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Teaching On-Line: The Journey of an Early AdopterMary R. Sudzina, Ph.D.This reflective case study traces the journey of an early adopter over almost a decade of on-line teaching and learning. Issues of technology, pedagogy, content, expectations, and outcomes will be discussed with specific examples. The evolution of a Web-based course will be used as a touchstone for innovations including video and audio clips, case studies, problem-based learning, case competitions, threaded discussion groups, CU-SeeMe videoconferencing, streamed video, rubrics, Web-based final projects, and on-line tutorials and resources. The paper will conclude with the author’s assessment and vision for on-line teaching and learning in the future. Key Words: On-line teaching and learning, case study, early adopter, technology IntroductionIn the “dark ages” of teaching and learning on-line, 1994 to be exact, there was no World Wide Web readily available. The Internet was the mode of minute – a bare bones, unadulterated text format, where messages were preceded by a string of letters and numbers that made no sense to those uninitiated in computer language. Modem speed was not yet an issue, (all modems were slow), and viruses were yet to bloom and flourish. Spell check was yet to be introduced; glaring typing and spelling errors were there for all the (limited) world to see. No great graphics or palette of colors was available to juice up the text and add interest to the messages. You had to want to communicate in this format, as universities were not yet supporting this new technology for widespread use. Much of the early research on teaching with technology focused on the impact of computer “saturation” on teaching and learning in K-12 classrooms, through the Apple Classrooms of the Tomorrow (ACOT) collaboration between Apple Computers and school districts around the country. After 4 years of gathering research on these early adopters, Dwyer, Ringstaff, and Sandholtz published (1990, 1991) their seminal findings on patterns of teachers’ technology integration in the classroom. They were: entry, adoption, adaptation, appropriation, and invention. This pattern later became a lens in which to view the shift to on-line learning and technology integration in higher education (see, Sandholtz, Ringstaff, and Dwyer, 1997). Using these patterns as a template, this paper will explore each stage in light of this author’s own journey in learning to teach on-line. Thus, the professors on the forefront of the wave for on-line teaching in the early 90’s were chasing the new technologies to enhance their own teaching– that is, they some ideas what was possible but could make things happen only by putting together their own team of technology supporters inside and outside the university. These early adopters took an entrepreneurial approach to accessing and using the new technology. They jumped from “entry” to “adoption” in practically one fell swoop. They were on a mission. Seduced by the ‘NetThe First Virtual Case Competition – Internet Users Only Need Apply I had already been flirting with technology in those early days and I experimented with some low-tech audiotape (Sudzina, 1991b; 1992a) and videotape (Sudzina, 1992b) interventions to improve student context and recall for case study analysis. An educational psychologist at the University of Dayton, I was also interested in the future of technology networks for teaching (Sudzina, 1991a) and educational reform (Sudzina, 1993). I was in the “entry” phase of technology integration in the classroom. Crunch time for me came in the way of an invitation to participate in a “first ever” virtual case competition by colleagues Bob McNergney and Joanne Herbert in the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia (UVa) in the spring of 1994. The previous spring, I had mentored a team of students invited to participate in a national team case competition at UVa in Charlottesville. I had been teaching with cases since 1989 and was thrilled to have a team selected for this heady three-day event sponsored by the Commonwealth Center for the Education of Teachers at the University. When funds were unavailable to host a competition the next year, a virtual team case competition was proposed as a cost saving measure to continue the team case competition among teacher preparation programs nationally and internationally. On short notice, Dayton was invited to help pilot this new competition. Excited to be invited, I immediately said “yes,” even though I had no on-line technological expertise and needed to recruit a new student team. I was determined to make this happen. The first step was to assess the state of the Internet at my own institution. Usage on our Internet connection, called the VAX, was limited and demand was low. Time and resources were not readily available. No one in my department, at that time, was knowledgeable about how to help me engage in this on-line case competition. Consequently, I sent my brother, a computer guru in Oregon, a plane ticket to fly in to Ohio and help me set up a computer account and password to engage in this new competition. He communicated with the technology staff in charge of the main frame and set me up with an account, user name, and password using the Gopher browser. He also showed me how to access my mail from my computer at work, and at home, via dial-up modem. I remember vividly that this was a toll call to the university when I received my first phone bill! I asked several of my students if they would be willing to engage in a team case competition with others institutions on-line after class. They agreed. We were on our way. The content and pedagogy were fairly straightforward. A competition schedule was posted and teams met each other on-line. A text case study of a classroom dilemma was sent out to the email addresses of team advisors. Each team of students prepared a case analysis, based on a standard 5-step process of case analysis (McNergney, Herbert, & Ford, 1994), which was then e-mailed to judges. Time for teams to work together and word count were limited. Judges then posed questions that were sent to each of the participating institutions, and students typed their answers on their advisor’s computer, which was emailed back. (Most students didn’t have their own computers or computer accounts.) A rating scale was devised for the judges to rate each analysis (see, Kent, pp. 122-126, for a fuller explanation and example). Text was captured and printed out by the printer in the computer center, across campus. