The Teaching with Technology Newsletter

March 2006

Welcome to the sixth edition of the Teaching with Technology Newsletter, a service offered by the Academic Technology Center (ATC) in conjunction with its Teaching with Technology Collaboratory website. The newsletter is sent each month, bringing you technology news, announcements of professional development opportunities, research articles, and tips on using technology for teaching.

Teaching with Technology Tips

What’s Your Teaching Style?

In last month’s newsletter, you discovered what your learning style is. This month we explore teaching styles. As with learning styles, most instructors utilize a variety of teaching styles, but they have a tendency to gravitate towards one or two styles more than the other ones. Teaching styles may change when you teach different courses. Think about a course you teach and then fill out the teaching styles survey with that course in mind to discover your teaching style in the course.

Grasha-Riechmann Teaching Style Inventory – Scores your teaching style on separate scales for each of the five predominant teaching styles: Delegator, Facilitator, Personal Model (or Demonstrator), Formal Authority, and Expert.

In many cases, it is good to strive for a balance of styles in your teaching. However, there may be times when one style is better suited to a particular course than the others. To make this determination, consider whether your teaching style allows students to achieve your course objectives. Might a different teaching style aid students in achieving the course objectives and thus enhance their learning?

There are a variety of technology tools that can help you implement the different teaching styles. myWPI has several features that make it easy for you to use a Facilitator style, such as the discussion board feature. You can practice the Delegator style by putting content and class activities in myWPI that you don’t necessarily cover in a live class, but for which the students are still responsible for reviewing and completing. PowerPoint and media used in your lectures can enhance your use of the Expert, Formal Authority, and Personal Model styles in the classroom. These are just a few examples of how technology can assist you in implementing a particular teaching style. For more ideas, contact the ATC to speak to an instructional technology specialist by sending a message to atc-ttc@wpi.edu or calling 508-831-5220.

This is the second in a three part series on using technology to adapt to different learning styles and teaching styles. In next month’s newsletter, learn how you can merge learning styles and teaching styles.

For more information, see the following:

Teaching with Style
Overview of Teaching Styles – This resource has links to five video clips showing different ways of teaching the same content.

Tip for ADLN Instructors: Providing Feedback to Students

Giving feedback to students is important in any class, but instructors in distance learning courses often wonder how they can provide the same level of feedback to their distance students as they do to their campus-based students. Fortunately there are many technology tools that assist with providing feedback to distance students, and some of the tools make it possible for you to automate the feedback.

Information Feedback is informational or evaluative in nature. It is often given in response to a student question or as an assignment grade and comments. Some strategies for providing information feedback include:

Arrange virtual office hours where students can reach you live by phone, instant messaging, the chat tool in myWPI, or Interwise.
Use the PDF scanner to return assignments with your written comments.
Use the Assignment Manager in myWPI to indicate grades and comments on assignments.
Use Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat to insert electronic comments into assignments that you return to students.
Use the Test Manager in myWPI to develop tests and quizzes.
Use the Gradebook in myWPI.
Structure assignments so that students provide feedback to each other.

For more feedback strategies and details on each strategy, see the Teaching with Technology Collaboratory topic on Providing Feedback in Your Distance Learning Course.

Using Rubrics for Assessment

A rubric is a scoring tool that divides an assignment or project into performance objectives that provide a detailed description of what should constitute a quality final product. They are used to objectively measure student learning for final assignment/project scoring and grading. Rubrics can be used to grade laboratory assignments, homework problems, research papers, oral/visual presentations, and group projects using pre-determined grading criteria. When presented to students at the introductory stage of an assignment or project, rubrics can help promote self-regulated and independent learning while also making clear the minimal requirements for the final product.

Some examples of Engineering discipline-related rubrics can be found on the College of Engineering websites at San Jose State University and at Auburn University.

There are a number of free tools online to create rubrics that can be published on the web, or copied and pasted into a Word document. Two of the more easy to use tools are the Landmark Project’s Rubric Builder and Rubistar. You can also create your own rubric in Microsoft Word by creating tables and imputing in your pre-determined objectives and grading criterion. The University of Michigan’s College of Engineering website lists in more detail the process to creating effective and useful rubrics.

