Teaching+and+Learning


 * Teaching & Learning in the Digital Future **


 * 1. Strategic Goal: ** Promote active learning across campus to positively affect student engagement, learning, and retention, with attention to access for all. Bonwell and Eison (1991) identify active learning as learning where an emphasis is placed on students developing skills through engaging activities requiring high order thinking. Students receive more immediate feedback in order to increase their learning. Digital technologies can enable active learning pedagogy.

The pedagogical benefits of active learning in higher education are well noted (Adler, 1982; Bligh, 2000; Bransford, et al., 2000; Chickering and Gamson, 1987; McKeachie, et. al., 1987; Silberman, 1996). There has been a transformation of courses across many disciplines and course levels using digital technologies to implement active learning strategies and examining the positive impact on engagement, learning, and retention. Active learning in blended and online classes is even more pertinent due to the mediated nature of the learning environment.

// Insert mouse over on "Bonwell and Eison (1991)" [start] 1. Students are involved in more than passive listening; // // 2. Students are engaged in activities (e.g., reading, discussing, writing); // // 3. There is less emphasis placed on information transmission and greater emphasis placed on developing student skills; // // 4. There is greater emphasis placed on the exploration of attitudes and values; // // 5. Student motivation is increased (especially for adult learners); // // 6. Students can receive immediate feedback from their instructor; and // // 7. Students are involved in higher order thinking (analysis, synthesis, // // evaluation). [end mouse over] //


 * Actions: **

1. Highlight and promote best practices and model strategies for using digital technologies to enable active learning across campus for all types of courses, e.g., face-to-face, blended and online, including:

a. supporting and encouraging instructors through incentives to develop courses that employ active learning strategies, b. developing campus-wide awareness to promote the incorporation of active learning through the effective use of learning technologies (e.g., campus campaign), c. recognizing the effective use of active learning strategies and technologies in hiring, tenure and promotion processes, and d. promoting effective practices in learning space design to facilitate student-centered, active learning (See EDUCAUSE Quarterly, 2009, UMN Learning Environments Research, 2011).

2. Charge academic units with defining disciplinary criteria and benchmarks for using digital technologies to facilitate active learning, including best practices and assessing student learning, including:

a. developing working groups to evaluate active learning in their own and cognate disciplines, b. promoting both formative and summative course evaluations that emphasize the active learning methods specific to the type of course, e.g., face-to-face only, blended, and online, and c. developing a certificate for graduate students in the use of technology to promote active learning in their own disciplinary areas.

3. Promote pedagogical strategies facilitating active learning through the use of emerging technologies, such as mobile technologies, social networking, collaborative technologies, high fidelity simulations, student-created content, e-texts, and third-party vendor course materials, including:

a. convening working groups to identify active learning pedagogical strategies for use in emerging technologies, b. establishing criteria to evaluate the impact of these technologies, c. piloting the use of the emerging technologies to establish best practices and promote pedagogical models with special attention on the STEM disciplines, d. evaluating the necessary infrastructure (technology, support and facilities) for the use of the identified emerging technologies, and e. enhancing faculty and student opportunities to use mobile devices (e.g., rental program and expanded wireless data packages/discount).

4. Develop a center to investigate emerging technologies on an ongoing basis in the pursuit of research and teaching goals, providing evidence of impact to improve efficiency and effectiveness through data-driven decision making, including:

a. identifying stakeholders (tech developers, ie computer science, engineering, researchers ie qualitative and quantitative, teaching and learning development staff, faculty participants) to evaluate and promote emerging learning technologies, b. establishing leadership in the application and research on emerging technologies in academia, c. promoting a research program on emerging technologies to assist in strategic planning for future technological implementations, providing constant development, and identifying research and opportunities, d. integrating technological leadership into faculty, staff hiring, promotion, merit, and incentives, e. using findings to determine where to allocate resources (budget and time), f. increasing the interdisciplinary opportunity for development, research, and scholarship to benefit teaching and learning, and g. developing national recognition of UWM as an academic leader in using emerging technology.


