Practice Teaching & Technology Commons

 

Practice Teaching & Technology Commons Summarizing What the Practice Teaching and Technology Center is All About The Idea Behind the Practice Teaching and Technology Center How the Layout/Space of the Center is Helpful Critical Features-- Factors Necessary for Success Staffing Coalition of Potential Partners Examples at Other Universities Research Questions Possible Services, Programs, & Events Faculty Development Goals Human and Infrastructure Resources

 

Summarizing What the Practice Teaching and Technology Center is All About

• The Center is a place where faculty and professional staff at Illinois can develop educational technologies for the classroom and the web in a fully supportive environment, with the aid of staff from CITES Educational Technologies and Classroom Technologies. The goal of the Center is to facilitate the development of best practices and models that integrate traditional media, emerging web technologies, and classroom technologies into cohesive and practical applications suitable for widespread adoption.

 

• Rooms 182A and 182B will be set up as studios for recording instructional presentations. Room 182 will have workstations set up for receiving the audio and video from the studios. Instructors will receive hands-on training from EdTech and ClassTech staff in editing with industry standard applications. A reception area will also allow for incoming teachers to sit and work in a comfortable atmosphere. It will also serve as a demonstration area for new and emerging technologies.

• Room 183 will be a classroom practice facility, allowing faculty to use their tools and content in a space that closely approximates an ITS classroom. Again with EdTech and ClassTech assistance, faculty will have the opportunity to try out innovative and creative uses of technology.

 

• The Center will partner with campus units such as ATLAS and the Center for Teaching Excellence to assist faculty in designing projects. Some of the projects that might be implemented would address such questions as how can multimedia and emerging technologies facilitate moving traditional classes into a blended or hybrid format? What are the best uses of emerging technologies for capturing lectures? What are the effects of using podcasts? Hi-tech student presentations? Interactive games?

 

• Some of the resources that would be needed consist of a staff presence between 8 am and 5:00 pm Monday thru Friday, as well as some evening hours and weekends; digital video cameras; digital still cameras; tablet PCs; video and audio editing software and equipment; portable audio and video capture equipment; studio equipment resources such as soundproofing, lighting, and microphones; an inexpensive synthesizer for simple sound effects and music cues; couches, chairs and tables for a comfortable and inviting reception and work area; an espresso machine, and a small browsing/borrowing library of edtech books and magazines.

 

 

The Idea Behind the Practice Teaching and Technology Center

• The Center is a proving grounds where professional staff and faculty at Illinois can work informally in pilot partnerships that explore uses of educational technologies in the classroom and on the web. Little has been done on this campus in trying to develop practices and models that integrate and wisely exploit traditional media (photography, video, audio production), emerging web technologies (blogs, wikis, RSS, podcasting) and classroom technologies (projection & playback, class polling systems) into cohesive and practical applications suitable for widespread adoption across the disciplines.

 

• Collaborations with other support groups would also be encouraged, and joint seminars and workshops could be offered. Media experts from places like ATLAS, OET in Education, the Viz Lab, as well as pedagogy and evaluation experts from such offices as the Center for Teaching Excellence could assist.

 

How the Layout/Space of the Center is Helpful

• A significant piece of the Center is a classroom practice facility where instructors can get experience in good teaching practices with all the technological tools at their disposal. There will be a mobile ITS cabinet with an umbilical cable that can be plugged in at several locations in the room. Wall interfaces where the cabinet could plug in would be located at the north and south ends of the room, to allow for several possible room configurations. This will allow instructors to practice teaching with standard equipment in the company of professional staff and without the pressures of a live classroom filled with students. In this environment faculty will not only learn the proper, basic procedures for using the equipment, but can also have the space, time, and support to test and try innovative and more creative uses of educational technology in the classroom.

 

• The advantage of a mobile podium or cabinet is that it would allow ClassTech to experiment with various cabinet designs and prototypes, and to gather feedback from instructors. A mobile cabinet would also allow equipment upgrades and modifications to be made less expensively.

 

The chairs and tables in this area will be movable, allowing for the space to be used in a multitude of ways. Either a lecture-style format with chairs in rows, a training format with chairs in front of tables, or a more collaborative format with tables pushed together for group or team work. The facility could not only be used for instructor practice sessions, but also a/v training workshops, EdTech brownbags, Faculty Summer Institutes, mini Product Showcases, and other forms of training and dissemination.

