Another potential issue is the fact that using technology to help students LEARN versus TEACHING a course online are two very different things, but they are mostly related to your view of what education is (Re. Sage on the stage vs. Guide on the side). Those are values and attitudes towards tech and education that I have built over years of looking at this. And now I’m trying to fast-forward this to my instructors… No matter it doesn’t work!

They have to experience it iteratively, just like I did, to get it. They have to spend the time to engage in discussions, but since it’s not a part of their research field, it’s either like pulling teeth or feeling like they could make a better use of their limited time. Anyway, enough whinning.

As we continue to work at implementing the goals of CFF at the secondary level, I think we could increase our effectiveness by using a similar model. The legacy of isolated high school teachers, responsible primarily for only their own classroom has made CFF a true challenge for schools to implement. Innovative teachers are often limited in their ability to affect change because of this isolation.

One of the big tensions here is our need to continue to build and manage University wide projects … we do a big piece of iTunes U, Blogs at Penn State, Adobe Connect, ANGEL, Turn it In, TLA Program, the Symposium, and on and on. That stuff can’t go away, so making time to attack something like this has been difficult. I do think we’ve hit on something that can move our organization forward. I think at the end of the day we are looking for ways to connect and share new experiences … I think it is one of the things you mention — you have to talk to each other, not over or past one another. That is one skill I am looking to develop further within my part of the organization. Thanks for the thoughts and for the help thinking about this!

I think you have hit on something with the faculty fellows that has been largely missing from this space. Conversation. What is powerful is getting faculty working with you and thinking together about solving mutual problems that both of you can bring expertise to bear on. What typically happens (with respect to Mathieu and Allan) is that folks on the technology end want to educate faculty about the tools so they can take advantage of them in their teaching. I think showing the faculty the blogging platform and having them say “I want to do that in my class” is not the reaction that you are looking for. The conversation that you want to have is around making the students educational experience better – something that both you and the faculty member have a vested interest in. From that conversation both of you can bring things to the table and you develop a wonderful synergy. That is what your work with Carla represents.

The reason it is rare is that usually when representatives of the two groups come together they are in their camps and see the other group not as colleagues looking at the same problems from different perspectives, but as obstacles to solving the problem. The tech folks gnash their teeth about faculty that won’t innovate with the technology or won’t learn the affordances of the technology so they can use them. The faculty gnash their teeth about the technology folks not being willing to support them or complain that they don’t have time to learn to use the technologies. There is a lot of talking (just barely) past each other.

The successes seem to come in two forms, both rare. First is what you have created in the fellows program. That is a space or project where people with differing expertise come together to solve a mutual problem that lies at the intersection of the partner’s areas of expertise. The other kind is also rare, and that is when the expertise about the technology and the pedagogy are both in one person and they can innovative pedagogically and technologically. One example of this type of rareness is Michael Wesch
.

Looking back at this I should have just made a blog post on this whole thing. I guess I am saying that I admire what you are doing and I think the type of partnerships represented by the faculty fellows should be a central focus of the larger project of innovative pedagogy (or research) through technology. If that is what is possible with a new Center for Academic Computing, then I am all in.

I can’t imagine a compliment better than the one Carla left here: “What has transpired from our work together during the summer has revitalized my teaching and research.” That statement is a great vision of what faculty development should be.