 * 2. Strategic Goal: ** Develop an instructor (faculty, teaching academic staff, teaching assistants) training and development support plan for the digital future.

To fully benefit from its investment in professional development support for instructors, UWM needs to increase awareness and utilization of emerging technologies and new pedagogies. Centralized support for faculty training and development is offered through the Center for Instruction and Professional Development and through the Learning Technology Center. Further, many schools and colleges provide staff resources to support their instructors. Some of these support systems are not well known throughout the campus, and new technologies could be deployed to provide more effective “just-in-time” support to instructors. This would also encourage instructors to explore emerging technologies to enhance teaching and learning. Finally, faculty training should facilitate access for all instructors and students.


 * Actions: **

1. Develop strategies to increase communication across campus to better support of instructors, including:

a. Developing marketing and advertising plans for existing and new support systems and materials, b. Providing universal design training, tools and support, and c. Determining what new technologies are needed to enhance faculty support and planning for their implementation.

2. Increase the use of digital course materials for teaching and learning through open content web-based systems that are accessible and free to all, including:

a. increasing faculty use of affordable or free web-based course materials, including offering training and a means of sharing knowledge of these free web-based course material repositories, b. developing preferred repositories and systems on campus to provide open access resources for course materials, such as the Desire2Learn (D2L) Learning Object Repository (LOR) and other systems that provide open access and sharing of resources, c. sharing training, tools and support to increase utilization of universal design techniques, and d. developing mechanisms to help students create their own content and contribute to open repositories.

3. Create a virtual teacher center, an online learning environment that would showcase and support pedagogical success at UWM, including:

a. developing a fully accessible online environment for instructors to explore and try new technologies and pedagogical methodologies, b. showcasing innovation, creativity, and best practices with new pedagogical tools, c. providing a how-to area for the use of new technologies and pedagogy, including the use of rich media and universal design strategies, d. offering training and support on emerging technologies (hardware and software), and e. providing these services through streaming videos (with transcripts, captioning, and/or video descriptions), synchronous webinars and chat, and other documentation.


 * 3. Strategic Goal: ** Ensure hardware and software accessibility of learning resources inclusive of all needs.


 * Actions: **

1. Establish campus standards (i.e., web, media, course content, procurement) that meet Section 508 Standards and work toward W3C web standards.

2. Establish campus standards for infrastructure capacity and consistency (technology, wireless network).

3. Develop campus awareness campaign.

a. Develop training and an online test with certification for all teaching staff regarding the campus accessibility standards.

4. Provide incentives for faculty to adapt course materials with universal design in mind by:

a. recognizing leadership in the faculty community for all course materials with innovation and compliance to improve accessibility, and b. creating a system to rank and clearly identify course accessibility (class schedule, class website).


 * 4. Strategic Goal: ** Improve digital access for all students and increase student preparedness to participate in digital learning and discovery at UWM and beyond.

UWM needs to provide incoming students with mechanisms (through the General Education curriculum and coursework in the major) to expand their digital literacy to be effective learners and technologically proficient graduates. All UWM graduates should understand how to learn about and critically use new and emerging digital technologies for creating and engaging effectively with social, academic, civic, business, and research communities, such that UWM becomes known for graduates who have the abilities to be active, creative, critical, and collaborative users of a range of digital technologies.


 * Actions: **

1. Assess technology and skills and provide technology access and skills development for incoming students and at no or low cost, including:

a. developing a placement exercise for incoming students or create and disseminate a survey to determine students’ technical knowledge baseline upon entry to UWM allowing us to prepare training and support materials that best meet the needs of incoming students, b. creating a checklist for high school guidance counselors; distribute at new freshman orientation with further resources/workshops available, c. offering a (summer) information technology bridge program to bring students up to speed, d. developing opportunities such as high school auditors/entire classes as guests in online classes for a week for college readiness and to support high school teachers, and e. exploring avenues of providing alternative access to hardware, software, broadband, and networks at low or no cost for students with greatest need.

