Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Week #4 - Education technologies and trends from the Horizon Report

Technologies Appropriate for final project

 

Camtasia and YouTube

In Week 2, I mentioned that I'd like to "flip" the classroom by having the students watch short instructional videos prior to the class session to cover some of the content that I've typically included in my Intro to Political Inquiry one-shot. By watching the videos ahead of time, more of the face-to-face class time can be devoted to more hands-on activities. Currently, I have a license for TechSmith's Camtasia that I use to create instructional videos, and I upload the videos on YouTube.

Google Docs

For my face-to-face activities, I am considering having the students work together in small groups on worksheets. Afterwards, the groups will reconfigure so that students can share what they've learned with students who worked in small groups on different topics.

In the past, I've used paper worksheets, but it's possible that shared and editable documents, like Google Docs, could help students teach each other and provide them with something to refer to after the class.

Alignment with Trends from NMC Horizon Reports

I skimmed the 2014 Library Edition and highlighted the trends and challenges that seemed most relevant to my place of work. Of the items I read in depth, I'd say that 'Embedding Academic and Research Libraries in the Curriculum' was the most relevant trend.  It specifically mentions things like sequencing information literacy instruction to help support learning throughout the curriculum. I envision the efforts that I'm putting into this sophomore level course hopefully leading to a more coordinated program involving work with upper-level courses in Political Science, too. I've had a lot of positive reception to the idea of "curriculum mapping" and identifying courses where more information literacy instruction might be beneficial, but even with a small department like Political Science it's been hard to turn that into concrete, systematic change. 

Implications Choice of Technology

I think that by giving students some of the material ahead of time asynchronously via YouTube, I can improve the learning experience in the face-to-face session. If the students view a couple of videos ahead of time on the layout of the library website and an overview of the general content we'll be covering, then it will free up time for  more hands-on learning and peer interaction. Incorporating Google Docs has the potential to make it easier for them to share with peers and refer back to aspects of the library instruction at a later date.

No comments:

Post a Comment