know some other pieces of the puzzle.
Learning Theorists and Instructional Designers know some other pieces of the puzzle.
Learning Space Designers know some other pieces of the puzzle.
And yet other specialties know about some other pieces of the puzzle.

But, in practice, how often are these specialties siloed? How much information is shared between these silos? Are there people interpreting and distilling the neuroscience and cognitive science into actionable learning activities? Are there collaborative efforts going on here or are the Teachers, Professors, and Trainers pretty much on their own here (again, practically speaking)?

So…how do we bring all of these various pieces together? My conclusion:

We need a team-based approach in order to bring all of the necessary pieces together. We’ll never get there by continuing to work in our silos…working alone.

…

But there are other reasons why the use of teams is becoming a requirement these days: Accessibility; moving towards providing more blended/hybrid learning — including flipping the classroom; and moving towards providing more online-based learning.

Accessibility
We’re moving into a world whereby lawsuits re: accessibility are becoming more common:

Ed Tech World on Notice: Miami U disability discrimination lawsuit could have major effect — from mfeldstein.com by Phil Hill
Excerpt:
This week the US Department of Justice, citing Title II of ADA, decided to intervene in a private lawsuit filed against Miami University of Ohio regarding disability discrimination based on ed tech usage. Call this a major escalation and just ask the for-profit industry how big an effect DOJ intervention can be. From the complaint:

Miami University uses technologies in its curricular and co-curricular programs, services, and activities that are inaccessible to qualified individuals with disabilities, including current and former students who have vision, hearing, or learning disabilities. Miami University has failed to make these technologies accessible to such individuals and has otherwise failed to ensure that individuals with disabilities can interact with Miami University’s websites and access course assignments, textbooks, and other curricular and co-curricular materials on an equal basis with non-disabled students. These failures have deprived current and former students and others with disabilities a full and equal opportunity to participate in and benefit from all of Miami University’s educational opportunities.

Knowing about accessibility (especially online and via the web) and being able to provide accessible learning materials is a position in itself. Most faculty members and most Instructional Designers are not specialists in this area. Which again brings up the need for a team-based approach.

Also, when we create hybrid/blended learning-based situations and online-based courses, we’re moving some of the materials and learning experiences online. Once you move something online, you’ve entered a whole new world…requiring new skillsets and sensitivities.

The article below caused me to reflect on this topic. It also made me reflect yet again on how tricky it is to move the needle on how we teach people…and how we set up our learning activities and environments in the most optimal/effective ways. Often we teach in the ways that we were taught. But the problem is, the ways in which learning experiences can be offered these days are moving far beyond the ways us older people were taught.

Why we need Learning Engineers — from chronicle.com by Bror Saxberg

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Recently I wandered around the South by Southwest ed-tech conference, listening to excited chatter about how digital technology would revolutionize learning. I think valuable change is coming, but I was struck by the lack of discussion about what I see as a key problem: Almost no one who is involved in creating learning materials or large-scale educational experiences relies on the evidence from learning science.

We are missing a job category: Where are our talented, creative, user-centric “learning engineers” — professionals who understand the research about learning, test it, and apply it to help more students learn more effectively?
…
So where are the learning engineers? The sad truth is, we don’t have an equivalent corps of professionals who are applying learning science at our colleges, schools, and other institutions of learning. There are plenty of hard-working, well-meaning professionals out there, but most of them are essentially using their intuition and personal experience with learning rather than applying existing science and generating data to help more students and professors succeed.

Also see:

Why you now need a team to create and deliver learning — from campustechnology.com by Mary Grush and Daniel Christian
Excerpt:
“Higher education institutions that intentionally move towards using a team-based approach to creating and delivering the majority of their education content and learning experiences will stand out and be successful over the long run.”

Addendum on 5/14/15:

Thinking different(ly) about university presses — from insidehighered.com by Carl Straumsheim

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Lynn University, to further its tablet-centric curriculum, is establishing its own university press to support textbooks created exclusively for Apple products.