2. Enhance students’ ability to be active, creative, critical, and collaborative users of a range of digital technologies in preparation for the digital future by:

a. implementing Essential Learning Outcomes (ELOs) around critical technology literacy, b. promoting adoption of critical technology literacy into general education/integrative learning outcomes, and c. implementing and evaluating class components (or parallel classes) that support integrative learning and independent and networked problem solving across different disciplines/departments/areas develop. (TJ - move to two?)

4. Ensure technological skill, knowledge, and proficiency upon graduation by:

a. creating a more advanced and perpetually updated “discipline by discipline” checklist of tools needed to be successful upon graduation and ensure that all UWM students have access to training and support to learn how to use such technologies (e.g., Using SPSS training), and b. developing a Technology Essentials Checklist social media application that would allow students to compare their technical knowledge with peers in their school or college.


 * 5. ** **Strategic Goal:**Meet the challenge of a digital future by increasing UWM’s capacity to adjust its degree array in response to new trends in scholarship and societal and regional needs. Higher education will be impacted by a more competitive marketplace (for-profit education increase of 9%in 2009), a changing marketplace (globalization, home schooling, charter schooling, and other educational alternatives), and other factors, including disruptive technologies, which have already impacted other marketplaces (newspaper, music, television, and book-publishing industries) influencing student expectations (see [|Katz, 2010]).

In practical terms, this means differentiating UWM from other higher education providers. To the extent that our degree array is current (reflecting UWM’s mission as a research university) and flexible (meeting the needs of today’s busy learners and working adults) we will be prepared for the digital future.

1. Make it easier to develop interdisciplinary degree programs, by:

a. establishing a task force to address administrative and policy hurdles in developing interdisciplinary degrees, such as disincentives arising from tenure and promotion policies, course credit distribution, pricing and revenue structures, course support, and b. charging campus leadership to devise ways to foster an overall campus culture of rewards and responsiveness to new degree opportunities that lie at the intersections of disciplines.

2. Seek out corporate and community input to evaluate how UWM current program offerings map to community, state, national, and international needs.

3. Explore opportunities and address administrative hurdles to teaching niche courses across institutions (e.g. WISE Consortium, see http://www.wiseeducation.org/)

3. Develop more online and blended degrees, so that each school and college has this capacity.

From Don Pardee - Section 2. c. "graduate students in the use "of" technology" is what it should read.

The extensive list of actions are well-supported by the rationale for each of the 5 strategic goals, so I would not change anything. But I'm not sure who will be reading this document; can it start with a shorter, less daunting 'executive summary'? I read with interest the comments of Mark and Bruce about the inattention to new learning space design and agree with all that this issue be put at the forefront of all new building design plans. Since departmental units almost always have a say in the design process, why not simply insist that each unit provide an 'Active Learning (and Accessibility) Impact Statement' as part of classroom design planning?

Ed makes a good point about assessment (especially if it measures progress towards strategic goals of providing or improving service). A time-table for achieving goals was originally intended. Did it get lost?

Gerry

Jacques & group,

I would hope that ITPC with its membership drawn from faculty and technology support personnel and administrators from across campus reflects the sort of diversity you have in mind. I think it would be very shortsighted of the provost not to begin the process of implementing Digital Futures plans through collaboration with ITPC.

One brief observation about the document. The only thing that jumped out of it, and I had a similar reaction to other Futures documents that I've read, is the absence of anything specific about assessment. As Mark noted, there are quite a few very specific action items to be implemented to accomplish each goal. Should we just assume that all of those items really work and will have the intended impact? How many need to be judged successful in order to consider a goal has been accomplished? I'm not sure the Futures exercise really was geared to including assessment criteria/outcomes so I don't see its absence as a problem now but it would become one once plans transfer to execution.

Ed Mabry, Communication

I could not agree with Mark more on the second point about classrooms. I won't be here to support this, so I am going to be a bit more free with my commentary than usual.

Expanding on Mark's point, we have NO ONE at UWM whose primary job is to worry about classroom design from a pedagogical and learning outcomes perspective. My personal observation is that we follow the same formulaic approach time after time as classrooms are modernized. While my staff in classroom support do an admirable job of supporting needs of instructors once the facilities are built, who is representing the current research on learning when new spaces are built?

