Reflections on CI335 (CTER2)

Fall 1999

Amy Fahey

The CI335 Course, Computer-Assisted Instruction, has been a very helpful introduction to the use of technology in education and instruction.  I felt like I was able to effectively convert the knowledge that I learned in the course and in the research for various assignments to what I am doing in my job, which was an important goal for me   and one that is necessary for our College.   Through CTER, I became much more aware of resources that are available to technical support personnel, teachers, and students, and was very impressed by the level of interest in the topic of technology in education -- at every level of instruction.  The internet resources, discussions, projects, and knowledge bases are phenomenal.  I also felt a lot of kinship with others in terms of my goal of trying to find ways to support faculty, because one of the biggest issues for non-teaching support personnel is the problem or perspective.  We are trying to understand what will assist teachers and faculty, in some cases without really having taught a course ourselves (in many cases) or without understanding the teaching process itself or the pedagogical issues.  Understanding the technology alone is not enough, explaining it adequately will not create the best result, and I truly believe that it the best solution is for technical personnel who have this responsibility is to have the sort of background knowledge provided in a program like CTER. 

 The amount of interest being shown in instructional technology and educational technology issues is staggering and there are many technologies that I would like to continue to explore.  I know now that others are tackling some of the same issues that I have struggled with in assisting faculty.  While I have heard some positive comments about our final project already, I will be very interested to continue to get more feedback from the teachers in this course on whether or not they feel the website we created for our final project appeals to them as instructors.  They are faced with some of these same issues.  I’d like to know if the self-directed learning approach is appropriate.  An interesting future research project would be to test whether classroom instruction on these types of topics works better than self-directed learning, simply because of the steep learning curve (for some) and the positive learning environment created by having dedicated time away from the job.  In terms of other technologies that I would like to explore, most immediately I would like to spend more time learning about dynamic web pages and scripting.   While static content still prevails on most websites, the trend is toward dynamic content and it is and will continue to be an important component of web-based distance education courses.  I also would like to learn more about the marketing of courses for distance education and some of the technical issues surrounding the real-life implementation of a distance-learning project.  During this fall, I learned about digitizing video (and found it was much simpler than I had assumed) but I would like to learn more about delivering audio over the Internet and how to most efficiently make the use of bandwidth. 

In the assignment about accessibility, I realized that I need to educate myself about creating accessible webpages and code.   As an information technology professional, the topic (sadly) rarely shows up on the agenda at conferences.  I attended a conference this fall in Indiana which was related to web development efforts of colleges and universities; accessibility was not listed as a primary topic of any of the seminars or workshops.  I attended a seminar where the college had established a wonderful web-support system for their website and had addressed issues of marketing and outreach.  They really had done a wonderful job of organizing it and making an effective structure that was both beneficial to students (who maintained the site) and the college itself.  Unfortunately, they hadn’t thought about accessibility issues (I asked).  I think the absence of this issue at technical conferences (both for techies and teachers) sends a very loud message to technical professionals and faculty.   I was also impressed during our discussions on WebBoard and during an online chat, that more education needs to be done on the topic with teachers.  We all have a lot to learn!  Accessibility is once a straightforward issue (it’s obvious we need to do it, it must be a priority for moral and legal reasons) and a complex one (how do we take existing, inadequate tools and inadequate resources and make them fit this model, and how do we do it with technology that is emerging and changing constantly).   Funding for research in this area is desperately needed, and an emphasis on its importance is still being sought, even among institutions and schools that consider themselves to be accessible and open to the issue.  This is a major issue for the future, and I believe it will continue to emerge as a social factor and I hope a change factor when we talk about and propose the use of technologies in education.  It is something that CTER should (and does) put an emphasis because all teachers and technology directors will need to address it. 

I tried to think about what I learned about curriculum and the impact of technology on teaching, and I thought at first that I hadn’t learned much, primarily since I don’t “teach” in a formal setting or in a formalized way.  But in a sense, I do teach technology to faculty and other staff.  In the final analysis, our project was about curriculum and impact of technology because as a group of teachers (our own group members) we worked to provide resources for a group of students (who were in this case the faculty we were trying to serve).  In the final project we developed a set of courses or a curriculum which we hope addressed their needs.  The impact of technology on teaching is also what the project was about, because not only did we try to teach technology but we were also trying to address some of the questions, and planning for different situations that would emerge from the learning process, and trying to anticipate the impact the use of the technology has on the instructor and students.  I’m particularly interested in addressing these other issues – not just the teaching of the technology and the creation of the end-product itself -- because I sense that while we are developing courses by the bushel at the colleges and universities, not enough attention is being paid to whether or not the course that was traditionally taught in the classroom translates well to web-based instruction or what such a transition does to enhances students’ learning.  I can’t speak to this in primary education but I suspect it is an issue as well.  Are we creating courses for the right reasons, or simply to compete and do what everyone else does?  Are we copying what some other institution does and should that drive the process?  In what ways can we do things better than others?  I think these questions need to be asked as we move down the road toward the virtual university in the next 3-5 years.  Evaluation is another one of these issues that overlaps; how do we evaluate what we’re doing and by what standards?  When it is new technology and no one has done this type of thing before, who says if it is good or effective?  By what measure?   This is an area I think CTER can continue to educate me on. 

Policy (and ethics) are issues that I didn’t explore fully in this course, but I’m sure a very interesting course or project could be devoted to them.  As new technologies are integrated into a curriculum, the need grows to evaluate them and create policy (and in some cases implement that policy).  What I tended to notice  (particularly at the web conference that I attended and discussed emerging projects with teachers) is that some of the early adopters have sort of thrown caution to the wind in terms of their use of student data and on questions of accessibility and equal access.  Often this is so they can be the first one to do something or because they simply haven’t thought about these issues.  I wonder about FERPA and other privacy protection mechanisms, income differences (can the student afford a computer or not), differences in resource/funding levels between districts, etc. and how school districts, colleges and universities should deal with these types of questions.  I wish we had more time to explore this but I’m sure we will in the future. 

On communication tools -- I appreciated having WebBoard as a resource for this class, and I think it was a very valuable tool for several reasons.  Despite the distance barrier, I was able to interact with the other students and the instructor more extensively than I have in many on-campus courses.  I would like to find out if we can work towards obtaining an audio-enhanced (two-way) version of WebBoard or another conferencing product for CTER which operates over the Internet, and if and how that would be feasible given people’s varying ways and speeds of connection to the Internet.  I think this would be helpful because despite the frequent contacts with my classmates and project team on WebBoard, there are some times that a conversation makes more sense (and is more efficient) if you can hear the other person rather than just reading what they’re saying.  A lot is lost in translation when you are typing it rather than saying it.  Even so, as I had mentioned in my project summary, I really have enjoyed the CTER program so far and feel it is beneficial in my job.  I enjoyed interacting with my classmates and in particular my teammates on the project and am looking forward to next semester.