IT Plan Initiative - Research Instructional Technology for Impact

Sponsor/Decision Maker: Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning

Project Leads: Teaching Academy, DoIT-AT

Key Partners: Teaching Academy, Delta, DoIT - AT, ComETS members, Members of the Library System, University Assessment Council, TLE and ComETS website organizers, Other campus groups invested in research on teaching and learning (e.g. WCER, GLS, etc.)

Challenge:

We come to identify the challenges of our disciplines through research, surveys, our observations of other classrooms, and/or evidence gathered in our own teaching. When we identify a particularly knotty problem and want to talk-out or test-out a solution, we either do very broad searches to see what we can learn from Google or we turn to our colleagues down the hall or the local IT support person to help us realize the merits and limits of that  solution. This is perfectly fine except that what we learn, what we realize about the problem/solution -- the idea -- is conceived, grown, and will most likely stay walled up within that group for a long time, if not forever.

A 'good idea' asks us to first look out across campus -- at other disciplines, at other departments -- and say, "I wonder who else is interested in this?" We need to share our ideas -- our knowledge, our experiences, our knotty problems with the rest of the campus and work toward solutions that are applicable across wider audiences.  This all starts with an environmental scan. Who else on campus is having this particular problem or how others have addressed it? If nothing presents itself, then one should think that working on this idea might be of interest to more people. Without asking these questions, we don’t share what we know, we don’t collaborate, we don’t identify our common needs, and good ideas stay boxed up. Our goal should really be to "magnetize" an idea -- draw attention to it and try to pull in partners who have experience with the same problem or who have an interest in working toward a solution.

How might we address this?:

For starters, we can actively seek cooperation and input from key partners on campus who are particularly attuned to the latest research and surveys on teaching and learning challenges at the national and campus level (with particular interest in the Essential Learning Outcomes) and make that work more visible to campus. We have communication mechanisms in place to share/disseminate information, work collaboratively and improve networking across campus in the form of the Teaching and Learning Excellence (TLE) Site and the ComETS website. Ideally, one would be able to discover solutions or discussion around a particular teaching challenge by searching the TLE Network with an appropriate keyword or by submitting a question to the Open Questions Discussion Forum. One might also contact a local instructional technology support person who will be able to provide help and circulate an innovative idea to the wider ComETS community.

One place our campus could improve with respect to researching the impact of instructional technology is in the general fluency we have with finding good information, interpreting that research  or performing our own evaluations. We might look into creating more expertise and finding more funding for evaluation planning on instructional technology projects.

In the end, we want to increase the discoverability of and engagement around campus teaching and learning challenges and the research that is beind done to find solutions.

How will we know we've made progress?:

When we become even more accustomed to looking up and thinking, 'Who else can I work with on this?' then the TLE and ComETS site will see increased growth and participation by the Teaching and Learning Community and the ComETS community. We should see changes in identified teaching and learning challenges in faculty surveys, the TLE site, reports from Help Desk, and in feedback to technologists. We'll also see more coordination and resource sharing happening at the early stages of emerging technology development, hopefully leading to more shared approaches to common problems. In short, we'll see more good ideas -- informed by research and evaluation -- progress to jointly developed solutions.

Pathways to a Good Idea:

• Improving the "discoverability" of current research, surveys and best practices around campus teaching and learning challenges
• Discussion with departmental colleagues -- possible dept. brownbag on issue
• Search across "TLE Network" website http://tle.wisc.edu
• Email ComETS listserv and/or search/submit to ComETS website http://comets.wisc.edu