Director DATA
From
COMMON GROUND, COMMON FUTURE
Challenges
IDENTIFICATION OF PEDAGOGICAL NEEDS & GOALS, AND THE TECHNOLOGY TOOLS TO SOLVE THOSE NEEDS; TRAINING FACULTY TO IMPLEMENT THE TECHNOLOGY
SOLUTIONS
Communications Solutions
Communications Solutions:
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Professional Development
Professional Development Solutions:
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PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF FACULTY TO ENCOURAGE THE USE AND SHOW THE EFFECTIVENESS OF TECHNOLOGY
Communications Solutions
Communications Solutions
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Professional Development Solutions
Professional Development Solutions:
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USING AND CHOOSING TIME- AND COST-EFFECTIVE TECHNOLOGY FOR FACULTY & STUDENTS
Sharing Resources Solution
Sharing Resources Solution:
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Research Solutions
Research Solutions:
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Responsible Party:
Instructors/faculty |
MEETING THE NEEDS OF INDIVIDUAL STUDENTS
Sharing Resources Solution
Sharing Resources Solutions:
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Communication Solutions
Communications Solutions:
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Professional Development Solutions
Professional Development Solutions:
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Research Solutions
Research Solutions:
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BUILDING ACCOUNTABILITY INTO STUDENT SELF-LEARNING TOOLS WITH INDIVIDUAL STUDENT WORK
Communication Solutions
Communications Solutions:
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Research Solution
Research Solutions:
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Responsible Party:
Instructors, directors |
Needs
Financial Support
- Program lacks resources or funding to promote technology
- Lack of funding for subscriptions to some services
- Students are unmotivated and unprepared to spend more money on additional products
- No funds to create our own technology
- Hard to require all students to have a smart phone or purchase apps
- Some new tech cost too much to experiment with; too high of a financial risk to try multiple technologies
- University does not have a good tech infrastructure, nor experts to support the language program
- There needs to be a platform for all the FS programs to access and share materials on the basis of similar learning outcomes
New Technology
- Too much change
- Too difficult to train teachers and students on each technology
- There are too many tools; it’s hard for teachers to catch up with the tech trend
- Disconnection between students and teachers in terms of the kinds of tech they use
- Many technologies are very similar with very minute differences; difficult to know which one best suits your program’s needs
- Too many tech/apps we don’t know which one is best for a specific area: listening, reading, writing
- One software is tailored to do one thing; students and teachers need to be familiar with many apps
- Tech changes too quickly, software that works now may be gone in 2 years
- Tech develops so quickly that often times pedagogy is behind and needs to catch up
- Too much new tech can be a burden on faculty members, making them not want to use it
- It can be difficult to have sustainability and consistency across classrooms
- Teaching team doesn’t have quality control over new tech
- In developing ways to use new tech, it can be an obstacle to train instructors on how to use each one properly
Motivation
- Students not motivated to use tech outside the classroom
- Difficult to monitor students to ensure quality if they’re using tech on their own
- Difficult to find accountable tools for students to practice on their own so they can develop their weak areas
- Difficult to find tools to report tutors’ performances and train them in an un-threatening way
- How do you make people use tech if they don’t want to?
- Some language instructors lack motivation to use tech; tend to stay in their comfort zone
- We need to hear students’ preferences for using different applications
- Students need to learn how to learn outside the classroom, different tools might match the needs of different students
- If teachers aren’t willing to use the tech, it will affect the willingness of students to use it
- Students find outside the classroom work hard to complete because they often lack motivation when not in a classroom setting
- Students don’t see the benefit/learning gains of using technology
- Difficult to maintain motivation of students in an online technology setting when they don’t have the instructors on their backs about completing an assignment
Language-Specific Needs
- Some of our new tech are not applicable to other language programs due to the different language pedagogies
- Because of the non-verbal (lang/culture) nature of Arabic it is difficult to grade or teach via software. How do we solve this?
Pedagogy-Technology Integration
- There is no unified, coherent approach for developing intercultural competence
- When an assignment is finished online, it’s difficult for teachers to track whether it was done by students by themselves, without help from translators or books
- Challenging to know whether the students use the tools and whether they use them effectively, not easy to decide whether teachers should guide them or leave it to students, e.g., making flash cards
- The teaching accountability comes from the outcomes, common goals, not the teaching methods
- When adding tech to paper-based assignments, this means more work for students, and almost all of them have extra-curricula activities
- How do we solve this problem, what can we do to avoid burning out the students?
- It’s difficult to use tech in higher level classes and easier to use it at beginner levels
- How to use technology in a systematic way to supplement teaching?
- It’s hard to figure out which part of the course should be integrated with tech
- There is a lack in the instructors’ grasp in good pedagogy even before tech is introduced: this usually leads to choosing the sexy technology instead of thinking through the pedagogy
Other Considerations
- Determining which tools meet which pedagogical need, distributing this info, how to ensure its goal-driven
- ROI on time; moving to tech delivery is time-intensive for students and instructors
- Getting faculty buy-in, encouraging motivation, showing/demonstrating effectiveness of tech
- Meeting individual needs of students with different learning stles/levels not one panacea
Platforms
- It’s hard to create a platform incorporating/addressing all the materials/all the learning needs
- Too many different platforms means too many accounts/passwords, which is annoying
- There needs to be a platform for all the FS programs to access and share materials on the basis of similar learning outcomes
- It’s hard for teachers to create a great system with technology; a system that includes input: digital learning materials, feedback, etc.
Instructor needs & preferences
- Difficulty to explore tools for the first time
- Difficult to get changing instructors familiar with the tools & curriculum
- Teaching team doesn’t have any tech background to evaluate the new tech to see if it meets their needs
- Teaching is very personal; we can’t request instructor to use specific tools
- Instructors personal preference is the key point regarding which app to use
- Some faculty only willing to use the most basic tech
- Actual technical issues with computers, PPT, wi-fi creates logistical and planning issues
- Teachers who’ve been successfully teaching a course without technology may not feel the need to incorporate it into the classroom
- It’s hard to find common ground with instructors between those who want to use tech heavily/those who don’t want to use any at all
Time
- It takes time to work with instructors to teach tech literacy and confidence
- Time to prepare a lesson is too long
- Time taken to proctor ‘fun learning’ via Socrative, e.g., takes too much time which could be allocated elsewhere
- There is a problem with time consumption and effective learning: which do we compensate for, which do we lose out on?
- Searching for new tech can be slow and frustrating
- It takes a lot of time to learn the new tech and to teach other teaching team members to learn it