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked. We were thrilled when our team tied for first place in the competition. I was hooked. I wanted to know how to use this new technology and on-line cases with my undergraduate students to extend the boundaries of our classroom experiences. Rocketing to the WWW Almost overnight the technology was changing. After the technological success of the first competition, another was planned almost immediately by the Commonwealth Center for the next spring, 1995. This time, there were six teams from the United States and Canada competing. The competition was posted on the World Wide Web and included color, graphics, and hyperlinks. The forms feature was used to post the analyses directly on the case competition site. This major advance opened up the competition for all to see on the WWW, unlike the previous Internet competition, which was conducted on a closed mailing list over the Internet. Team pictures and bios were posted on the Web, along with the three judges and two provocateurs, in an attempt to humanize and personalize the competition. We were also using the Netscape browser for the first time. Technology support individuals at UVa held our hand every step of the way as we asked questions about all aspects of sending, saving, receiving, and printing messages. The University of Dayton student newspaper heard that we were competing again and ran a feature on the students and the competition. The Dayton Quarterly alumni magazine also picked up the story. We didn’t win but we made an earnest showing. We were the babies in the competition; sophomore undergraduates competing against older teams, some of them graduate students. Rather than being intimidated, we were energized by this opportunity. It was a terrific learning experience. The First Multimedia Teaching Case At about this time, Todd Kent, (a doctoral student at Virginia), along with two colleagues, proposed to develop a stand-alone teaching case for the World Wide Web. Using raw footage from several schools in Cape Town, South Africa, he developed Project Cape Town, about the first schools to integrate after apartheid. The case included several movie and sound files and each of the four events had professional practice questions and professional perspectives to accompany it. It was the first multimedia teaching case to take advantage of the Web as a medium for making cases available worldwide to educators. The case can be found at http://curry.edschool.virginia.edu/go/capetown. (At last count, over 10,000 visitors had viewed Project Cape Town.) Naturally, I was eager to have my students work through this new case, in addition to the text cases we were analyzing in class. I just had to figure out how to get them on-line. My “adoption” phase continued as I searched for ways to integrate on-line cases and technology in all my classes. Teaching On-Line: Putting a Toe in the Water I had a sabbatical coming up and had decided to split my focus between writing a book about using case studies in teacher preparation (see, Sudzina, 1999) and on teaching with case studies on-line. Rather than let my teaching lay fallow for a semester, I asked for a reduced teaching load so that I could experiment with technology over the course of the year while writing my book proposal. Again, technology resources in house were limited. Consequently, I wrote a professional development grant (Sudzina, 1995a) that allowed me to upgrade the technology hardware and software in the computer lab so that my students could log on and access the WWW and Web-based case studies containing audio and video. Additionally, I was learning how to access the technology and wrote in technological support for a graduate assistant at UD to support my classes and myself. On the computer scene, my 4-½ year old computer was upgraded from a Mac to a PowerMac. I was delighted that I could now save manuscripts in either a Mac or PC format. The answer to my dilemma in getting my students on-line came when Bob McNergney at Virginia and I had decided to conduct a dual case competition, using Project Cape Town, in our respective second-year courses in the fall, 1995. This was the first time a Web-based case competition had been integrated into existing courses. Our students broke up into several teams and competed over a dual case competition site on the WWW. Team analyses were judged according to a rubric that offered opportunities for constructive feedback. (The site has since been deleted, but was available to be viewed for several years as a link at the bottom of the Cape Town case.) This led to presenting a paper at a professional meeting (Sudzina, 1995b) about what were doing, followed up by a student survey investigating the use of case-method teaching and technology (Sudzina, 1996a). We were having a great time breaking new ground. “Adaptation” was our mantra. Developing a Course on the Web As the semester wrapped up, I was invited, along with a half a dozen faculty at a variety of higher educational institutions who were using cases, to help pilot a case-based course on the Web that could be applied to a variety of content areas for undergraduate and graduate teaching credit. The course was called CaseNET, and was co-founded with Bob McNergney and Joanne Herbert, our UVA case competition hosts, with support from the Hitachi Foundation (see, Herbert, 1999). The 12 course cases contained light multimedia including movies, sound files, and graphics and were longer and more involved than the Cape Town case. All the cases were multilayered, that is, they included issues such as diversity, technology, pedagogy, classroom management, parent involvement, assessment, special needs, and legal issues in teaching. Password protected, the site included a week-by-week syllabi and assignments, a virtual librarian, links to resources, and CU-SeeMe video conferencing. The instructor’s version also included teaching notes. A central feature was the case competition and follow-up videoconferencing in synchronous time with an expert to comment on the selected case. Instructors would all follow the same syllabi and our students would communicate with each other on-line through threaded discussions, chat windows, and videoconferencing over the course of the semester. Invited faculty spent a long weekend at UVa, in a December 1995 snowstorm, working through the on-line cases and technology to prepare ourselves to launch the course that spring. All the materials were printed out in a huge binder that became our course bible. We also had the phone numbers of people to call when we ran into questions with the technology, which happened with regularity. As many of our technology support were UVa doctoral students in education, we brainstormed together ways to make the technology work that would produce enhanced learning outcomes for our students. Bob and Joanne were our role models in using this new technology and were right there in the trenches with us. None of us had taught on-line before and we all knew that we were on the cusp of something exciting and powerful in teaching and learning. Spring 1996 was our pilot launch date. Pouring on – and over - the Technology With the approval of my department, I invited UD teacher education graduate students, through a personalized mailing, to participate in this innovative on-line initiative. UD had approved the course as an elective in our graduate teacher education program for teachers acquiring a technology endorsement. We had no distance education component to our program and we were all interested in the potential of such a course to deliver on-line instruction, and model pedagogy, for teaching on-line. This initial course was offered through the Office of Continuing Education at UVa. Fifteen students had signed up for our maiden voyage of “Contemporary Issues: Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning with Technology” in our Macintosh lab. Although all class materials were available on-line, we printed out copies of all materials, and conducted most of the on-line learning in the lab. There were several reasons for this: (1) many of the graduate students did not have access to a personal computer or Internet outside of school;(2) those that did characteristically did not have up-to-date hardware and software;(3) many of the students did not know how to access materials from the Website, post to discussion groups, or participate in CU-SeeMe conferences; and (4) students wanted to underline and write on class materials and did not have access to print them from the Website. Six institutions were teaching the course on-line, at similar times, with some overlap in time zones. Teams of students “met” each other on-line when their photos and a short biography were posted on the Website along with email addresses. The course was being taught in a hybrid format, that is, we strived to combine the best of classroom interaction with resources and activities on the Web. We exchanged course schedules and coordinated our assignments and syllabi, which were posted on the course Website. The instructors all knew each other from our time together the previous month in Virginia and there was an easy camaraderie among instructors and support staff. We attempted to stay in close contact to each other in synchronous and asynchronous time, and we had our students chat with each other on-line about an assigned case, exchange case analyses between institutions, and schedule Cu-SeeMe conferences to talk about case issues. Digital pictures were captured from the windows on our monitors and posted them to the course Website, further personalizing the instruction. We were always looking for the humanizing element in teaching on-line. There were also all the challenges that you might imagine: servers going down at one end or another, insufficient band width and freezing frames during the in the CU-SeeMe videoconferencing or insufficient sound and grainy images, (thank goodness for chat windows), files that were saved improperly, student files that couldn’t be opened by another computer because the word processing program was so old, work that was lost on-line because the Website timed out, and plans that went awry due to time and technology difficulties. This is where being an expert in your content area pays off. When teaching with technology; you always need to have a Plan B, and sometimes Plan C. A hybrid course offered us that flexibility. When the technology didn’t work – we did! The upshot of this pilot experience was an energetic thumbs up from faculty participants and students alike. Students were excited about learning to use the new technology at the same time they were learning about problem-based learning and analyzing classroom dilemmas. Changes occurred in the way students analyzed cases (in collaborative teams) and shared their written analyses (across institutions). Undergraduates were able to compare their perspectives with graduate-level seasoned teachers in several different geographic areas. Expert resources and case perspectives were available on-line. From a faculty perspective, this was tremendous professional development. It wasn’t just the technology that turned me on – it was the opportunity to work with colleagues at other institutions to think about how we could improve teaching and learning