 

• Two small spaces, 182A and 182B, would be set up as media capture studios, and will be sound-proofed and modified for audio and camera work. Curtains would be installed, movable lighting, cameras on tripods, and microphones on stands would also be present in the room. When not used for capturing content, the studios could also be reserved for private one-on-one consultation.

 

• Connected to the classroom practice facility would be a demonstration space for emerging technologies demonstrations. CITES Classroom Technologies and CITES Educational Technologies often receive hardware and software from vendors to test for days or weeks at a time. The demonstration area would be a secure area where instructors can get a sense of the look and feel of these new devices. Audio and video from the media capture studios will be routed to workstations in the demonstration space, where instructors can learn editing techniques with applications such as Premiere, Final Cut Pro, Serious Magic, etc. Over-the-shoulder training could take place in this area and the studios could also be reserved for private one-on-one consultation.

 

• The space would also serve as a reception area and collaborative work space for incoming faculty. EdTech and ClassTech staff monitors would be present to work with instructors.

 

• Down the hall, Armory rooms 172 and 173 would become office space for the ClassTech classroom support group who support faculty, along with EdTech staff rotating in to offer support in the Innovations Center. These ClassTech staff would serve the dual role of supporting the needs of the Innovations Center and the campus smart classrooms as a whole.

 

• Many of the CIC campuses already have similar services offered to their faculty and teaching assistants. With the increasing number of smart classrooms as a result of the classroom improvement initiative, the number of instructors taking advantage of these technologies is increasing as well. CITES needs to inhance the exposure of its support services in this important area. Workshops and seminars would take place on a regular basis in these areas, covering topics such as podcasting, audience response systems, streaming video, and other areas of interest.

 

Critical Features-- Factors Necessary for Success

• The facility must have multiple rooms for one-on-one work, editing and recording, and practice teaching. One large room will not work.
• An experienced, professional staff needs to be present and available at all times when the doors are open. A student-staffed facility will not get the attention or respect that the Lab requires. The ClassTech coordinators need to be housed inside or nearby.
• The location needs to be convenient and easy-to-find. An office hidden away will not be frequented by faculty.
• It needs to be an inviting location. Old furniture, cast-off or hand-me-down computers, stained carpeting, will turn away instructors rather than welcome them. Furniture should be flexible and movable to accomodate the multitude of ways the facility will be used.

 

Staffing

• The Center will be open from 9 am to 5 pm Monday through Friday, and at least one staffperson from ClassTech or EdTech would be present at that time, in the demonstration area, ready to receive walk-in clients or meet with people on a scheduled basis. A graduate student would provide evening support to 9 pm during several week nights as well as during some hours during the weekend. Support needs to be available during times when faculty and teaching assistants can best make use of the available equipment for extended periods of time.

 

• The Practice Teaching and Technology Center would also provide a central point from which to develop undergraduate and graduate student assistants who could help faculty with technical presentations. It can be very difficult to teach in a media-heavy classroom and attend to the teaching, student responses, and the managing and juggling of the technical equipment. Much in the spirit of the audio-visual assistants who used to help with high school classes, our campus could use a pool of knowledgeable and trained student assistants or Technology Presentation Assistants, who, being well versed in smart classrooms, online teaching systems, presenter tips and tricks, and possessing discipline-specific interests and basic knowledge could be of great help in assisting faculty with technology presentations. Technology Presentation Assistants could serve as on-call support staff who can help faculty with one-time media-intensive presentations, over the course of a week, or for very large enrollment sessions requiring support. An extension of the model would involve the Technology Presentation Assistants visiting classrooms in order to teach the undergraduates and Teaching Assistants of that class how they could assist in conducting the class.

 

• If demand is expected to be high during critical periods (prior to the start of semesters), additional ClassTech and EdTech staff would need to make themselves available.

 

• Hiring an additional CAIS or Coordinator should be considered. This person would be the lead in ensuring a workable environment at the Center, that it is comfortable and inviting, would manage the schedule of events and staff monitors, as well as assist in marketing strategies to raise the level of exposure of the Center.

