© Michael J. Albright, 2005

The following is based on a paper initially written by the DWU Title III Instructional Technology Specialist, Dr. Mike Albright, in 1998. He retains copyright ownership.

Why Teach with Technology?
Let's begin our answer by asking another question: What is teaching in the first place? Teaching is the process of leading students through a sequence of learning experiences that enable them to achieve course learning outcomes.

Traditionally, those learning experiences have included listening to lectures and taking notes, reading the textbook, completing homework and lab assignments, writing papers, and doing projects. Many faculty include human interaction as learning experiences, including participation in both large and small group discussions and various forms of collaborative learning activities.

Learning experiences also could include interaction with course content and other students via some form of instructional technology. It is no coincidence that these technologies are sometimes referred to as "media," because their purpose is to serve as a medium by which students experience and interact with the substance of a course.

Effective use of technology begins with effective teaching. Instructional technologies represent resources or teaching methods that facilitate learning within the broader context of a carefully structured course environment. In other words, use these technologies as instruments within a well-orchestrated course.

The "Old" Technologies
From time to time, we hear pronouncements that classroom media are dead, and that new, computer-based technologies represent the wave of the future. (That line actually was lifted almost verbatim from an e-mail message received as this paper was initially written.) We don't disagree with the latter part of that statement, but classroom media will not be dead until conventional face-to-face teaching is dead.

The last we checked, Dakota Wesleyan classrooms were full of students sitting in the conventional face-to-face teaching format. Until the lecture and its related activities cease to be a widely practiced method of teaching, a time we do not foresee until long after our current faculty start drawing their retirement pensions, classroom media in the form of what we might call the "old" technologies will continue to play important roles in university instruction.

By "old" technologies,” we mean the ones that have been around for a while, such as videotapes, overhead transparencies, 35mm slides, and even 16mm films. (McGovern Library actually has a few 16mm files in its collection, along with a projector.) What functions do these media perform in your teaching? The following certainly is not an exhaustive list.

• Provide organizational structure and facilitate note-taking. This is a classic function of overhead transparencies.
• Provide visualization of course content. Try describing the parts of a cell, or teaching methods, or theatrical set design, without some kind of visual representation.
• Take students where they otherwise could not go. This could apply to time or place. For example, video microscopy can show all students simultaneously the subject of a microscope for class discussion. Documentary films and tapes are wonderful for helping students experience actual events of times past. Can't take the students on a field trip to Antarctica? Show a videotape.
• Provide historical documentation. There are some wonderful examples out there of interviews with survivors of the Holocaust, and also Japanese internment camps in the U.S. during World War II, that are excellent for use in courses addressing multiculturalism. Another example is the recording of class events (e.g., guest speakers, student presentations) for use in subsequent classes.
• Provide stimuli for class activities. Videotapes are frequently used to provide vignettes as the stimulus for group discussions, especially in the social sciences, business, and education.

One could argue that these functions are being converted to computer-based technologies. Many faculty have moved their overheads to PowerPoint presentations that can be more easily edited and updated. Other faculty are drawing their slides from digitized, online databases, and their videos from digital media servers. But, for many purposes, the older technologies work perfectly well, and we don’t want to discourage faculty from using them.

The “New” Technologies
The “old” technologies primarily have been used in large group, classroom settings, so that all students share the same learning experiences at the same pace. Videotapes may be viewed independently in settings such as McGovern Library (which has a Preview Room for this purpose, with very comfortable seating for two), but such media normally are displayed in conventional classrooms.

With computer-based technologies, however, have come exciting new opportunities for providing learning opportunities to students. These technologies can be employed in the face-to-face classroom in various forms, but are much more likely to be found in independent learning and small group settings. Learning can take place in computer labs, dorm rooms, private homes and apartments, in the park, on the beach, or in an airplane. Even in computer labs set up as teaching facilities with instructor stations, much student work is carried out independently.

In fact, in Europe, a new trend toward “m-learning” (mobile learning) is emerging.

Newer technologies, now facilitated primarily through the Internet, allow faculty to involve students intellectually with course content in more personal and productive ways. These are “hands on” technologies. They exemplify the trend toward what is popularly known as the “student-centered” instructional paradigm because they so strongly promote active learning, collaboration, mastery of course material, and student control over the learning process.

Digital learning technologies can perform some of the same functions as conventional classroom media. Other functions go well beyond the capabilities of videotapes and transparencies. Digital technologies can:

• facilitate in-depth learning;
• promote inquiry, construction of knowledge, and development of insights;
• promote creativity and enable revision (multiple drafts) and improvement;
• provide greatly expanded access to information;
• enable students to obtain current, literally up-to-the-minute information;
• expand course discussions beyond the classroom, and enable participation by scholars/resource persons from anywhere in the world;
• customize learning experiences to meet individual student needs and accommodate differing learning styles;
• promote real-world learning that better prepares students for the workplace;
• promote learning of scholarly research tools; and
• facilitate course outreach to distant learners.