for the next generation of teachers. The technology was simply the vehicle. During this time, I made 3 technology presentations (see, Sudzina, 1996b; 1996c; Sudzina, et. al., 1996), and was asked to join the University Alpha Computer Committee. Realizing that I had just scratched the surface of using technology, I attended two technology workshops immediately after completing this course: “A Guide to the Internet and WWW” with Dr. Wayne Summers at the UD Chautauqua Field Center in May, and a University Teaching and Technology Workshop at Wittenberg University in June. Ironically, I was still using my PowerMac laptop, and both courses that I attended were set up for a PC environment. There was no easy conversion of software and platform and I struggled to transform the learning to a Mac environment. Hmm…more work to be done. (I did eventually get a PC and, for several years, had both a Mac and a PC on my desk as some editors wanted articles saved to Mac and others to PC. The conversions from Mac to PC were terrible and the entire manuscript had to be reformatted. Today, open platforms make such conversions seamless.) I was entering the “appropriation” phase of faculty technology integration, in which teachers understand technology’s usefulness, apply it as a tool to accomplish real work, and continue professional growth through conferences and presentations. In the fall, with the permission of my colleagues at UVa, I assigned my undergraduate Honors/Scholars educational psychology class read the CaseNET competition case for that semester, a case about school violence and gun control. I was asked to be a judge for the on-line competition that semester, so my students didn’t submit written analyses to be judged. However, they did participate in the synchronous CU-SeeMe conference from the National Press Club with U.S. Assistant Attorney General Reginald Robinson, our guest speaker on the case, early one evening in November. The lab staff at UD and I had several practice runs in the days before the conference to make sure the technology was up and running and we could log in and transmit to and from the reflector site at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The evening of the conference, we projected the tiny CUSeeMe window from our computer monitor onto a large screen in the computer lab and brought in extra speakers so we could all hear the case discussion. My students had all prepared questions on the case and several of stood in front of our CU-SeeMe eyeball camera and spoke into the tiny hand held microphone to ask him questions about the case and what teachers should do about violence in the schools. His answers to these teachers-in-training were wonderful. We all marveled on the power on this inexpensive and accessible technology to connect people across the country and with individuals that they might never have had the opportunity to meet. I had invited the local press to join us for this event and it went off without a hitch. A flurry of positive publicity followed in the media. At the end of the semester, I shared what I had learned about teaching with technology at UD Faculty Development Day (Sudzina, 1996d). Soon afterward, as a member of the newly formed Graduate Technology Advisory Committee in the School of Education, we were rewriting the graduate curriculum to meet the new state standards for a technology endorsement in our graduate offerings. The technology, content, and pedagogy of the CaseNET class met the criteria for a distance learning class, as well as NCATE criteria for technology and diversity in multicultural and special education issues. We submitted our new curriculum to the state and it was approved. The next spring, 1997, the course was officially a part of our revised graduate program and earned UD graduate credit. I had fallen in love with what the technology could do. Flash to NowThe rest, as they say, is history. I still continue to teach from the CaseNET Website in our graduate program, except now the Website is called CaseNEX, and the course is called “Case Studies in Technology-Enhanced Learning” to reflect the latest program revision. We’re using Internet Explorer instead of Netscape and are cruising along on Windows XP. We wouldn’t think of turning on the computer without a virus protection program in place. The innovations in hardware appear to be outstripping the innovations in software these days, something unimaginable 5 years ago. I’m still teaching with technology, presenting about technology, and collaborating around technology for the purposes of improving teaching and learning. Innovation still rules in 2003 as surely as it did in 1995. Here are my observations: The Next Generation Website The CaseNET Website became CaseNEX when it spun off from the University of Virginia in 2000 as a separate education company. The complexity and expense of constantly revising and maintaining the Website in house at the Curry School was becoming prohibitive. CaseNEX is now accessed by public and private K-12 institutions as well as institutions of higher education for in-service, undergraduate, and graduate instruction. Although a password protected site, the homepage (http://casenex.org) can give a flavor of what is available for instructors and students. The site now houses over two dozen cases so that cases can be selected to fit the content of the course to accommodate individual needs and preferences. The on-line syllabus has gone away in favor of the instructor deciding how best to use the cases to fit their existing own course. Another change is that course content can now be accessed at any time of the year instead of just during fall and winter semesters. The early CU-SeeMe videoconferencing evolved to iVisit, which has evolved to using streamed video. Moving to a reflector site at the National Press Club, instead of individual computer IP accounts, dramatically improved video transmission over the Web. There is no question that new innovations, which