Based on her years experience as the director of the writing program at Richmond University and as an Epiphany Project Leader, Hickey discussed the ways that faculty and administration can work together to promote new ways of using technology in teaching. The key, of course, is communication. Faculty involved must communicate with both their colleagues and the administration, because they can only offer support if they understand what is happening. At the same time, though, Hickey pointed out that administrations that desire change have a responsibility to understand what they want and to support faculty as they implement it.

Below is the handout Hickey passed around, containing many practical suggestions for faculty, department chairs, and administators involved in the often bewildering process of pedagogical change.


help!! 
Getting Support from Them and Giving Support to Each Other
 
Dona Hickey, University of Richmond
 dhickey@richmond.edu
 http://www.richmond.edu/~wac/
 
Upper level administrators—deans and provosts—can help faculty by: Program administrators and department chairs can help faculty by: Faculty can help themselves by: Your colleagues in Technical Services: Meet and Talk with them. But How?
Tell them what you want to be able to do in the classroom. Not, "Do we have Webchat or newsgroups? But, "I'd like my students to be able to send messages to each other that everyone in class can read on-line." In other words, talk about the activity instead of naming the software or platform. Technical Services may not have just that software or platform, but they may be able to simulate it with what's available on campus now.

Please see materials prepared by Trent Batson and Dickie Selfe in the accompanying handouts for this session. Their work informs my own.

 

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