I have touched on this topic several times in my postings, but it is always a good reminder as we begin another academic year.

We often see the tension around which technologies will enhance teaching and learning as perceived by the various players. The predominant public discourse on this comes from those connected to education in some fashion or the other, but not from the faculty and the students, . In many higher ed institutions, instructional technologists play the role of both being the resource for the use of existing technologies (such as classroom technologies, learning management systems etc. etc.) but also researching emerging technologies and finding appropriate venues to talk about them to see if the faculty are interested.

There are also institutions where the adoption of technologies seem to be more a top down mandate. I was talking to a friend of mine who is an excellent teacher in a very prestigious institution who was complaining about the pressure to flip classrooms. He flipped and it was a big flopped classroom!

I think more often than not, we tend to get excited about new developments in technology and start seeing all sorts of possibilities for their use. This is a good thing – starting from a solution looking for a problem. On the other hand, there are so many factors that we need to take into consideration before jumping to conclusion. Are the faculty and students going to be interested and as excited as you? Does the new technology really help enhance teaching and learning? If so, are you able to articulate it clearly? Is the fact that a group of faculty are successful in using in some other institution indicative of the fact that it will succeed in your institution? And then, some of the other questions one does not want to hear “If adopted, will we be able to support this reliably?”

Frankly this approach is to be considered an “experimentation”. One would think that those who understand research and experiments would readily accept the concept of experimentation. But not so fast. Remember that the research and experiments they are engaged in has a purpose – to advance their knowledge, their career, publish et. etc.

This is the most important thing for us to remember – unless we can show some tangible benefits, why would anyone spend their valuable time to adopt some new technologies whereas they could benefit from spending the time in other fruitful activities?

We always need to connect the adoption of new technologies to how it is likely to benefit the person at the other end. In other words, is there a problem that we can possibly solve by the use of technologies. The discussions about MOOCs, blended learning, learning outcomes measures are all good examples of “experimentations”. If you discuss it as such and if you can find partners who are willing to work with you to learn from these experiments, it is great. Instead pitching it as a solution to a perceived problem (such as “students are not engaged in a face to face class, but are more engaged online”), which may exist in certain institutions but not everywhere, can be frustrating to all involved.

There is no perfect approach to this, but I want to give you one example that I am very proud of. About a couple of years ago, we decided to buy a drone as an experiment. We had some great ideas on how they can be used etc, but were really not sure who is going to buy into it. One day, in a hallway conversation with a classical studies faculty member, we found a solution to a problem! How cool would it be to take the drone to archaeological sites and have it “survey” the site from above to give a totally new perspective to the study? He has been using it for the past two summers and he and the students seem extremely happy. In the coming months you will hear more from me on further exciting developments in this project.

So, let us mix it up. Let us explore solutions out there and find some use cases, but most importantly, talk to your faculty, students and staff about problems facing them and try to see how to connect them to the new and emerging technologies.