Lynn University Digital Press, which operates out of the institution’s library, in some ways formalizes the authoring process between faculty members, instructional designers, librarians and the general counsel that’s been taking place at the private university in Florida for years. With the university press in place, the effort to create electronic textbooks now has an academic editor, style guides and faculty training programs in place to improve the publishing workflow.

Teaching: What do great college professors have in common? [Sanchez]

On 05/12/2015, in adjunct faculty, faculty, higher education, learning, learning ecosystem, lifelong learning, love of learning, more voice more choice more control, pedagogy, student-related, teaching & learning, by Daniel Christian

Teaching: What do great college professors have in common? — from kqed.org by Claudio Sanchez; an interview with Ken Bain, author of What the Best College Teachers Do.

Excerpt:

What do the best teachers do in the classroom that’s different?
They create a critical learning environment in which students rethink their assumptions. It’s an environment in which students believe their work will be considered fairly and honestly. The best teachers allow students to try, to fail and try again. They allow students to collaborate with one another in tackling the most intriguing problems.

They treat their students with decency and respect, no matter how much a student is struggling. The best teachers trust their students rather than blame them. They often give up their own sense of power over students.

Why is that important?
Ultimately students have to take control of their own education. And if that doesn’t happen, they’re not going to learn deeply. Students have to have that intrinsic motivation and if there’s someone else in charge of their education, telling them what to do, then they’re not going to become those independent, lifelong learners. So a good teacher is there to inspire and guide the individual but ultimately to help them work on their own and take personal responsibility (for their learning).

Dr. Eric Mazur – Active Learning Speech @ Auburn University’s EASL Classroom

On 05/01/2015, in active learning, adjunct faculty, attention, education technology, engagement / engaging students, interactivity, learning, learning ecosystem, learning spaces, mobile technologies, participation, pedagogy, smart classrooms, student-related, teaching & learning, tools, by Daniel Christian

Preparing for the Digital University: A review of the history & current state of distance, blended, & online learning [Siemens, Gasevic, Dawson]

On 04/30/2015, in 21st century, adjunct faculty, Australia, blended learning, Canada, change, distance education, education technology, faculty, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, history, hybrid learning, innovation, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, online learning, organizational change, pace of change, pedagogy, research, social learning / networks, strategy, student-related, teaching & learning, teaching online, technology (general), trends, UK, United States, user experience (UX), vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Excerpt:

It is our intent that these reports will serve to introduce academics, administrators, and students to the rich history of technology in education with a particular emphasis of the importance of the human factors: social interaction, well-designed learning experiences, participatory pedagogy, supportive teaching presence, and effective techniques for using technology to support learning.

The world is digitizing and higher education is not immune to this transition. The trend is well underway and seems to be accelerating as top universities create departments and senior leadership positions to explore processes of innovation within the academy. It is our somewhat axiomatic assessment that in order to understand how we should design and develop learning for the future, we need to first take a look at what we already know. Any scientific enterprise that runs forward on only new technology, ignoring the landscape of existing knowledge, will be sub-optimal and likely fail. To build a strong future of digital learning in the academy, we must first take stock of what we know and what has been well researched.

During the process of completing this report, it became clear to us that a society or academic organization is required to facilitate the advancement and adoption of digital learning research. Important areas in need of exploration include faculty development, organizational change, innovative practices and new institutional models, effectiveness of teaching and learning activities, the student experience, increasing success for all students, and state and provincial policies, strategies, and funding models. To address this need, we invite interested academics, administrators, government and industry to contact us to discuss the formation of an organization to advocate for a collaborative and research informed approach to digital learning.

February 2015
George Siemens
Dragan Gasevic
Shane Dawson

5 keys to flipped learning success [Pierce]

On 04/29/2015, in adjunct faculty, faculty, flipping -- inverted learning, higher education, instructional design, pedagogy, productivity / tips and tricks, teaching & learning, by Daniel Christian

5 keys to flipped learning success — from campustechnology.com by Dennis Pierce
Flipping the classroom isn’t easy, but many instructors have found it to be well worth the effort. Here’s some advice for making flipped learning work.

