Faculty

Technology and Learning

The Faculty Connection
This Web site is designed to assist faculty of post-secondary institutions in understanding the issues, examples and discussion topics associated with using emerging technologies in teaching and learning. Using this educational resource, faculty are encouraged to travel the web at a comfortable pace to identify where courses are offered over the Internet, how technology can be used in the classroom, and to discuss issues that will affect them in the future.

Diversity in the Classroom: Bridging Difference and Distance Through Computer-Mediated Communication
Leslie Harris, Instructional Technology Facilitator, SUNY-Plattsburgh
In this article, Leslie Harris discusses the ways in which computer-mediated communication (CMC) helps promote the study of diversity at colleges and universities within the U.S. He describes an English Composition class on Families Across Cultures and shows how technology can be used to to pair racially homogeneous classes with more diverse classes at other institutions, thus bringing diverse exchanges into seemingly "homogenous" classrooms.

Enhancements: How Using Technology Changes What Faculty Do - A Collection of Articles by Indiana Higher Education Faculty
In 1998 the Indiana Higher Education Telecommunication System (IHETS), a state-supported consortium for shared networking and distance education coordination, published a collection of twenty-four papers by faculty at Indiana instutions. The authors, who incorporate a variety of technologies into their work as instructors, are& responding to the question asked in 1997 by the Faculty Development Committee of the Indiana Partnership for Statewide Education: "Using Technology to Enhance Learning: How Does It Change What Faculty Do?" These papers, selected by a peer-review process, are organized both by the specific technology adressed and by the faculty author/institution. Increasingly, the boundaries between distance education and on-campus education are blurring as the use of mediating technologies becomes more common in classes taught on campus. This new "distributed education" requires that faculty rethink their understanding of teaching and learning.

MERLOT - Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching
MERLOT, Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching, allows visitors to locate learning materials within their disciplines and colleagues who share their discipline/interests. The Web site offers a guide to online teaching materials that systematically rates academic sites on the World Wide Web and allows users to add their own comments. Reviewers in various academic disciplines evaluate and rate sites as well as giving detailed reports about each site. Conceived in 1999 as a collaboration among the California State University System, the University System of Georgia, the University of North Carolina system, the Oklahoma State Regents, and the State Higher Education Executive Officers, MERLOT is recruiting other institutions to participate.

New Media Classroom
The New Media Classroom Resources are a combination of course outlines, classroom activities, skill-building tools, and other practical electronic learning guides to assist with the use of new media resources in humanities education. Resources such as online syllabi, student projects, classroom activities, and a list of Web Sites for the Humanities Classroom used by educators in ASHP's teaching with technology faculty development programs are provided. The course outlines and guides have been used by teachers in the New Media Classroom program, which is being established by The American Social History Project/Center for Media & Learning (ASHP/CML) at the City University of New York, in collaboration with the American Studies Association's Crossroads Project.

The NODE Learning Technologies Network
Based in Ontario, Canada, The NODE is a nonprofit center that provides colleges and universities with resources and information on educational computing, as well as offering an institutional consulting service focusing on areas such as technology assessment, Web site design, and programmatic research. The network also maintains an online database of materials on information technology and runs electronic discussion groups for faculty and administrators.

Scott Kerlin's Educational Research Directory
This educational research room contains K-12 and postsecondary educational research and planning resources. These links help instructors as well as researchers and scholars to discover new and effective methods of utilizing instructional technology in classroom work, curriculum development, and advanced research. The Web site was developed by Scott Kerlin, who utilizes the unique features of the Internet as a resource for online research and communication to enhance teaching and learning.

Teaching Centers, Instructional Technology, and Course Development
Iola Peed-Neal
Published in the online journal The Technology Source (September 1998), this article explains how instructional consultants work with faculty on course design and how the process of course development can be affected by technological concerns. Using the teaching and learning center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a basis, Iola Peed-Neal outlines a generic model for course development, discusses the issues raised by technology at each stage of the process, and suggests steps to address such concerns as course framework, teaching environments, teaching strategies, teaching tools, producing course materials, and evaluation.

The Technology Source
The Technology Source is a free, peer-reviewed, bimonthly periodical that provides thoughtful, illuminating articles to assist educators as they face the challenge of integrating information technology tools into teaching and into managing educational organizations. Produced and edited by James L. Morrison, The Technology Source began in 1997 as a project of Microsoft and UNC-Chapel Hill; in July 1998, it moved to the Horizon web site, where it is sponsored by SCT, Microsoft, Compaq and Smart Force. Sections include Vison; Faculty and Staff Development; Virtual University; Spotlight Site; Tools; Commentary; Case Studies, and Critical Reading.

Common-place
Common-place is new literary Web site designed for people to explore and exchange ideas about early American history and culture. Identified as "a bit friendlier than a scholarly journal, a bit more scholarly than a popular magazine," Common-place involves scholars, museum curators, teachers, hobbyists, and others interested in American history before 1900. The Web site provides free subscription to its essays, reviews, news commentary, and online discussion board. Founded and edited by Jill Lepore (Boston University) and Jane Kamensky (Brandeis University), Common-place is funded by the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA, and the Gilder Lehrman Institute in New York.

The Gateway to Educational Materials
Sponsored by the the U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education (NLE), The Gateway to Educational Materials is a special project of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information & Technology. The NLE and the U.S. Department of Education have created this database of Internet-based educational materials in order to provide educators with quick and easy access to their growing consortium of institutions' collections of educational resources such as lesson plans, activities, and curriculum units.

H-WORLD
H-WORLD, a member of the H-Net Humanities & Social Sciences OnLine initiative, facilitates discussion of research and teaching in world history through its discussion list and other resources, including descriptions of undergraduate, graduate and teacher-training programs emphasizing world history; bibliographies, syllabi, and other teaching materials that provide support for teaching at high school, university, and graduate school levels; and research resources such as notes on current research and links to internet resources in world history at other sites.

History Matters
A project of the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning of the City University of New York and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, History Matters assists social studies and history teachers at high schools and colleges around the world by providing a non-commercial starting point for exploring the Web and offering an array of teaching resources that are grounded in the latest scholarship. Resources include an annotated guide to the most useful Web sites for U.S. history and social studies teachers, an annotated collection of syllabi, primary sources, texts, and links to American History. This site also houses an archive of twenty-five online dialogues with leading historians and teachers about the teaching of major topics in U.S. history.

Teaching Goals Inventory (TGI) Online
The Center for Teaching at the University of Iowa has created this self-assessment survey online to help faculty members assess their instructional goals. Instructors rate fifty-two goals of teaching and receive a score report that contains comparative scores from large samples. The purpose of the inventory is to help college teachers become more aware of what they want to accomplish in individual courses; to help faculty locate Classroom Assessment Techniques they can adapt and use to assess how well they are achieving their teaching and learning goals; and to provide a starting point for discussion of teaching and learning goals among colleagues. The TGI is useful for college and university teachers who are developing a new course, revising a course, writing or re-writing their philosophy of teaching, or participating in a curriculum review.

AAC&U offers these resources only as possible models of interest and has not submitted each of them to any substantial peer or quality review. If you have questions about any particular resource, please contact the institution sponsoring it directly.