are ongoing, will refine this process. Each on-line case of an educational dilemma is accompanied with peripherals that include a teaching note, audio and video clips, artifacts, resources, and a threaded discussion area. Tutorials are also available for analyzing cases, creating Web-based final projects, and accessing the technology. One final project option is to write a Web-based case about a multi-layered educational dilemma that applies to the course content area. Exemplars are provided. A template is provided to assist in writing the case in HTML format and posting to a course Website to share with other viewers. For first time users, a course Website such as this may be overwhelming. For those of us who have been using technology for a while in teacher education, it is, perhaps, a Gold Standard, because it is so complete and self-contained. Building a quality Website is a lot harder then it looks. But no matter how great the Website is, it is what you do with the material that counts. The power is not in the Website per se; but in the instructor and pedagogy that transforms the Web into a teaching tool. We will continue to see excellent resources and courses on the Web (see, also, Public Broadcasting System’s Teacher Line course modules), along with a better understanding of how to use them. Preliminary research conducted on students accessing the CaseNEX Website found that participants were better prepared to make connections between theory and practice and deal with diversity issues (Bronack, 1998). Pre-service teachers were found to improve their ability to identify issues and apply knowledge from various sources to seek appropriate solutions (Kilbane, 2000). The technology made it possible for the students to: access a variety of multimedia, multilayered case studies; collaborate with many individuals on-line outside of class through threaded discussions and email; have access to related on-line research and professional perspectives; and extend the learning beyond one class and one institution. Multi-layered Teaching and Learning I’ve been fortunate to be a part of an exciting community of learners that was exposed to a full-blown Website from the onset. It’s been a wild ride learning how to keep up with and integrate it all as the course technology was upgraded and revised every semester. I didn’t take baby steps; I jumped right in, with a very long umbilical cord to UVa and the support of some great folks at UD. Because the course included a variety of media and assignments, I wasn’t limited to one way of looking at, or teaching, on-line. My experiences in teaching with cases on-line have dramatically changed the way I approach my classes – and what is possible. All course, graduate and undergraduate, now have a distance-learning component to them in addition to incorporating case studies. Assignments tend to be cooperative and collaborative, project-driven, and constructivist in nature. That is, my students and I co-construct knowledge and meaning from the course content and together we discuss how this information will impact them individually and collectively as teachers. Through these activities I’ve become more of a facilitator and mentor to my students. I usually assign a threaded on-line discussion on a text or articles to include everyone’s voice in the conversation; something that is unwieldy in a class of 30 or 40 students. Student presentations are often PowerPoint accessed from a personal homepage. This simply wasn’t possible a few years ago. Using what I’ve learned on-line, I’ve continued to experiment with various media to deliver class instruction and have designed ancillaries to accompany teaching in my areas of expertise: case studies, teacher preparation, and educational psychology. Pedagogical activities include: designing a Website for my book on teaching with case studies Sudzina, 1999c), researching almost 100 Websites and writing student activities to coordinate with topics in the most widely-used educational psychology text (Sudzina, 1998a), writing “Frequently Asked Questions” about educational psychology content for the Web (Sudzina, 1998b), writing and producing a video on teaching with case studies (Sudzina, 2003), and designing various PowerPoint slide show presentations to enhance instruction. My latest project is designing a companion Website to accompany my on-line course that will list my syllabus and assignments, demonstrate the different pedagogies in the course, list resources, and give example of final Web-based student projects. This latest shift in focus could be characteristic of the “invention” stage of the Dwyer, Ringstaff, and Sandholtz model (1990) of technology integration. Sharing What We Know – and Want to Know. Getting the word out is critical to continuing to connect with others around issues of teaching and learning on-line – and risky. There is always someone out there who has a better Website, better technology, better support, and better student learners. For the most part, people are very willing to share what they are doing as well as Websites and resources. These things change very rapidly in an on-line environment, oftentimes from semester to semester. Keeping current is all about building networks with others who share your passion for finding better ways to deliver instruction. Taking the initiative to make technology presentations can help make that happen (see, Sudzina, 1997a; 1997b; 1997c; 1998c; 1999e; 2000; 2001a; 2001b; Sudzina, Kaleta, & Garnham, 2003; Sudzina & Sudzina, 2003). When I first started teaching on-line, my primary support group consisted of those instructors with whom I was teaching on-line. The common denominator was the UVa connection to the CaseNEX Website. We taught together, wrote together (see, Herbert, 1999; Kent, 1999; Sudzina, 1999b; Sudzina, 1999d), and presented together at conferences (see, Sudzina, et. al., 1997). The technology had become a part of our teaching and research agendas. Today, my support