Excerpt:

Talbert teaches Calculus I and a full-year course on discrete mathematics for computer science majors. For calculus, he is using a free, open source textbook written by one of his colleagues with flipped learning in mind, and his department has created a YouTube channel with instructional videos that faculty have recorded using simple screencasting software. For his discrete mathematics course, Talbert is finding and curating online videos that students can watch before coming to class.

In both courses, students are given a structured, pre-class activity that gets them familiar with the lesson’s basic concepts, so when they arrive in his class, “they’re ready to work at a higher level,” he said. That’s the essence of the flipped class model: Students learn the basics on their own, outside of class, so class time can be devoted to a deeper exploration of the content.

Teaching in a Digital Age
A.W. (Tony) Bates
Guidelines for designing teaching and learning for a digital age

The book examines the underlying principles that guide effective teaching in an age when everyone, and in particular the students we are teaching, are using technology. A framework for making decisions about your teaching is provided, while understanding that every subject is different, and every instructor has something unique and special to bring to their teaching. The book enables teachers and instructors to help students develop the knowledge and skills they will need in a digital age: not so much the IT skills, but the thinking and attitudes to learning that will bring them success.

As Tony mentions here, his intended audience is primarily:

college and university instructors anxious to improve their teaching or facing major challenges in the classroom,
school teachers, particularly in secondary or high schools anxious to ensure their students are ready for either post-secondary education or a rapidly changing and highly uncertain job market.

An example chapter:
Chapter 7: Pedagogical differences between media

What is deeper learning all about?

On 04/02/2015, in adjunct faculty, education, education reform, faculty, higher education, K-12 related, learning, lifelong learning, pedagogy, teachers, teaching & learning, by Daniel Christian

CoSN 2015: Harvard’s Chris Dede Talks Deeper Learning
Harvard Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies Chris Dede spoke with EdTech about the concepts behind Deeper Learning and the many ways technology can support it.

Chris mentioned:

Apprenticeships
Case-based teaching
Interdisciplinary teaching
Teaching for transfer
The National Research Council’s book entitled, “Education for Life and Work” (see below)

Also see:

Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century (2012)
Description:
Americans have long recognized that investments in public education contribute to the common good, enhancing national prosperity and supporting stable families, neighborhoods, and communities. Education is even more critical today, in the face of economic, environmental, and social challenges. Today’s children can meet future challenges if their schooling and informal learning activities prepare them for adult roles as citizens, employees, managers, parents, volunteers, and entrepreneurs. To achieve their full potential as adults, young people need to develop a range of skills and knowledge that facilitate mastery and application of English, mathematics, and other school subjects. At the same time, business and political leaders are increasingly asking schools to develop skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and self-management – often referred to as “21st century skills.”Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century describes this important set of key skills that increase deeper learning, college and career readiness, student-centered learning, and higher order thinking. These labels include both cognitive and non-cognitive skills- such as critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, effective communication, motivation, persistence, and learning to learn. 21st century skills also include creativity, innovation, and ethics that are important to later success and may be developed in formal or informal learning environments.This report also describes how these skills relate to each other and to more traditional academic skills and content in the key disciplines of reading, mathematics, and science. Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century summarizes the findings of the research that investigates the importance of such skills to success in education, work, and other areas of adult responsibility and that demonstrates the importance of developing these skills in K-16 education. In this report, features related to learning these skills are identified, which include teacher professional development, curriculum, assessment, after-school and out-of-school programs, and informal learning centers such as exhibits and museums.

Also see:

Excerpt of PDF file found at Deeper Learning Defined

DEEPER LEARNING COMPETENCIES | April 2013

Deeper learning is an umbrella term for the skills and knowledge that students must possess to succeed in 21st century jobs and civic life. At its heart is a set of competencies students must master in order to develop a keen understanding of academic content and apply their knowledge to problems in the classroom and on the job.

The deeper learning framework includes six competencies that are essential to prepare students to achieve at high levels.

