If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the June/July issue of Innovate magazine at (subscription is free and the articles are well worth the read). Be sure to read the first two articles by Donald Phillip and Sarah Lohnes/Charles Kinzer. Both articles argue the merits (or lack thereof) of assuming that the Net Generation (aka Millennials) is pushing education and educators into a more technology-rich learning environment. Phillip argues that they are, suggesting that

As N-Gen student’s exposure to interactive media changes their perception of how education should proceed, schools will need to move from the former model of classrooms that are analogs of broadcast media to a more interactive model of learning.

This new, more interactive model of learning makes ample use of what Phillip refers to as “thinking prosthetics,” or the computer. In Phillip’s ideal classroom, the student is the co-discoverer in the learning process with the professor heavily supported by a variety of integrated technologies.

Lohnes and Kinzer disagree, based on a small quantitative study they conducted recently at a Northeastern university. While these authors concur that the N-Gen student is highly connected during his or her leisure time, “the Net Generation’s general expectations regarding leading-edge technology have not fully impacted its expectations about the use of technology to support learning.” In other words, N-Gen students seem well capable of contextualizing technology, keeping leisure use separate from (and perhaps more desireable than) learning use.

No matter which philosophy you adopt, the articles give cause for pause. Where are we going in our teaching environments and are we “jumping the gun” with how we employ educational technology in the liberal arts classroom? Maybe we are at the beginning of the N-Gen push for more educational technology, as Lohnes and Kinzer suggest, or maybe we are further down the path as Phillip suggests. In the end, it really doesn’t matter. The use of ed tech should always be based on sound instructional design decisions, not on real or perceived student pressure.

At Cedarville, we are always pushing the high tech envelope, and have for many years. We are a high tech campus with high tech expectations for professors in traditional courses and online courses. As we approach this generation of students, we cannot assume that technology in learning environments is something that they have adopted en masse. Instead, the instructional design process should help define when technology should be used and how it should be communicated to students to ensure the most effective learning environment. Check out the articles in Innovate; they will make you think.

Our Center for Teaching and Learning here at Cedarville just completed an intense two-week faculty Teaching and Learning Conference. During the two-week conference, we had over 60 faculty attend over 300 sessions on a wide variety of topics from the technological to the pedagogical and everything in between. Faculty got the chance to see new technology, discuss innovative teaching practices and eat donuts every morning from 9-10. Overall, for our first ever faculty development offering, it was a smashing success. More to come.

As I reflect on the conference, something interesting comes to mind. When it comes to new teaching technology, we’ll never have any trouble getting the early adopters and the techno-curious to attend the sessions; but if you want diverse participation, offer sessions that focus on teaching practice and the role of the professor as teacher. There appears to be a great hunger at Cedarville for discussion/advice/sharing/confrontation about the practice of teaching. I believe this bodes well for the future of the Center for Teaching and Learning and our role of helping our faculty become reflective teachers.

What does it take to become a reflective teacher? Most definitely, a willingness to try things you’ve never tried before, including new technology, new approaches to delivering content, new methods of determining how/if course objectives are met. Reflective teaching requires curiosity and humility – dedication to the notion that teaching is an “evolutionary” practice and that no one ever fully “gets it” no matter how long he or she has been managing the learning environment. Finally, reflective teaching requires an atmosphere and organization that rewards the exemplar teacher alongside the accomplished researcher and expert in a field.

I look forward to more opportunities to foster reflective teaching at Cedarville.

My inspiration for this particular blog entry comes from the following article:

Award-winning teacher discusses ‘brave new world’ of classroom technology

If you are a professor in 2007, you can’t escape the promise and the hype of Educational Technology. Practically every conference and every journal related to Higher Ed has at least one session or one article expounding on the virtues (and sometimes the vices) of technology in the classroom. As the article listed above implies, all of this technology can be intimidating, especially for technophobic professors with limited experience in things techy. It is my contention that educational technology doesn’t have to be intimidating; instead, it can be exciting and even freeing.

The key to successful implementation of educational technology, especially amongst the skittish, is to start small. Take baby steps. Don’t immediately jump into embedding Wiki assignments or blog entries or Flash-based simulations into your class. Don’t rush headlong into website development or PodCasting. Work from the familiar first and move from there. For example, try using some of the more simple features of WebCT first (assignment posting, syllabus posting, basic quizzing) and then move into group work and threaded discussion list management. Redo your PowerPoints into non-linear study aids and then try launching a course website. Movement forward in the world of Educational Technology is better than no movement at all.

This past week, I attended SOCHE’s 40th anniversary celebration and heard renowned speaker and author Parker J. Palmer. If you haven’t heard of Dr. Palmer, might I suggest that you start by reading his 1998 work The Courage to Teach.

Dr. Palmer’s main message was a call for Higher Education to “return to the obvious” of knowing teaching and learning. It was a stirring talk that focused on learning community and connectedness. Two main quotes tied his message together:

To teach is to create a space in which the community of truth is practiced. Good teaching can never be reduced to technique. The key to good teaching is a capacity for connectedness, which comes in many forms.

Dr. Palmer ended his talk by suggesting that good teachers ask the following question: How does or might my pedagogy respond to the fact that . . .

1. The brain’s weakest function is retaining isolated data bits, while its strongest function is holding and working with information in patterns of meaning: narratives, stories, systems, gestalts, etc. The more a pedagogy appeals to the brain’s strength while bypassing its weakness, the deeper the learning will go.
2. Cognition is intimately tied to feeling, which can either undermine cognitive functioning(e.g., through fear) or strengthen it (e.g., through caring about a subject). The more a pedagogy can minimize the former and maximize the latter, the deeper the learning will go.
3. Intelligence comes in many forms, so the more forms of intelligence a pedagogy can invoke – within us, between us, among us – the deeper the learning will go. And since all of us thinking together are smarter than any one of us thinking alone, given good ground rules for discourse, communities that invoke multiple intelligences can drive the learning deeper still.
4. The most engaged learning communities are those that gather around vivid, lively, and morally compelling realities, or their representations, rather than around “inert facts.” The more pedagogy can focus learners on such realities, the deeper the learning will go.
5. In every discipline, knowledge is generated through a communal process. This requires habits of mind and heart that allow us to interact openly and honestly with other knowers and with the subject to be known – such habits as a capacity to care about the process, the willingness to get involved, the humility to listen, the strength to speak our truth, the willingness to change our minds. The more closely a pedagogy cn emulate this communal process, cultivating these habits of mind and heart as it goes long, the deeper the learning will go.

What was most interesting is that Parker Palmer suggested that these ideas, these calls to connectedness, can occur even in lecture-oriented classrooms (although he was quick to mention that the “practice of lecturing in the University is far more widespread than the gift for it”). I was also left with a question, one that an audience member asked: what role does technology play in this quest for the connected classroom? Does it help or hinder what Dr. Palmer suggests? These are the types of questions we must wrestle with if we are to become reflective teachers.

Everyone has a blog these days, so why not the Center for Teaching and Learning? I’ll do my best to keep these entries short and informative, so check back often! Teaching is a science, a skill, an instinct, an art. Explore all of those with the Center for Teaching and Learning.