group is centered at UD and includes an Instructional Technology Center and IT staff that were previously unavailable to faculty and students alike. This instructional technology support revolution has occurred in the past 5 years at UD, as it has on many other campuses nationally. Joining technology committees and attending seminars is also a great way to find out who is doing what and where the resources are. Also, it is important to align your interests with the larger interests of your institution. I became active in several other university (Learning Village) and School of Education (Graduate Technology Advisory Committee, Dean’s Technology Committee) committees, which allowed me opportunities to sit down and discuss with others what was effective and what the vision might be for the future of teaching and learning at the university. It’s important to look for the win-win. The Enemy of Teaching On-line: Time The number one reason many people have difficulty adjusting to teaching and learning on-line, in my opinion, is the issue of time. Time on-line is like no other. From a teaching perspective, my rule of thumb is the amount of time I think it will take, times three! Teaching on-line is not a time or work saver compared to traditional lecture instruction, where teaching is teacher-centered and I can control most of the variables. The first thing that always needs to be considered when teaching on-line is issue of technology skills – and that it takes an enormous amount of time to learn how to access and use the technology for teaching. Most of us have come to technology through the back door – that is, we have learned to use technology in addition to our regular teaching, service, and research load. Even technology workshops and seminars take time away from our other academic work – and then we have little time to integrate and practice these new skills. The second issue is that the technology is sometimes unreliable in terms of our use of time: servers go down, computers crash, firewalls prevent people from communicating, virus’ play havoc, email messages get delayed, the wireless network is down, upgrades cause glitches in previously reliable programs. All of these are issues that can be worked out, but cause frustration when time is limited. Another enemy of time is the amount of time that it takes to write assignments on-line, review them individually, and respond to them. You can literally be on the Internet for hours responding to an assignment that you may be able to talk through in class in 20 minutes – without you having to revise your response to students several times so that you don’t have grammatical, spelling, or interpretation problems. Consequently, my on-line assignments now tend to be group or collaborative assignments and I use threaded discussions frequently when I wish to have students discuss an issue that I don’t have sufficient time in class to hear from everyone. Still, it takes time to set up the technology, assignments, set expectations and model acceptable responses, read the comments, and take notes or print out the discussions for follow-up. This additional preparation time is not captured in credit hours or student evaluations. University teacher evaluation criteria have yet to reflect the unique circumstances of on-line teaching. It is not unusual for an instructor who earns excellent evaluations in a traditional lecture class to earn lower evaluations when teaching on-line. It remains to be seen whether this is an artifact of the evaluation, or, in fact, students tend to rate on-line classes lower due to lack of face time with the instructor or their own difficulty with the technology, among other possible issues. The untenured should proceed with caution as criteria and standards to assess the value of on-line teaching and research are still being debated in the academy. Heightened Skills – Heightened Expectations One of the biggest surprises for me has been the crossover in students’ expectations in the course that I teach on-line. It has been my observation that as students’ technology skills skyrocket, their expectations that their instructor will have skills equal to or superior to their own increases. This is an interesting dilemma for me that may be related to the nature of the program in which I teach, and the objectives of the course. When I first started teaching on-line in 1995, the instructor was the content and technology leader. Most students and school districts were not yet on-line and much of the on-line work was done in class, together. Issues were more related to hardware and software, and understanding case studies, than in the technology. Today, in 2003, I often have students in class that are the Webmasters or technology leaders for their school districts and finishing their masters’ degrees. Even though the focus of this capstone course is about pedagogy issues related to technology and teaching, the old paradigm that the instructor should know more than the students in all areas of a course, (which was doable in the traditional lecture format), seems to hold sway for a few students. The new paradigm is a constructivist approach to learning in which the instructor and the students co-construct meaning together in a community of learners. Although on-line learning lends itself to this new paradigm, it is still easier said than done. The reality is that I will never know more than many of my students today. The technology has exploded so exponentially that there will always be something new on the horizon. There are several ways to address this wrinkle: form collaborative groups where the skills levels of students are equally distributed for class projects so that the stronger technological students become resources to the others in their group; form collaborative partnerships with the IT staff and invite them in as expert guest speakers to address technology issues in assignments; focus on fewer technology innovations and be able to model