Competencies

Master core academic content
Think critically and solve complex problems
Work collaboratively
Communicate effectively
Learn how to learn
Develop academic mindsets

From DSC:
That 5th one there…“Learn how to learn” seems extremely key to me these days. I’ve had several graduates of our T&L Digital Studio tell me that one of the most important things they’ve discovered after graduating and hitting the real world is how important learning is to them — and doing so as much and as fast as they can. Below are some quotes from them:

Lifelong learning has been most helpful in my career. While in college, learn how you learn best. You’ll be able to learn your way out of nearly any challenge faster than others. For me, I learned that audiobooks is a fun way for me to learn.
I’m a strong believer that its always good to stretch yourself out and learn things you are not familiar with, cause you never know when those extra skills will come-in-handy.
I wouldn’t stop trying to learn as much as possible. It is good to have a good educational foundation before jumping into a job, but there are many things that you just have to learn by experience outside of the school/college environment that are impossible to learn IN college.
Continual learning is something that has no end, one can keep at it. It’s amazing how much learning takes place post school and on the job. Things are usually thrown at you in the real world and the only way out is to learn it and to be honest that’s the only way out.
…learning is something that you have to do no matter what because the world is changing, technology is changing.
He who learns the fastest wins.

So the better you know how you prefer to learn, the more enjoyable and effective your time spent learning will be.

———–

Also see:

Deeper Learning: What is it and why is it so effective? — from opencolleges.edu.au by Saga Briggs
“When engaged in deeper learning, students think critically and communicate and work with others effectively across all subjects. Students learn to self-direct their own education and to adopt what is known as ‘academic mindsets,’ and they learn to be lifelong learners.”
.
“Deeper learning is the process of learning for transfer, meaning it allows a student to take what’s learned in one situation and apply it to another.”
.
If all this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. It describes the aim of every reasonably devoted educator since the dawn of time. But therein lies the problem: aim and execution are two very different things. When it comes to deeper learning, we’re aiming for something we understand fully in theory but barely at all in practice. What was once a pedagogical fantasy is now an indispensible necessity, and it’s time for us to wake up.
.
Deeper learning is “an old dog by a new name,” according to Ron Berger, the chief academic officer at Expeditionary Learning, which has brought deeper learning to 165 educational institutions across 33 U.S. states. It’s about combining in-depth academic knowledge and skills with the belief that students must also master communication skills, learn to collaborate effectively, and manage their own learning in order to be ready for college and beyond–pretty much what we’ve known all along, right?
.
Right, says Berger, but have we been doing it all along?

———–

Transferable Knowledge and Skills Key to Success in Education and Work; Report Calls for Efforts to Incorporate ‘Deeper Learning’ Into Curriculum — from nationalacademies.org

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON — Educational and business leaders want today’s students both to master school subjects and to excel in areas such as problem solving, critical thinking, and communication — abilities often referred to by such labels as “deeper learning” and “21st-century skills.” In contrast to the view that these are general skills that can be applied across a range of tasks in academic, workplace, or family settings, a new report from the National Research Council found that 21st-century skills are specific to content knowledge and performance within a particular subject area. The report describes how this set of key skills relates to learning mathematics, English, and science as well as to succeeding in education, work, and other areas of life.

Deeper learning is the process through which a person develops the ability to take what was learned in one situation and apply it to new situations, says the report. Through deeper learning, the person develops transferable knowledge, which includes both expertise in a particular subject area and procedural knowledge of how, why, and when to apply this knowledge to solve unique problems in that subject. The report refers to this blend of transferable content knowledge and skills as “21st-century competencies.”

———–

Deeper Learning — from American Institutes for Research

———–

Addendums on 4/6/15:

Deeper Learning 2015 – Day 2 — from ghsinnovationlab.com
Excerpt:
Deeper Learning 2015 just gets better and better!
For Day 2 of the conference, I participated in the Deep Dive hosted by Mark Hines of Mid Pacific Exploratory on Pedaling Towards Sustainability. I and the other members of my team, Andrew from The Met in Providence RI, Nate from Poudre High School in Colorado, and Robin from ReadyNation got the chance to think about how design projects centered around bicycles and sustainability can be used to unpack major concepts in physics, math, and the humanities while engaging students in authentic building, problem solving, and teamwork (STEM!!!!).
Deeper Learning 2015 – Day 1
Excerpt:
Well High Tech High knows how to throw a conference, that’s for sure.

