Greg Beatty writes:Hmm. Where to begin. I started integrating a range of new technologies into my teaching six or seven years ago. At the beginning I used it as a subset of a larger class, or, frankly, to do an end run around a recalcitrant advisor.
I was teaching in Iowa's Rhetoric program at the time. I had done lots of FTF tutoring, and had been teaching in the traditional classroom for three years. I had studied composition theory and practice with Richard Lloyd-Jones and Sharon Crowley. When I switched over to teaching in the Rhetoric program, I found that I had to have all of my handouts approved by my teaching advisor (who had a slow turn around time)--and that I had a strictly limited photocopy allotment. Anything I wanted to handout quickly or without an argument I moved to email. At that time I had to teach a number of my students how to use email, and we quickly moved to treating electronic communication as a new arena for rhetorical analysis, starting with our own email.
When I moved to teaching in a fully online environment, I did so first for Baker College, then for the University of Phoenix, two of the largest online programs in the nation. My experience there was at the other end of the spectrum. Rather than feeling my way along, and meeting students in person to explain virtual assignments, I was now operating in a completely virtual classroom. Each school had an extensive faculty training program that combined assigned readings on electronic pedagogy and mediation with practice teaching, mentoring, and critique of all documents intended for students. We were guided away from any humor that might be misinterpreted, and towards what seemed like an overarticulation of assignments. We were guided towards a specific frequency of response to students, and very pragmatic suggestions were made for things like handling the flood of emails this would produce.
So, I've been a minor pioneer, and been trained in an extensive and extended program. At that time both Baker and UOP's faculty training lasted six weeks. We then observed an entire online class from start to finish, with access to the experienced instructor, so we could ask questions.
I'm now onto the next stage. I just completed a training program for Pepperdine's Connected University, which provides training for instructors looking to integrate new technologies into their teaching.