and support their use in the course; design a companion course Website as a resource to support course technology and pedagogy; and, all of the above. Technology as a Moving Target - and a Destination The learning about teaching and learning on-line is never ending. The software changes, the hardware changes, an upgrade doesn’t work with another program, the content is constantly revised and updated, and so on. Universities and school districts are now on-line, and being away from your email for even a day or two can be a cause for consternation. Universities are now requiring faculty to post their syllabi and class assignments and office hours on-line and to use on-line resources whenever possible. The pace of communications has quickened leaving less time for reflection and more pressure to respond immediately through email, instant messenger, listservs, voicemail, fax, or phone. The Internet, rather than face-to-face meetings, appears to be gaining preference as the way to conduct most routine business. Several years ago, there seemed to me to be a point where some of us stopped chasing the technology - and the technology started chasing us! Simply put, there seemed to be a critical point in which the overwhelming mass of technology available outstripped our ability to keep pace. We needed help. To that end, there are now university-wide Teaching and Learning Centers on many campuses whose focus is to support faculty as they incorporate interactive strategies and technologies in their teaching. The staff can be excellent resources and role models in how to use technology for teaching. Different from the early technology support teams, they also are well versed in pedagogy for teaching and in Web design to support on-line initiatives. They are providing a crucial link at many campuses for faculty to be brought on-line incrementally through hands-on workshops, videos, on-line resources, and special teaching settings. Campuses have adopted such platforms as WebCT, Blackboard, or IBM Lotus LearningSpace to deliver instruction. The focus has shifted to using good pedagogy, not just on using good technology. On-line resources available to higher education faculty have exploded in recent years. Resources that I have accessed include: the Center for Applied Research in Educational Technology (http://caret.iste.org), The Technology Source e-journal (http://ts.mivu.org), EDUCAUSE Review (http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/), and Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) “Educational Technology” resources (http://www.askeric.org/cgi-bin/res.cgi/educational-technology). An annotated Webliography by Mullinix and McCurry, (2003) lists links to some of the most active sites in the development of technology-enhanced teaching and learning and can be found at http://64.124.14.173/default.asp?show=article&id=1002. These include technology groups, centers that support teaching and learning, resources for course sharing, and best practices in electronic learning. Why Teaching On-line Still Gives Me a Thrill I’ve never had a dull moment teaching on-line. Frustration, disappointment, elation, excitement, anticipation, satisfaction – yes! Boredom – no! The opportunity to connect and partner with others, both locally and on-line, who are knowledgeable and enthusiastic about using technology to extend the boundaries of teaching and learning has been invigorating – and tremendous on-going professional development. The opportunity to connect and interact with students in ways that I couldn’t even conceive of 9 years ago still knocks me out. The future promises to be even more challenging and exciting. Where To NextThe future of teaching on-line is all around us in all the media that we access without thinking twice. Yes, on-line teaching will continue to be a huge presence in the future of quality teaching and learning but we need to remind ourselves that it is not the only, or even preferred, way for many of our students to learn. We have a variety of rich choices and opportunities to choose from, something that I call Dim Sum Technology. Just like a Chinese menu, we can have choices from column A, and column B. The choice depends what you are teaching, how you are teaching it, the needs of the learner, and how teaching on-line enhances the learning-teaching process. Teaching on-line has further sensitized me to the learning challenges many students face. There is no one right way to deliver on-line instruction. This sentiment was echoed by Chris Dede, a visionary in distance learning, in a recent talk (2003) on emerging technology trends and their implications for the teaching-learning process. Dede, who teaches a hybrid distributed education methods course at Harvard, (see, www.gse.harvard.edu/~dedech/502), believes that multiple interactive mediums will lead to deeper, richer, learning for students. He believes that in the future, “it will be considered professional malpractice to teach in one medium,” and advocates using a variety of media that fit the needs of a variety of learners. Trends include more wireless technologies, virtual environments, and interactive presentations. Carol Barone (2003) writes about the changing landscape of the academy and the power of technology to transform teaching and learning. She points to fledgling efforts, such as my own, as being under the political radar screen to create significant change because they were, for the most part, individualistic and not systematic. However, she says such a transformation has finally started to occur. The weight of many such faculty initiatives and students whose cognition was formed in the digital age have created a momentum that is irreversible. So here are some new patterns to think about as we continue to use technology as a tool for teaching and learning. (Looks like I inadvertently bumped into just about all of them!) Nine Patterns in the Changing Landscape
