Innovators Among Us: How UW Faculty are Enhancing Teaching with Technology
March 2013
Drawing on tools ranging from Twitter to ‘clickers’, online and hybrid class formats, and pedagogical techniques such as ‘flipping the classroom’, faculty from all three University of Washington campuses are working to support and challenge their students. This report, part of an ongoing series on transformative changes in higher education, highlights the work of 16 UW faculty members who are using innovative methods to engage students in the digital age.
“Every day I walk into a very lively and exciting classroom that challenges me but challenges students at least as much. That’s exciting. Most days I have to remind students when class is over. That never happened when lecturing,” said Linda Martin-Morris, a principal lecturer in the Department of Biology at UW Seattle.
“Flipping the classroom opened up possibilities that have made teaching much more exciting and rewarding. To go back to the standard chalk and talk (or more accurately now, ‘PowerPoint and talk’) with largely unengaged students is now inconceivable,” said Douglas Wills, associate professor in the Milgard School of Business at UW Tacoma.
These faculty members are meeting and exceeding the challenges presented by President Michael Young in his October 2012 annual address to the university, in which he urged UW faculty, staff, and students to be leaders and innovators in the changing world of public higher education.
While outlining the vision for Tomorrow’s University Today, President Young said, “Students of today are very different from students when most of us were in college. Technology has not only shaped the way they acquire information, but also how they process it, how they learn, and how they develop intellectually.” As President Young observed, new technology tools may allow us to expand “the range and number of truly transformative intellectual experiences for our students. We have the capacity to expand dramatically access to our university so that we can reach many more people and change their lives for the better.”
Each of these brief profiles shows how students and instructors are benefiting from using technology to enhance pedagogy, and shares advice to peers interested in exploring new tools or class formats. The techniques employed fall into three main categories: online-enhancement of face-to-face classes, hybrid classes in which face-to-face time is reduced by the addition of online components, and courses that are entirely online with the possible exception of occasional face-to-face meetings.
The profiles refer to technologies such as learning management systems, new formats such as massive open online courses, and new practices such as flipping the classroom. The definitions below explain these innovations in more detail.
What are LMSs, MOOCs, and flipping?
Learning Management Systems (LMSs) are online integrated software packages — such as Canvas, Moodle, or Blackboard — that enable instructors to manage a course, deliver materials and resources, and promote student interaction. An LMS supports online discussion, quizzing, submission of assignments, sharing of files, and assessment and grading. Following a pilot program, Canvas was selected as the UW’s preferred, centrally supported LMS. Many faculty members still use Catalyst Web Tools as a hub for course materials, but Catalyst is a collection of separate web-based tools for collaboration and communication, not an integrated LMS package
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have recently captured the attention of the higher education community, the media, and the public. The Chronicle of Higher Education describes MOOCs as “classes that are taught online to large numbers of students, with minimal involvement by professors. Typically, students watch short video lectures and complete assignments that are graded either by machines or by other students.”2 Currently, the majority of MOOCs are free and initial enrollments can number in the thousands to hundreds of thousands, with students participating from all over the world. Typically, only a fraction of students complete the entire course. Most MOOCs are the result of partnerships between universities or professors and educational companies that provide the platform. The UW has been partnering with one such company, Coursera, since July 2012. UW faculty have offered or are developing 12 UW courses on Coursera. The UW was the first university in the U.S. to offer a credit option for MOOC students to apply and pay for enhanced, instructor-led versions of the free, open courses.
Flipping the classroom refers to a collection of practices that increase active learning by allowing students to review lectures or course materials at their own pace, freeing up class time to grapple with the most challenging material in ways that rely on faculty expertise. Technologies, such as the UW-supported lecture-capture tool Tegrity, now make it possible for faculty and students to benefit from active learning, which research shows is more effective, by providing accessible alternatives to the in-class lecture, out-of-class homework model. In the flipped classroom, students review materials or watch lectures at home or in the library, while class time is spent on case studies, group projects, complex problem sets, and collaborative work, with the goal of increasing student learning through active engagement. In this model, faculty members can use class time to focus on areas that students find the most challenging.
March 2013 Feature Stories
UW resources for faculty
UW-IT offers Learning Technologies Workshops for tools such as Canvas, Tegrity, and Google Apps.
The UW Seattle Center for Teaching and Learning offers workshops and Faculty and Professional Learning Communities (FPLCs), as well as extensive resources on flipping, including a video on lecture capture using Tegrity produced by the Office of the Provost’s 2y2d Initiative. The 2y2d Initiative has also created a video about faculty and student experiences with the Canvas LMS.
UW Tacoma’s Faculty Resource Center hosts the iTechnology Fellows Initiative in Innovative Course Redesign, in which faculty ‘Tech Fellows’ redesign an existing course for the online environment.
UW Bothell’s Learning Technologies group, which bridges Information Technologies and the Teaching and Learning Center, offers the Hybrid Course Development Institute for faculty. The program is structured as a hybrid course so that faculty participants can gain insight into the experience of students taking hybrid courses.
Continuing the conversation
We welcome your comments, questions and suggestions. Please email edtrends@uw.edu.
Notes
1. For other examples of online education course classifications, see Barbara Means, Yukie Toyama, Robert Murphy, Marianne Bakia, and Karla Jones, “Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies,” U.S. Department of Education Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, Policy and Program Studies Service, revised September 2010, http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf, 5; Allen and Seaman, “Going the Distance,” 7; and UW Bothell’s Learning Technologies website: http://www.bothell.washington. edu/learningtech/elearning/hybrid-learning/about-hybrid/hybrid-at-uwb.
2. The Chronicle of Higher Education maintains an extensive website of news and trends on MOOCs, “What You Need to Know About MOOCs“ at http://chronicle.com/article/What-You-Need-to-KnowAbout/133475/