Learning Topic

Learning Problems

Technology

Development

Integration

Evaluation

Multimedia for Engineering Education

CaMILE

Classroom 2000

Algorithm Animations

Additional Cases

Integrating educational technology into your classroom is more than just making it available to your students. Educational technology that is not carefully integrated probably won't get used much -- and it's the activity of integration, of re-thinking your course and your pedagogy, that probably has as much benefit as any technology.

Below is a discussion of some of the issues in integrating technology into an undergraduate classroom:

Fitting the Curriculum to the Technology

Some technologies may not make a whole lot of curricular impact, like electronic mail. But others, like Kurt Gramoll's multimedia work or Farrokh Mistree's Design-Learning Simulator, may require a substantial change in curriculum.

• Does the technology structure and present concepts in the same way that you currently do?

  For example, some early Geometry tools tried to change the two-column Geometry proof format. Teachers avoided these tools because their experience and all the textbooks were incompatible. Maybe the new structure and representations are even better than those that you currently use. Structure and presentation is an important issue to address.

• Does the technology have an impact on assignments?

  Case studies can be a tremendous asset to students, but they have an impact on assignments. Are your typical homework problems already answered in the case study? Can you come up with new assignments that build on the case studies? In some classes using case studies, the students have been able to tackle more complex (and more interesting!) problems earlier in the course because a case study was available to serve as a starting point and to provide a structure.

Fitting the Classroom Style to the Technology

Electronic mail, Mark Guzdial's CaMILE, and other communications technologies may have more of an impact on your teaching and interaction style than on your curriculum or assignments. Are you prepared to get questions from students on literally a daily basis? Are you willing to look at work (submitted as an electronic mail attachment) before it is officially turned in as an assignment?

And if students can now broadly communicate with one another outside of class, how comfortable are you with students answering one another's questions? While acting as a teacher is a terrific way for students to learn, you may have concerns about the accuracy of the advice that students provide to one another. Can you or your TAs review student discussions for accuracy?

Finally, if students can now broadly communicate with one another, you need to be all the more careful in communicating standards of ethical practice in your classroom. Can students talk to one another about their homework? Can they share approaches? Can they point one another to resources on the Web and elsewhere?

Setting Expectations

Once the technological Pandora's Box is open (and perhaps, for higher education, it has been open for several years), students may become more demanding consumers, asking you to try new things or to allow use of new technologies. If you buy into email, will you also buy into real time chats during office hours for students who can't leave work? If you buy into case studies, will you also buy into students sending you Web addresses of related work for posting on a course homepage? From our perspective, these are amazing events -- they are the signs of students taking charge of their education and actively seeking to improve it. But be prepared! Undergraduate faculty have typically had the role of orchestrating learning. Students holding the tools of educational technology in their hand may start to attempt solos -- and since you won't be by their side as they enter the workforce, playing solos is a great way to start a career of lifelong learning!

Use Existing or Roll Your Own

A big question about educational technology integration is whether you're willing to integrate the technology yourself, or if you prefer to "roll your own" and engage in educational technology development. There are some excellent tools for developing multimedia and Web-based applications, so you may be tempted to simply pick up a copy of Director and start producing your own materials.

But educational technology is about more than just building media. It's also about curriculum, representing activities and content, and designing interaction. It involves consideration of bandwidth requirements, cross-platform delivery, and graphics file formats. And, of course, careful evaluation of what you are producing.

It may be more appopriate to look for a handful of off-the-shelf materials, some tailoring by you, and perhaps some small technology development (e.g., Web pages, example MATLAB or Mathematica files) to marry the pieces.

On the other hand, it may be entirely appropriate to roll your own, and without significant effort. A case library of successful student projects requires just a little implementation effort each quarter, but the overall effect is the collection of useful educational materials. The challenge in this case is indexing: How do you help students to find the most useful materials at the most useful times.