Inside Higher Ed’s 2015 Survey of Chief Academic Officers [Jaschik & Lederman]

On 03/26/2015, in adjunct faculty, faculty, future of higher education, higher education, leadership, by Daniel Christian

Inside Higher Ed’s 2015 Survey of Chief Academic Officers — from facultyecommons.org by Scott Jaschik and Doug Lederman

Excerpt:

A majority of provosts are concerned about declining faculty civility in American higher education. And a large majority of provosts believe that civility is a legitimate criterion in hiring and evaluating faculty members. Generally, the provosts are confident that faculty members show civility in their treatment of students, but have mixed views on whether professors show civility in dealings with colleagues and doubt how much civility is shown to administrators.

These results are clear from Inside Higher Ed‘s 2015 Survey of College and University Chief Academic Officers. And after a year of intense debate over civility, the survey shows that provosts are not aligned with faculty leaders on the issue.

Other key findings:

Many provosts report that their institutions are not feeling the impact of the widely reported improved economy. Most do not feel their institutions are operating in an improved financial situation, and many anticipate further budget cuts and paying for new initiatives through reallocations, not new funds.
The idea of competency-based education is now attracting strong support from chief academic officers, especially in public higher education.
Almost all chief academic officers believe that their institutions are very or somewhat effective at providing a good undergraduate education, and a little more than half think they are very effective at preparing students for the world of work. (That latter finding would appear to put the provosts at odds with employers in other surveys.)
…

Why you now need a team to create and deliver learning [Christian & Grush]

On 02/26/2015, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, active learning, adjunct faculty, adult learning, analytics, animation, attention, blended learning, changing business models, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, computer science, copyright/ownership/NFTs, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, design, digital audio, digital learning, digital storytelling, digital textbooks, digital video, distance education, e-books, education reform, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, expectations, experimentation, face-to-face, faculty, future of higher education, game-changing environment, graphics, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), hybrid learning, ideas, innovation, instructional design, interaction design, interactivity, interface design, internet, learning, learning ecosystem, learning spaces, more voice more choice more control, multimedia, online learning, online media, programming, staying relevant, strategy, student-related, surviving, teaching & learning, traditional / tradition, trends, universities, user experience (UX), user interface design, using teams, web design and production, writing, by Daniel Christian

My thanks to Mary Grush at Campus Technology for her continued work in bringing relevant topics and discussions to light — so that our institutions of higher education will continue delivering on their missions well into the future. By doing so, learners will be able to continue to partake of the benefits of attending such institutions. But in order to do so, we must adapt, be responsive, and be willing to experiment. Towards that end, this Q&A with Mary relays some of my thoughts on the need to move more towards a team-based approach.

When you think about it, we need teams whether we’re talking about online learning, hybrid learning or face-to-face learning. In fact, I just came back from an excellent Next Generation Learning Space Conference and it was never so evident to me that you need a team of specialists to design the Next Generation Learning Space and to design/implement pedagogies that take advantage of the new affordances being offered by active learning environments.

Making Assessment Work: Lessons from the University of Pittsburgh [Kurzweil]

On 02/02/2015, in accreditation, adjunct faculty, assessment, colleges, community colleges, education reform, faculty, higher education, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

Making Assessment Work: Lessons from the University of Pittsburgh — from sr.ithaka.org by Martin Kurzweil

Excerpt:

What should an undergraduate chemistry major know by the time she graduates? How can one tell if she knows it? And how can chemistry instruction be improved to ensure that more students meet those expectations?

Such deceptively simple questions—for chemistry and every other discipline—have become an important focus of higher education leaders, accrediting agencies, and government. Yet many universities have struggled to develop robust processes for assessing student learning. Even when a central administration makes a serious effort to develop such a process, faculty participation is often pro forma.

The University of Pittsburgh is an exception. At Pitt, faculty across 350 programs are deeply engaged in a systematic approach to assessing student learning outcomes, which has led to measurable results and significant changes.

…

“Making Assessment Work: Lessons from the University of Pittsburgh” delves into some of the specific practices Pitt undertook and documents the change in the university’s culture. No system is perfect, but this case study shows Pitt’s decentralized approach, targeted at the level of coherent programs of study, coupled with strong and supportive leadership, led Pitt’s faculty to make assessment an important driver of program improvement.

