Web 2.0 and faculty development

[Gayla Keesee]

I am currently doing research on how we can effectively use Web 2.0 tools in faculty development programming. I am thinking that Web 2.0 tools have five distinct functions: communication, collaboration, documentation, generation, interaction/exchange.

I would be interested BOTH in examples of how any of you (or your institution) might be using blogs, wikis, slideshare, etc to develop online communities of practice and any empirical research or articles on the use of Web 2.0 tools and faculty development in general.

[Dr. Jacqui Cyrus]

Hi Gayla:
I am interested in the responses that arrive to this query. I have tried a few things that have elicited the response that I had hoped for. Recently, I have begun a BLOG, Tech Notes, for my fellow colleagues [http://technotes.edublogs.org/] in an attempt to engage them in dialogue about technology tools that might interest them and also just sharing bits and pieces of campus information. I have been far less than successful in engaging any of the five distinct functions you list.

Let's see what our College 2.0 colleagues have to say and suggest.

-j-

[Gayla Keesee]

Hi, Jacqui:
I'm just now getting around to looking at your blog. You indicated that you have not been successful in engaging the faculty in any of the distinct functions I mentioned. This is my thought. The information in your blog is great! However, it does not engender discussion. Online discussions are much like face-to-face discussions: they require preparation and active management in order to facilitate learning. However, added complexities exist in the online environment, such as getting faculty comfortable with the technology and helping them to communicate clearly without the aid of nonverbal communication cues. In this way, blogs are similar to online discussion forums in course management systems.

Adult learners seek relevance and just-in-time training. Perhaps you could incorporate your blog as part of your structured professional development activities--as a requirement for a course, activity, etc. Have you had a workshop or activity that introduced blogging as an educational practice? This would serve to orient them to online discussions--give them a purpose for participating. Consider setting up a “play” blog. Faculty who are unfamiliar with the online environment may appreciate having a virtual space in which they can experiment. Offer to delete the contents often so their “mistakes” are not kept.

At this point, your blog is primarily a repository of information. You haven't asked any challenging questions? They may feel they don't need to participate beyond lurking. Do you have stats on how many times your blog is accessed?

I hope these ideas are helpful.

[Dr. Jacqui Cyrus]

Hi Gayla:
Thanks for your responses. Actually, it is NOT my job to do any professional development; I just happen to think that I should share what I know. My job is to teach pre-service students how to integrate technology into their curricula.

I have in the past sent an email message to each faculty member with a short question and a link to the BLOG. I get absolutely no responses on the BLOG from the faculty. This BLOG endeavor is the result of trying to gather faculty together on Fridays for introductions to simple tech tools such as, BLOGs. The attendance was awful and went downhill from there. So I decided to write what I wanted to discuss.

I am now thinking of creating short 1-2 minute video clips on including one tech tool at a time into their repertoire.

Your thoughts?

[Gayla Keesee]

I think that short 1-2 minute video clips might work. I have found that early/late majority adopters prefer to be told and see a visual than to read about technology. Check out Common Craft's short videos explaining RSS, Blogging, Wikis, Social Networking... available on YouTube.

I was also wondering if perhaps a wiki would be a better way to share information. Part of the application project for my independent study research on faculty development initiatives for integrating technology is to develop three ways to help faculty learn about Web 2.0 technologies. I decided to create a PowerPoint presentation, a wiki, and a blog.

I uploaded the PowerPoint to slideshare (another Web 2.0 tool). Unfortunately, slideshare doesn't keep the transitions and music, but they now have a way to create a flash video that I'm going to work on. Here's the link to the presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/gskeesee/web-20-imagine
Current stats: 9341 views | 9 comments | 94 favorites | 1595 downloads | 38 embeds With the embeds, my slide show has even more views.

Wikispaces and pbwiki are two of the most popular wikis--free for educators. I think I'm going to go with pbwiki right now. I'm trying to decided what kind of info to include and how to arrange it. Any suggestions would be appreciated. The wiki could eventually be a collaboration with other educators and even with preservice teachers.

My concept with the blog is Conversation on Teaching and Learning--to make it more of a discussion board with comments back and forth. I tried this for a short time when I worked at Paine College and got the same response you did. Many of the faculty--even those who were attempting to integrate technology into their teaching practices--did not blog or were not familiar with blogs. Therefore, responding to a blog was not something they were going to do. I currently have my own blog that I set up as a way of reflecting on what I was learning in my Ph.D. program and in trying to work with faculty. I have found that more people have viewed than commented. There are so many blogs out there...I'm wondering if you might start with the education faculty--The Howland & Wedman article discusses an initiative that might work for your institution.

These are some of the teaching and learning blogs I've found. As you'll notice, they vary from a discussion to simply dissemination of information.
http://cgi.lib.wayne.edu/blog/otl/
http://warrick.edublogs.org/
http://123elearning.blogspot.com/
http://ctl.blog.uvm.edu/
http://ux.brookdalecc.edu/fac/tlc/fac/tlc_blog_categories.php
"Tomorrow's Professor" blog (http://amps-tools.mit.edu/tomprofblog/): A collaboration between MIT and Stanford described as "a place for discussion about teaching and learning, and general issues concerning higher education."
Cornerstone University highlights their faculty/staff blogs: http://www.cornerstone.edu/future_students/experience/blogs/faculty...