The next generation of students will be pushing those of us who grew up without the benefit of the Web, Napster, KaZaa, Instant Messenger, chat rooms, interactive video games, and DVD’s to get onboard. On-line is the coin of the realm for today and tomorrow’s learners. Now it is a question of which on-line mediums to use and how best to use them. Our ongoing challenge will be to incorporate what we know about excellence in traditional teaching and learning to produce excellence in the virtual classroom to benefit student learning. See you out there. ReferencesBarone, C. (2003). The changing landscape and the new academy. EDUCAUSE Review, 38(5), 40-47. Bronack, S. (1998). Analyzing multimedia cases: Teacher development in a Web-based environment. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Dwyer, D., Ringstaff, C., & Sandholtz, J. (1990). Teacher beliefs and practices, Part I: Patterns of change. 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Infusing case studies, multiculturalism, and technology into undergraduate teacher preparation. Primary author and researcher. Professional Development Grant, University of Dayton. Funded. Sudzina, M. (1995b, October). Holding case discussions on the Internet among teacher preparation institutions: Report on a project in process. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Mid-Western Educational Research Association, Chicago. Sudzina, M. (1996a). Case-method teaching and technology survey. Unpublished manuscript, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH. Sudzina, M. (1996b, February). Integrating cases and technology. Symposium participant, The teaching of educational psychology: Trends, emerging issues, and new ideas. Session presented at the annual meeting of the Eastern Educational Research Association, Boston, MA. Sudzina, M. (1996c, June). Using technology in teaching educational psychology: Integrating cases and Internet technology. 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(1998a). “InterActivities for educational psychology.” Designed approximately 100 Web- based interactive activities to coordinate with the chapter content in Woolfolk's best-selling Educational psychology (7th ed.) text (Allyn & Bacon, 1998). Activities were found on the CD-ROM enclosed in the interactive edition of the 1998 Woolfolk text . Sudzina, M. (1998b). "Frequently asked questions". Wrote the questions and answers to approximately 45 questions about educational psychology concepts that are frequently misunderstood. Coordinates with the chapter content in Woolfolk’s Educational psychology (7th ed.) text (Allyn & Bacon, 1998). Sudzina, M. (1998c, June). Learning networks: Designing instruction for on-line learning. Interactive technology presentation at the Paradigms for On-line and Asynchronous Learning Conference, sponsored by Ameritech, Otterbein College, Westerville, OH. Sudzina, M. (Ed.). (1999a). Case study applications for teacher education: Cases of teaching and learning in the content areas. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Sudzina, M. (1999b). Guidelines for teaching with cases. In M. Sudzina (Ed.), Case study applications for teacher education: Cases of teaching and learning in the content areas. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Sudzina, M. (1999c). Designed coordinating Website for text, Case study applications for teacher education: Cases of teaching and learning in the content areas. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. (On-line) Sudzina, M. (1999d). Organizing instruction for case-based teaching. In R. F. McNergney, E. R. Ducharme, & M. K. Ducharme (Eds.), Educating for democracy: Case-method teaching and learning. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Sudzina, M. (1999e, October). Designing instruction for asynchronous learning. Multimedia presentation as part of Faculty Exchange Series hosted by the Faculty Development Committee, University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio. Sudzina, M. (2000, July). Teaching and learning on-line: Options and opportunities. Session presented at the annual meeting of the World Association for Case Method Research and Application, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary. Sudzina, M. (2001a, March). Designing and facilitating Web-based case instruction. Lunch and Learn program presented at the annual meeting of the American Dental Education Association, Chicago. Sudzina, M. (2001b, June). Teaching with case studies in the virtual classroom. Session presented at the annual meeting of the World Association for Case Method Research and Application, Lund University, Lund, Sweden. Sudzina, M. (Speaker) (2002). Teaching and learning with case studies: Facilitating case discussions and engaging students. (Author & Producer) (Video) 29 minutes. Produced with the support of the University of Dayton Fund for Educational Development, Dayton, OH. Sudzina, M., Jennings, C., Kellmurray, K., Loosen, A., Piasecki, L., Sievering, D., Westberg, S., & Zimpfer, C. (1996, March). Dayton-Virginia dual case competition. Poster/multimedia presentation, seventh annual Stander Symposium to Celebrate Undergraduate Research, The University of Dayton, Dayton, OH. Sudzina, M., Kaleta, R., & Garnham, C. (2003, March). Preparing for and teaching hybrid courses. Session presented at the Educause Midwest Regional Conference 2003: Strategic IT Leadership in Challenging Times, Chicago, IL. Sudzina, M., McNergney, R., Herbert, J., Kent, T., Johnson, D., Johnson, B., & Macaul, S. (1997, February). Teaching multidisciplinary cases on the Internet: A case of intrauniversity collaboration. Symposium organizer and presenter at the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, Phoenix, AZ. Sudzina, M., & Sudzina, C. (2003, June). Insights into successfully teaching with cases on-line: The view from both sides of the “Net. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the World Association for Case Method Research and Application, Bordeaux Business School, Bordeaux, France. |