I thought today's keynote was interesting, very clear and offered some compelling arguments for teaching with technology that I will definitely be taking back home and using. However, I felt our (meaning NYU's) position in the teaching and learning with technology field is not quite a perfect match with the environment that Diana Laurillard articulated.
Like many US institutions, we are largely a Research university - our instructors (and many of our students) are also researchers. So I felt that the claim that Instructors are wholly unfamiliar with research approaches to teaching and learning slightly jarring. True, they aren't applying ALL those techniques to their teaching, but they are doing some of them. (Post continues below...)
Their goal is to teach their course - they have no investment in any overarching strategy to educate more individuals on a massive scale. (In fact, little initiative exists at the University level for these ideas in the States.) Anything that helps them teach their course is good, anything that throws up barriers to teaching is bad. For them, the initial time investment in learning new tools is a barrier that distracts them from their real work: research.
(If you like, I made a cute diagram for this. Also, apologies to Ethan Ehrenburg who first articulated this.)
Their goals are to get tenure and prestige, and to do that, they need to do research, then publish. Teaching could almost be seen as a chore, something that merely pays the bills. I admit, this is a slightly cynical view, but I think it really helps to articulate why our teachers are risk-adverse when it comes to teaching with technology. When it's 1 AM, they need some that they know will "work" for them.
Our challenge is in convincing instructors/faculty/teachers to actually use the technology tools we provide. I think the angle for us is to help these instructors to be agents of change when it comes to teaching with technology by emphasizing to them that they can get more accomplished with less teaching and prep time by shifting their teaching approach away from lecture and more towards online tools. Diana Laurillard's tool and approach is the perfect way to show instructors exactly how this bears out.
One last thing: I thought it was interesting she referred to the instructors as "lecturers" at the end - isn't the whole point that instructors are much, much more than just lecturers and they need to get away from the reliance on the time-consuming lecture-based approach of teaching?
Comments (2)
Hi Nicola,
Really intersting post - I agree entirely that this is a large part of what is stopping people at research Universities take risks with teaching.
Just FYI, though, 'lecturer' is the standard 'correct' word here in the UK, even if lecturing is not what they're actually doing - we usually translate to 'instructor' when talking to US colleagues, but we would never refer to our colleagues as 'instructors' and I think some people would be very upset if they heard this term!
Harriet
Posted by Harriet Truscott | July 2, 2008 11:19 AM
Posted on July 2, 2008 11:19
Thanks for that info, Harriet.
It's funny, we're always careful to say "Instructor" because many classes are taught by Grad Students and Faculty would be horrified if we referred to those Grad Students as "Faculty."
Posted by Nicola | July 2, 2008 11:58 AM
Posted on July 2, 2008 11:58