Instructional Technology

At this point, people removed from academia, or perhaps even some of those not so removed, may be asking themselves, why?  Why is there a special position called an Instructional Technologist?  It’s not a bad question, and even if you aren’t asking that, it is sometimes good to think about it anyhow.  Of course, in many ways this is just an expansion of the ‘What I am’ section of the first post.

Ok, for starters, my stated goals are:

1) Assist faculty with technology.  For me, this is primarily technology used in the teaching of the course, and not the technology of every day computing.  See the previous post on differing from a classic IT department.

2) Investigate and explore new technologies.  This is why I sometimes tell people that I play with computers.  To be sure, the goal isn’t to toy around with technology just for technologies sake.  The goal is to keep abreast of what is current and popular, as well as what is unique and esoteric, all with an eye towards pedagogy (can it be of use to teach with).  This tied very much to goal one.  Goal one is not just for existing technology, but also for technology not yet implemented on campus.  If a professor comes to me looking to use technology to meet an objective, I want to be able to point them in the right direction.  Conversely, if I find a technology and I think it has a merited use, I will point faculty at the technology as a way to meet objectives.  Case in point; next semester, it is likely that at least one English course will involve writing assignments in the form of blog posts.  The objective?  To get students to write for an audience, and to consider that audience, rather than just writing for a professor.  To throw out some of the old yardsticks of what writing is (length, format, structure) and to bring the real world back into the ivory tower a little bit.

3) To keep my finger on the pulse of the current generation of students.  This is sometimes the hardest part of the job, because I have to go outside of my own technological choices.  I have accounts on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LiveJournal, FlickR, YouTube, 4 or 5 different IM networks, Google, Yahoo, etc., because these are the neighborhoods of the current generation.  Social Networks are used as frequently as e-mail or the phone for keeping abreast of each others lives.  Your ‘tribe’ is made up of those people in your online world.  Even those who you are close to offline, you are also close to online, for these students.  For those of us of an older generation, but early adopters, this is not so different, nor so difficult to imagine.  For others, it is worlds away.  I still need to explore Second Life, the world of SMS and Smartphones, and more.  Once again, this ties into goal 2 (and by extension into goal 1).  If I can be aware of what the students are into, I can take these tools, or others like them, and reuse them as learning tools.  There are some good articles out there on using Twitter, Second Life, You Tube, and Wikipedia as tools in the classroom.

Now that there’s an understanding of the goals, we can track a little into the territory of ‘why have these goals’. In my next post, I’ll draw in some material I originally referenced elsewhere on the state of the current generation of students.  It should help show the world students and instructors have to live in, and the need to have someone who is responsible for these goals.  It comes down to one statment though: We live in a faster paced world with an ever expanding realm of technology, and it is too much for educators to keep up with while still fulfilling their traditional roles.

How is my job different from a Help Desk?

Because a regular Help Desk is concerned with the operational status of your technology.  Does it work? Do you know how to use it?  My job has elements of that, certainly, but it is simultaneously broader and narrower.  For example, I am the primary administrator for the Blackboard course management system.  This means I am concerned over whether or not it is working, and will help teach you how to use it.  But I will also create new resources for it, manage student and instructor enrollments, create backups, hold workshops, and critically examine what we do with it, why, and how can we go beyond.  I will not only answer the questions of Does it work, and Can you use it, but I will also be sure to understand it and to understand How to use it effectively.  I will also trawl the technological world looking for new things to pick up and use, like the site this blog is on, Edublogs.  I am responsible for more than just the tools we have today, but also to find new tools for tomorrow.  By understanding the needs of instruction, and not just the needs of instructors, I can move beyond making sure the tools are working, and into the realm of helping pick which tool to use to achieve the desired task.  To use a crude analogy, Technical Support can tell you how to use a screwdriver, and make sure that the screwdriver works.  They may even go so far as to tell you that you need a Phillips head or a flat head screwdriver.  I will also know about Torx and square head.  I can also tell you that what you really need for keeping those papers together is a stapler, not a screw and a screwdriver.

This is not to belittle Technical Support.  My own background is that of many years of Technical Support.  Unfortunately, support operations are the lowest rung on the IT totem pole, despite often having the most interations with the customers.  They are also often limited to working with the tools in the toolbox, so may not be at the luxury of stepping back and looking at what you are trying to do, and can only see what you are trying to do it with.

Hi.  My name is Chad, and I’m the Instructional Technologist at Regis College.

I’ve been here for a little over six months now, and I’d like to use this blog to share news, ideas, and information in the world of Instructional Technology.  I’ll also talk about what I and my colleagues in Academic Computing are up to, initiatives we’re taking or would like to take, ways you can improve your classroom with technology, et cetera.

What’s an Instructional Technologist?  Well, we straddle the divide between teaching and technology.  It means we keep our fingers on the pulse of the digital world, and try to feel out which parts of this new digital revolution can be used as tools to help in the practice of pedagogy, and to make better instructors, better students, and better learners.

One of the prime motivators for learning is intellectual curiosity.  The Cognitive Apprenticeship model espoused by Van B. Weigel in the book “Deep Learning for a Digital Age”, says, to summarize, that intellectual curiosity is a tool, the using of which is learned by being around others who are intellectually curious.  This might be obvious, or it may be a revelation for you.  So part of my goal is to be intellectually curious about new technologies, and about technologies that may already be embraced by the ‘Digital Natives’ (A term made popular by Marc Prensky which simply refers to those who have grown up with the digital world, as our current students have, versus those who have not, including most of their educators).  I hope that by expressing that intellectual curiosity here that it will infect you to be curious as well, and that in turn, together we can explore that curiosity and infect those around us.

Let me know if it’s working.