I attached a copy of my rough draft for my Knowledge Area Module (KAM) related to faculty motivations and concerns regarding adopting online teaching methods (which has bearing on integrating technology also). I haven't completed the annotated bibliography for this KAM yet.

I've also attached my annotated bibliography of 15 articles related to face-to-face, hybrid, and online professional development initiatives (some of which are included below). Most of them are descriptive rather than empirical. I haven't finished the literature review essay yet. Let me know if you would be interested in that.

Barnett, M. (2006). Using a web-based professional development system to support pre-service teachers in examining authentic classroom practice. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 14(4), 701-729.

Howland, J. & Wedman, J. (2004). A process model for faculty development: Individualizing technology learning. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 12(2).

Parr, J. & Ward, L. (2006). Building on foundations: Creating an online community. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 14(4), 755-793.

Sherer, P.D., Shea, T. P., Kristensen, E. (2003). Online communities of practice: A catalyst for faculty development. Innovative Higher Education, 27(3), 183-194.

Slavit, D., Sawyer, R. & J. Curley, J. (2003). Filling your PLATE: A professional development model for teaching with technology. TechTrends, 47(4), 35–38.

[Alev Elci]

Gayla hello,
I have also seen your mail in POD network, but didnt have chance to respond. I am also interested in faculty development using Information and Communication Technologies; which nowadays will be fitting in Web 2.0 environment. So pls collaborate on research material and responses. I am now in holidays in RI, USA. When I will be back I will give feedback further. Bye.

[Gayla Keesee]

Unfortunately, I have had little response except from those who also expressed an interest in my research and in my collating the responses. I'm wondering if this is a new concept--that faculty development is still tradition bound.

[Alev Elci]

No dont worry... There are some work done:) I will send you the reserach links, for the time being few of the links are in http://delicious.com/alevelci

[Jaime Caro]

Hello Gayla,
You started the topic I am interested in. I will benefit a lot from this. I work for a k-12 school in Colombia, not as a teacher, but leading quality and technology programs. One of the programs is web 2.0 literacy for teachers. We started last August, with a 2-days workshop facilitated by two american experts, Chris Bigenho and Rhond Blackburn. Now I am facilitating a weekly workshop to follow up. I am teaching them to use blogs, thinking that if teachers write on their own successful pedagogical experiences, they will share with the faculty a wisdom that is usually hidden. Then the faculty will benefit from the best of everyone. The curriculum is organized by areas and subjects, and inside subjects there are standards and objectives. If teachers can realize how to best handle these objectives and write about it, there will be a forum around that and an impressive improvement should follow. Once teachers are writing, the next step is to stimulate commenting and finnally bringing these topics, in addition to the class observation records, to the academic area committees. On the other hand, we are constructing institutional tests to assess students progress towards objectives, plus a database we have built with the gradings of every evidence in every objective. With that information we should be able to see a numerical evidence of the improvement (or lack of it) that should also be discussed in the committees and related to teaching methods and approaches. We are following ideas from the "Data Wise" approach of Harvard University, plus the use of web 2.0.

[Malinka Ivanova]

Hello Gayla, I am interested in Web 2.0 technologies and their adoption in the teaching/learning processes in Higher education as you. My research I summarized in some publications, you can check them at: Learning ePortfolio Deployment in Social Network NING, Knowledge Capturing in Web 2.0, Start Pages as Environments for Self-Organized Learners. Also, I interested in your exploration and experience. Maybe you will share somewhere. Sincerely, Malinka

[Lisa M Lane]

Hi Gayla,

I am faculty, teaching history, but helped create our faculty development for online instructors. Participation has been a struggle, partly because they want information, but still seem to need in-person workshops. However, I have taught several in-person workshops about using Web 2.0, and in fact will be doing one on Monday.

For the whole program, I created a Moodle site. Feel free to mosy over from http://www.miracosta.edu/onlineteaching and get an account to the site to see what has been done so far. I have focused on finding out which faculty are using these tools, and having them present workshops. We've begun a Third Thursday online session in Elluminate where we share tools and uses, but they have been sparsely attended, and mostly by people who are already interested.

I don't think all this answers your question, because aside from my blog (which isn't only for them), we're not yet using web 2.0 to create a collaborative community of practice, with the exception of our new certificate program, which requires instructors to blog their progress, with the feed shared to the Moodle site. That said, it is an important goal, but I'm not getting the sense of overall readiness yet.

[Gayla Keesee]

I have started a wiki in pbwiki entitled Teaching and Learning Resources. This wiki is designed to be a "toolkit" of online information and resources. I invite you to take a look. If you are interested in collaborating in the development of this resource, click the request access button. http://teachinglearningresources.pbwiki.com/

Gayla

[Kara Vikers]

I am a tutor at the university in Smithfield and I want to start a blog for my students. Unfortunately I am a newbie in the field of web 2.0, Blogs and so on but I am totally interested in this topic. I am of the opinion that it would be a good idea to use a Blog as a kind of teaching aid. What do I have to do in order to start a new blog? Would appreciate help. Thank you in advance