January 2005 — Features
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Improving Faculty Use of Technology in a Small Campus Community
Spring 2004 Results
As is often the case in voluntary professional development programs, a small core of faculty attended the workshops regularly, while many others only attended occasionally. The most successful workshop was on using Inspiration Software, which was attended by more faculty members than any of the other workshops. Within two weeks of the workshop, four faculty members told me they had since used the software in their classes or were going to in the next week or two. Overall, the skills workshops were better attended than the curriculum-focused ones. However, questions and discussions in the curriculum-based workshops focused on issues and problems in implementation more directly at the heart of my efforts.
During the semester, several faculty members asked me for individual help. Their requests included assistance with basic skills, curriculum questions, as well as being a guest lecturer in one class where I also assisted a student group in creating their own professional Web page. Since the grant offered a $3,000 minigrant last semester for a major project integrating student-centered technology, I had hoped that faculty would be interested in more intensive help in preparing their proposals. Ultimately, I did give some assistance to the only two faculty members who applied for the grant.
I believe my work had a generally positive impact on the faculty members who participated, as feedback from my work was encouraging. A number of faculty attended many of the workshops, while several more attended more than one. However, informal comments indicate that some faculty have already started to expand their use of technology in the classroom.
Future Plans
Based on my experiences and participant feedback, we made some modifications to the approach I was taking for the fall 2004 semester. Instead of individual workshops, fall workshops were conducted in series of three to four per topic. This allowed ample time to focus on basic and advanced skills with the hardware and software tools, while also providing plenty of time to work on curriculum. Participants will leave each series with projects they have created, as well as with the curriculum to use the technology for student-centered purposes. Workshop series are planned for application software, digital video, as well as for Web pages and projects.
In addition, I will be working weekly with the winner of the minigrant to help implement her plan. So far, this has involved basic help in Web page creation and Web site design. We have begun discussing ways of integrating technology into her curriculum in more student-centered ways. I also intend to continue working with the other faculty member who submitted a grant proposal so that his next proposal will have a better chance of being accepted. I believe continuing the dual approach to faculty development in technology with the modifications just described will continue to build the faculty skills in technology. Hopefully, it will also lead to faculty integrating more student-centered uses of technology into their curricula.