On a programming note, this is the first in a new series of case studies on educational transformation from Ithaka S+R. Every few weeks, we will release a new report on innovative approaches that institutions have taken to improve student outcomes and control costs. Covering issues such as online education, learning analytics, and university governance, the case studies document the ways that change happens in higher education.

Also see the ITHAKA S&R blog.

…the most important factor in the development of Pitt’s culture of assessment was its decentralized, yet accountable, approach. University leaders established a timeline and general framework for assessment, offered feedback, designated degree and certificate programs as the units of assessment, and, most significantly, left the details to faculty responsible for those programs. This combination of broad oversight and localized management has fostered a sense of ownership among faculty, who have made assessment an important driver of program improvement.

2014 Student and Faculty Technology Research Studies — from educause.edu / ECAR

From the ECAR RESEARCH HUB
This hub contains the 2014 student and faculty studies from the EDUCAUSE Technology Research in the Academic Community research series. In 2014, ECAR partnered with 151 college/university sites yielding responses from 17,451 faculty respondents across 13 countries. ECAR also collaborated with 213 institutions to collect responses from more than 75,306 undergraduate students about their technology experiences.

Key Findings

Faculty recognize that online learning opportunities can promote access to higher education but are more reserved in their expectations for online courses to improve outcomes.
Faculty interest in early-alert systems and intervention notifications is strong.
The majority of faculty are using basic features and functions of LMSs but recognize that these systems have much more potential to enhance teaching and learning.
Faculty think they could be more effective instructors if they were better skilled at integrating various kinds of technology into their courses.
Faculty recognize that mobile devices have the potential to enhance learning.

Excerpts from infographic:

Great colleges to work for 2014 [chronicle.com]

On 07/21/2014, in adjunct faculty, career development, colleges, community colleges, faculty, higher education, Michigan, online learning, teaching & learning, universities, by Daniel Christian

Also see:

The Uncertain Future of Academic Work — from chronicle.com by Audrey Williams June
Now more than ever, people employed in higher education face the forces of change

Excerpts:

Over the next several years, at least, new technologies are expected to drastically reshape the way professors teach, and when and where people on college campuses do their work.

…

For those who do end up in the academic workplace, how to best use technology in teaching and scholarship will be a challenge for the foreseeable future. Although massive open online courses, or MOOCs, are hot topics of conversation, even professors who have never taught online have seen the effects of technology on their work lives.

Some advice from Ms. Austin to graduate students who want to be professors: Get experience teaching online.

“You’ll be expected to teach fully online and to use technology quite skillfully in class,”says Ms. Austin, who has taught all-online courses in the College of Education’s online master’s programs.

As for senior faculty members, “we can’t just stay up on what’s happening our fields, but we have to stay ahead of the technology as well,”*** Ms. Austin says. “It’s more than just learning some technology. We need to think about it in the context of what are the most effective ways of helping students learn.”

…

“If you look to the future, it’s really going to be necessary for faculty to have a good degree of flexibility,” Ms. Austin says. “They’ll need to be flexible enough to use new technology, flexible enough to respond to the changing student body. Appointment types are changing.

“Flexibility is going to be key.”

*** From DSC:
Though I applaud what Ms. Austin is saying throughout this solid piece, I don’t see faculty members being able to stay ahead of the technology as well as staying up on what’s happening in their fields. Even keeping up with (vs. being ahead of) the technology is something that even Educational Technologists struggle to accomplish! Given limited resources as well as the pace of change, it’s very difficult, if not impossible to achieve such a feat. This is why I think TEAM-based content creation and delivery will be the predominant setup in the future.

Learning Ecosystems

Math professors laud 3D printing’s classroom potential [Matisons]

5 keys to flipped learning success [Pierce]

Inside Higher Ed’s 2015 Survey of Chief Academic Officers [Jaschik & Lederman]

Making Assessment Work: Lessons from the University of Pittsburgh [Kurzweil]

Great colleges to work for 2014 [chronicle.com]

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