Crosstalk - a Forum for Technology, Teaching and Learning

 

(Article in the MIT Faculty Newsletter)

M. S. Vijay Kumar

Director of Academic Computing

 

Are there signs of intelligent life on the internet? Is a picture really worth the thousand words ? What do you do after you build it and they come?

 

Questions such as these have been the concern of those promoting and practicing the use of information technology for different educational ends. While some of these questions may have been answered or even become irrelevant at MIT, a range of issues around the technology-pedagogy connection are of increasing interest to faculty, given the ever expanding scope of applications that they are undertaking.

 

Animations for understanding concepts in electromagnetism...... a WWW-based interactive geology tutor....... hypermedia environments for foreign language learning...... collaborative design in the studio of the future for Architecture.....the landscape of educational technology applications at MIT is rich - numerous initiatives that are varied in terms of their scope, specific technology employed, the nature of the application as well as the pedagogical approaches and techniques adopted. They all have the potential to transform the content, curricula and even the clientele for MIT education.

(See http://web.mit.edu/acs/www/acaduses2.html for some educational uses of IT at MIT).

 

These projects hint at and highlight several positive transformations that can be enabled through IT use in education, including the following two broad attributes:

 

 

  1. Proximity - between the learner and materials, learner and instructor, students and their peers, education and the work-place, novices and experts. Increased proximity is illustrated by access to discussion lists and databases formerly available only to professionals, simulations of reality that are as compelling as reality, "visiting" foreign countries as well as other opportunities created by the web and video-conferencing.

     

  2. Transparency - animations, modeling and simulations enable a glass-box approach to understanding complex physical phenomena; the ability to play experimental games makes a rethinking of traditional methods of hypothesis testing possible; collaboration with peers, interactions with experts and the ability to access current ( almost real-time) data and primary resource materials foreground the problem-solving process in research and industry.

     

Embedded in these value-adding opportunities are also several interesting, sometimes challenging and often value-laden issues encountered by faculty using technology to teach ( as well as students using information technology for learning). These issues revolve around:

 

 

Conversations with faculty in the course of my visits departmets over the past few months suggest that there is interest in opportunities to share information on the array of strategies, resources and solutions being employed across departments, as well as on some of the challenges and issues associated with the use of information technology in the educational process at MIT. In short, there is an interest in developing a community of practice around technology, teaching and learning.

 

 

What are we doing about IT?

 

Academic Computing, in collaboration with Undergraduate Education and Student Affairs is in the initial stages of planning a forum on "Technology Teaching and Learning" that could serve an important role in the constructive furthering of the Institute's educational technology agenda. The forum which would meet periodically would provide opportunities for: (1) examining and articulating the role of information technology in teaching; (2) identifying aggregated technology needs and exploring the synergy of solutions. It would facilitate the growth of this community of practice.

 

Some questions that this proposed forum would help sharpen and address include:

  • What is different in the approaches ( technology and pedagogy) adopted in different courses? What is common?

  • Are there ideas that have potential applicability elsewhere, other than the originally intended domain?

  • Are there common problems and needs with implications for IS efforts and priorities?

  • Are there opportunities for resource sharing and leveraging?

  • How can technology-based instruction be improved and restructured for improving student learning needs?

  • How can technology be used to bring the excitement of research to the instructional environment?

  • What are the infrastructure enablers for deriving more pedagogical gain from educational technology?

  • How do you measure quality in light of the changes induced by technology in the educational process? (Elswhere in this issue, Prof. John Belcher from the Physics department points to innovations in Physics education to urge greater engagement in processes to assess and understand the educational potential of emerging technology).

  • What is the quality of cyberspace as a learning environment? (The message in the wry joke about the WWW which is making the rounds at MIT: "the Web is a Write-Only medium....because there is no time to Read all the stuff on it" is significant.

  • How does technology influence the social relationships of teaching, learning, research?

    The forum will complement efforts that are already underway ( such as those of the Council on Educational Technology) to envision how we might construct new information environments that will include qualities to augment our instructional and scholarly practices.

     

    The forum will feature a mix of strategies:

     

     

    1. Case Presentations, which describe the details of the development and use of information technology components in courses, will help faculty share experiences and perspectives on the use of technology use in the curriculum. Presentations will also emphasize the transformations in content, methods and culture of the classroom. They will address the impact on student learning. Presentations could include departmental as well as project site visits ( field-trips).

       

      The cases will serve as an important resource for faculty in their efforts to integrate technology use in their courses. They will provide important inputs to IS (Academic Computing) on attributes we might wish to include in the ways we design and build information as well as for planning services and resources . (For example,it might be useful to compile directories of software along with their scope of application in various disciplines as well as listings and descriptions of the technologies being used).

       

    2. Presentations and discussions: led by representatives from other institutions on topics and issues central to the use of technology for teaching and research, such as,

       

      • Distributed Learning and Continuous Education
      • Assessment and Evaluation of technology's impact on instruction and learning.

         

    Earlier this year, at the Seminars on Academic Computing in Snowmass Colorado, Peter Lyman, Librarian at UC Berkeley made the following observation in his keynote presentation:

    " ......... in 20 years I have to say..academic computing has always been in crisis and that makes it interesting. It is essential that it remain in crisis because it is one of the places where we can see the evolution of higher education..."

     

    Perhaps the forum on Technology, Teaching and Learning could be one way to fuel this crisis.

     

    We would like to hear about your interest in this activity as well as ideas that will help with its implementation. Please contact Naomi Schmidt, Manager, Planning and Support in Academic Computing (nschmidt@mit.edu), Rosalind Williams, Dean for Undergraduate Education (rhwill@mit.edu) or me (vkumar@mit.edu).


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