For more information:

RubiStar
Auburn University College of Engineering - Assessment Rubrics
Guidelines for Developing Rubrics
Recommendations for Developing Classroom Performance Assessments and Scoring Rubrics
Scoring Rubrics: What, When and How?
Purdue School of Engineering and Technology - Developing Scoring Rubrics for Abet Outcomes Assessment
San Jose State University College of Engineering - Rubrics for Evaluating Student Work
University of Michigan Engineering - Rubrics, Scoring & Grading
The Landmark Project - Rubric Builder

Teaching with E-books

This year, Read an E-book Week takes place during the week of March 5-11. E-books are just what they sound like - electronic books. The e-book industry has grown significantly over the last few years, and continues to expand. E-books are available on a variety of topics, from dictionaries and reference materials to textbooks and novels. Many e-books are electronic versions of their paper counterparts, but some are exclusively electronic.

Electronic books can be read on a computer, laptop, or handheld device (like a Palm Pilot or Pocket PC.) E-books are available in a wide variety of formats, and are typically read with the Adobe or Microsoft e-book reader, which can be downloaded for free. Some handheld devices or publishers may require a specific reader which is typically downloaded from their web site.

The Gordon Library also maintains a collection of over 25,000 e-books that are not in the public domain. Depending on the collection, these e-books can be downloaded or read online from WPI computers or the proxy server. Some sites may require you to create an account, so be sure to read the details for each collection. The library's collection includes a variety of subjects including how-to books on popular desktop software (Books 24 X 7,) computer programming (Safari Techbooks, including popular O'Reilly titles) and engineering and math (EngNetBase and MathNetBase.) The ebrary and Netlibrary collections feature a wider variety of topics.

E-books are a great way to access material in a convenient format. Many e-books are searchable, unlike their paper counterparts, which can help save you time for research or reference. Depending on your subject area, using e-books in your courses may help save your students money, and some textbook publishers are beginning to offer electronic versions of their books at a reduced price. E-books are also a great way to self-publish for you and your students. If you are working on the Great American Novel in your spare time, or would like to have students create an e-book as part of a course assignment, e-books can be created relatively easily. If you are interested in using e-books in your teaching, contact atc-ttc@wpi.edu.

For more information:

Teaching with Technology Research Corner

In a recent study published in Physics Education, Cox and Junkin (2002) found that by asking lab groups online follow-up questions after completing a lab, and then having those groups discuss their answers with other students, increased student learning. In addition, the technique resulted in an increase in students’ readiness to communicate, and a heighten ability to apply concepts to novel situations.

Access the article, entitled Enhanced Student Learning in the Introductory Physics Laboratory, from: www.iop.org/EJ/article/0031-9120/37/1/305/pe2105.pdf.

Teaching with Technology News

New Content in the Teaching with Technology Collaboratory

New How-to Center topics on Images and Graphics. – Learn about scanning images, using the digital cameras in the ATC equipment inventory, and graphic file formats.

Teaching Technology Fellowship Program Now Accepting Proposals

The Division of Academic Affairs and the Information Technology Division are now accepting proposals for the 2006-2008 Teaching Technology Fellowship program. The Fellowship program is a vehicle for faculty members to develop innovative technological solutions to instructional challenges they are face in their classrooms. The deadline for the 2-3 page proposal is March 17, 2006.

In addition to the individualized support a faculty member receives as a Fellow, an awards package of $4500 is also provided to each accepted faculty member.

Details about the program, as well as copies of the RFP, are available at http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/ATC/Collaboratory/Programs/TTF/application.html.

Teaching with Technology Showcase

A Teaching with Technology Showcase featuring an overview of various technologies and presentations by WPI Faculty is being planned for D-term. Watch your e-mail Inbox for the details coming soon!

Professional Development Opportunities

Event Announcement

On April 24th, 2006 Holy Cross will host a 1-day event focusing on the implications of Culture, Gender, and Identity on online learning environments. The session, organized by WPI Instructional Technologist Matt Laliberte, is only $79 for the day, which includes lunch.

A superb group of four speakers, including WPI Director of Diversity Affairs Dr. Calvin Hill, will be leading sessions throughout the day. Please join us for an informative and enlightening event!

Additional details, including registration information, is available at http://www.nercomp.org/events/event_single.aspx?id=347.

Opportunities Outside WPI

NERCOMP 2006, March 20-22, 2006, Worcester, MA.
Connecting Technology & Liberal Education: Theories and Case Studies, April 5, 2006, Amherst, MA
Lilly East 2006: Conference on College and University Teaching, April 7-8, 2006, Newark, DE.
Are Digital Images Changing Teaching in Liberal Arts Colleges?, April 24, 2006, Worcester, MA.
HigherEd BlogCon 2006: Transforming Academic Communities with New Tools of the Social Web, held online from April 3–28, 2006.

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Last modified: Mar 03, 2006, 09:23 EST