Background for my non-MCLA readers: each May, after final grades are submitted and students have moved out of the dorms - but before faculty scoot off to their summer responsibilities - the College's Center for Academic Technology hosts a day-long conference/professional development event known as TechFest. It's a chance for faculty to see, try, and think about some of the most interesting, most current, and most relevant tech-related possibilities for teaching and research.
In past years, TechFest has been where MCLA faculty have learned about using in-class technologies like clickers or Extrons, general tools like email or ePortfolios, and project-oriented software like Powerpoint or Prezi. The event has built a positive reputation among faculty, many of whom have told me that they look forward to the new and engaging ideas they experience here at the end of a long semester.
There's so much happening in the world of #edtech these days, you might imagine that it can be overwhelming to pick a unified theme for an event like this! At present, my AT colleague and I are doing the preliminary planning and prep work for this year's event. And among the multitude of new and exciting things happening - DH, MOOCs, edugaming, tablets, analytics ... - we've chosen a theme that will serve as the unifying framework for the conference and (hopefully!) for our work in the academic year ahead.
"Meet the MCLA Student", our provisional theme, is both descriptive and hortatory: not only an informational blurb of the TechFest theme, but a call to action. One of the many reasons I am intensely glad that I keep teaching every semester is that I continually hear directly from my students. And students are telling me things that we as faculty really need to be hearing about what it means to be enrolled in our small public college today:
- how MCLA students actually react to $150 "required" textbooks, and what they really think of the "innovative" option to rent ebooks. (Hint: the scare quotes are intentional.)
- why assuming that our students are "digital natives" is both inaccurate and counterproductive.
- that students expect us to provide course materials electronically for serious reasons - not as a method to make it easier to skip classes.
- that the design of online course content can make or break its accessibility in a world of mobile access: pasting a MS Word syllabus into an LMS, or "dumping" Powerpoints, doesn't suffice.
- how faculty have the power to make simple changes that will make an enormous difference to them.
A task I'm looking forward to: interviewing some MCLA students on-camera to capture a montage of student voices that will kick off the event. Stay tuned - I'll be updating here periodically as the date approaches!
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