This is a tremendous opportunity for UWM to get this right. I am willing to assist by linking colleagues at Madison with you, but the basic issue of who is representing faculty needs in classrooms needs some serious attention and represents a tremendous opportunity.

Also related, is that UWM is now diverging down multiple paths related to lecture capture. SOIS and LSBA are already going down separate paths, and there is no discussion campus wide about a strategic approach to managing this. Parts of our community think lecture capture is a bad idea, and parts think it is a local decision to be made. This too represents an opportunity, but again no one is on point for this matter for the institution.

Tone is hard to determine from email, so I need to state I view this as a real opportunity for you to think about more strategic approaches to these important issues. I am not being critical. Good luck, and I will assist as I can from a distance. Bruce.

Bruce Maas Chief Information Officer University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 414-229-2834 (email me or call if you need my mobile contact)

Mark, Your observation about technology in the classrooms is right on in this report. At this time, I'm not sure I will have a computer classroom for business writing sections I teach even though I use an e-book, it's a blended class, and class activities are designed for computer access for students Mariann.

Tanya,

The report summarizes a lot of ideas and has some good concrete suggestions. Two thoughts:

1. The report has 5 goals that feed 20 actions with 45 subpoints. The sheer number of these make it hard to know where to begin and to recognize what should have the highest priority. I raise this point to ask if the group gave any thought to identifying the best initial steps.

2. One thing that I would add is related to classrooms. Much of the report deals with digital teaching (as it should) but I think we should also include the need to provide better classroom spaces that are designed and used for digital-based instruction. Most of ours are set up for projecting images, not for working with digital databases, mixing diverse information sources, or creating digital products. For me, this is a major problem at UWM.

Regards, Mark

Mark T. Harris Acting Dean, School of Freshwater Sciences Great Lakes Research Facility 600 East Greenfield Avenue Milwaukee, WI 53204-2944 Phone: 414-382-1700 FAX: 414 382-1705 Email: mtharris@uwm.edu

Tanya, Thank you for seeking input on this digital futures teaching and learning plan. I am sorry it has taken me some time to read and respond to your inquiry. It's a great document. Here are suggestions for two changes: (1) The quote from EDUCAUSE Professor, Richard Katz, on page five is so powerful. What do you think about moving that quote to page one or to the title page? That quote is the foundation for each point you make in this plan. (2) On page two or three, two of the bullet points use 'etc.' Business writing guidelines dictate to delete 'etc.' or spell out what it means. Just a suggestion that you delete any etc's in this document. Good work! Mariann Maris, Business Wriitng

Tanya, I think this plan is extremely well-written and scholarly. I also think it covers all the bases. I would only add that high-fidelity simulation mannikins and electronic health records are additional technologies we use in the CON and probably in Health Sciences as well. In the health professions these are essential learning technologies that are not mentioned in the plan. Can they be added?

Jo Ann Appleyard, CON

Hi Tanya - This is the point that stops me: 4. Develop a center to investigate emerging technologies on an ongoing basis in the pursuit of research and teaching goals... Personally, I'm not distinguishing this mission from Learning technology ctr;also just from a weariness/cynical standpoint - the answer to every problem isn't a center. Thanks. Theresa Buealieu , UWM lbraries Hi Tanya,

Just an observation. I think I'm a pretty strong supporter of active learning. In various ways I've been practicing it for nearly 40 years. And, I definitely think it should play a role in digital futures planning. But, I wonder, just how much of goals 1 & 2 are active learning qua active learning versus the role of digital technologies in enabling and implementing active learning.

I sort of got the impression from what I read that it came out more the former than the latter in this document. It was all well expressed and perfectly grounded. But, it just came out--to me--as seeming as though it lost its way and drifted too much into justifying active learning. The other goal statements didn't appear to have this proportionality problem and yet did a very nice job of laying out a digital implementation plan consistent with active learning objectives.

Ed