Voices
from Participants in the 2000 Conference
All anonymous quotations that appear below are drawn from various forums in "Talking toward Techno-Pedagogy: A Collaboration across Colleges and Constituencies." Bryn Mawr College, May, 2000.
They have been
excerpted from
"Unrolling Roles in Techno-Pedagogy: Toward New Forms
of Collaboration in Traditional College Settings", by Alison Cook-Sather,
Bryn Mawr College. The complete article is in Innovative Higher Education,
volume 26, number 2, 2001.
"I've had
professors that did everything in PowerPoint and I slept through the whole
class. Then I'd have professors that have strictly lectured and it was
the best class I'd ever had. So it's all about teaching style and you have
to learn what works best for each student involved. But technology is not
necessarily the greatest thing on earth." (Student Participant, Day 2,
morning)
"People will
come and participate and take risks in a 'virtual reality' that they wouldn't
take in the real world, but then get enough confidence to take the risk
in the actual reality." (Facilitators' Debriefing, May 25, 2000)
"[I]t was useful
to have concentrated time to think through different people's roles." (Information
Technologist, Final Feedback Form)
"[People] that
I have never seen on campus" [could begin to talk]." (Librarian, Final
Feedback Form)
"As a member
of computing services it becomes so easy to function solely within the
confines of our day to day maintenance of the critical college functions
that I find I do not focus on the components of technology that really
enhance the curricular mission of our institution. What has inspired me
most over the past few days is the understanding that viewing the faculty/library/IT/student
groups as a team - we can work together to create opportunities to use
technology in a more integral fashion in a way that empowers all the players,
and ultimately enriches the student experience." (Information Technologist,
Feedback, Day 3)
"...myths
and stereotypes were broken down." (Librarian, Final Feedback Form)
"We have a
much better understanding in my group of the roles each person in the group
and of the value of collaboration." (Student, Final Feedback Form)
"Sometimes
you're talking to a professor and maybe it's registering but sometimes
it's in one ear. [But here] maybe they thought they could actually benefit
from this…that they were going to be better teachers or more fun in the
classroom…I think there were many moments when [professors realized that
talking with a] student ahead of time saves you the anxiety of planning
a course that may or may not work. To realize that is a really liberating
thing and I think that happened for a couple of people and I don't think
they [had] imagined that as a possibility..." (Student, Final Feedback)
"We moved from
roles of reactivity to proactivity." (Librarian, Final Feedback)
"How can I
access the student voice in planning?" (Information Technologist, Final
Feedback)
"The student
participation…was really invaluable to me as a faculty member because even
though you have [course] evaluations, here we are talking about this stuff
and thinking about it and right there you've got this sense of, well, no
that's not going to work at all." (Professor, Day 4, morning)
"I realize
that I'd rather have more student input about what kind of resources they
think are good." (Librarian, Day 4, morning)
"One of the
things we were talking about too is creating a course with the students…training
them to do web development and web support for faculty."
(Information
Technologist, Day 4, afternoon)
"How can I
get faculty to teach me about their teaching/research goals instead of
them just asking me to teach them about technology?" (Information Technologist,
Dinner, Day 1)
"Who has the
authority to make suggestions to professors?" (Information Technologist,
Dinner, Day 1)