 

Coalition of Potential Partners

There are a number of groups on campus who support instructional technologies as their mission. It would be beneficial for this collective and to the campus to have a physical space where meetings could take place, seminars and workshops could be co-sponsored, and could also serve as a center for this collaborative work.

• Library (Learning Commons)
• GSLIS
• OET, College of Education
• ATLAS, College of LAS
• ITCS, College of ACES
• Global Studies Initiative
• Writing With Video (Fine Arts; Writing Studies)
• Visualization Lab
• Department of Computer Science
• NCSA: Center for Computing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Science
• UIUC Educational Media group, or EdMedia
• Illini Media Center/Apple Store

 

Examples at Other Universities

• All the other Big Ten universities have a "media center" for assisting faculty with developing digital instructional media. Some of these support students as well.
• These are often walk-in centers where one-on-one assistance is provided for free.
• Several universities have classrooms dedicated for technology training. Michigan State and Iowa have just completed theirs this fall. These rooms are not labs, but mimic regular smart classrooms. They are physically located within or nearby the technology support/assistance office and can be freely scheduled by the group.
• Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Purdue and other CIC institutions are also providing grants and scholarships to faculty for instructional technology training and professional development.
• These are sometimes collaborative efforts between the libraries and the technology support groups.
• These other centers sponsor events such as Intro to Final Cut Pro, Intro to Macromedia Flash, Intro to the Access Grid, Intro to Use of Motion Capture Software, How Faculty Like to Learn, A Sampling of Educational Technology, PowerPoint: Beyond the Basics, The Use of Digital Camera/Digital Video Equipment in Teaching, and more.
• We have visited nearly all of these centers:
• Indiana University http://www.indiana.edu/~tltl/
• University of Iowa http://at.its.uiowa.edu/
• University of Michigan http://www.lib.umich.edu/exploratory/about.html
• Michigan State University http://www.msu.edu/unit/imc/
• University of Minnesota http://dmc.umn.edu/
• Northwestern University http://www.it.northwestern.edu/about/departments/at/index.html
• Ohio State University http://digitalunion.osu.edu/ http://oit.osu.edu/
• Penn State University http://tlt.its.psu.edu/
• Purdue University http://www.itap.purdue.edu/learning/
• University of Wisconsin http://www.doit.wisc.edu/new_media_centers/

 

Research Questions

• Can multimedia and emerging technologies facilitate traditional courses that move toward a model of reduced face-to-face class time? Can hybrid courses equal or improve on the course work and learning typical of the 3- and 2-per-week f2f meeting model?
• What are the best uses of multimedia and emerging technologies for capturing the live lecture for online playback?
• What are the best uses of multimedia and emerging technologies for non-lecture forms of teaching and learning (3 minute movies or podcasts; meta comments from instructors; student presentations or summaries; interactive games; etc.)?

 

Possible Services, Programs, & Events

Definite	Likely	Possible
Smart Classroom Orientations	lecture recording/taping	summer tech retreats for teaching academies
Educational technology brown bag sessions	showcase of faculty projects	faculty-initiated student presentation practice facility
Media capture	usability testing	IT Minor for Grads/Undergrads
podcasting studio		IT Certificate for Faculty
hardware/software vendor demonstrations
Educational DVDs
Streaming media
campus tech training sessions
campus tech conferences & events site
Video conferencing

 

 

 

 

Faculty Development Goals

• Provide Access to real Smart Classroom for practice, testing, experimentation, including mock run-throughs which CITES staff can assist with
• Provide Access to Emerging Technologies (podcasting, RSS)
• Provide a sampling of consumer- and professional-grade hardware and software that faculty might need for occasional use or ultimately purchase on their own if they could take a "test drive" or do some limited production work that was successful
• Create a space where CITES staff can work closely with faculty before, during, and after production of learning materials

 

Human and Infrastructure Resources

• Podcast Factory
• Staff presence from 9 am to 5 pm Monday thru Friday, plus evenings and weekends
• video cameras
• digital still cameras
• tablet PCs
• video and audio editing
• portable audio and video capture equipment
• simple blue/green screen effects
• comfy couches
• espresso machine
• small browsing/borrowing library of edtech books and magazines
• inexpensive synthesizer for simple sound effects and music cues