IT Training
Motivate!
There are any number of ways to nudge your faculty toward confident and inspired Education 3.0 technology use. Here are some approaches to model by.
Mary Jo Garcia Biggs never really considered herself much of a technophile. Sure, the assistant professor at Texas State University-San Marcos knew her way around a web page, but for years, she was painfully aware of all of the technologies she didn't know much about. More times than not, the limitations of her knowledge frustrated the heck out of her. But everything changed in 2005. As a faculty member in Texas State's School of Social Work, Biggs was eligible to participate in the institution's annual two-week Technology Integration Workshop. From 9:30 am to 4 every afternoon, Biggs and 14 other "students" learned everything from how to master PowerPoint, to how to get the most from videoconferencing. Biggs says she also mastered the basics of developing an online class.
"Everything I learned there, I use today," says the educator, who received a $1,200 stipend for participating in the program. "Before I took the workshop, I was interested in technology, but I didn't really 'get' it. Now I truly recognize the benefits, and am doing everything in my power to [bring those benefits to my students]."
Texas State is not the only school inspiring faculty to increase their tech savvy. Across the country, a growing number of colleges and universities are offering similar programs and stipends designed to incent educators to embrace technology. The thinking behind most of these programs is simple: By offering educators an immediate motivation to embrace technology, colleges and universities hope to ensure that their best teachers will implement the latest and greatest technologies, and innovate with them, to bring new levels of learning to their students. In other words: Everybody wins.
In fact, incentive programs come in many different flavors and run the gamut from educator workshops to investments in tech incubator classrooms, grants (see "Piece of the PIE"), and more. Whatever the strategy, one thing is certain: Incenting tech savvy is one way to keep curriculum moving full tilt toward Education 3.0.
At the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, faculty members can receive grants from $500 to $2,500 for technology innovation, and the school also offers an annual Teaching Excellence Award funded by Bank of America.