Talking Toward Techno-Pedagogy 2000:

A Collaboration Across Colleges and Constituencies

Supported by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation


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)