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How to Get Faculty on Board With Classroom Tech

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Incorporating classroom technology into the curriculum has been shown to enhance lectures and improve student participation. With all of the options on the market, there seems to be a platform for every teacher and a solution for every challenge. Students respond well to tech use in class, and response systems make it easier for professors to track individual progress and optimize in-class time.

Still, some educators are reluctant to implement tech in their classrooms, not because they don’t see the value, but because they don’t have the time to learn new tools and build new curriculum that incorporate it.

As colleges increasingly feel the need to incorporate tech in their classrooms in order to to stay competitive, what can they do when faculty are unenthusiastic about learning new software?

Adopting programs on a school-wide basis might seem like the simplest option for schools that are feeling pressure to innovate, but professors and departments need to be able to make their own decisions about tech implementation. Professors have unique teaching styles and departments have different needs, so making campus-wide decisions for them isn’t the best way to go.

Encourage Implementation With Training Seminars

Administrators and IT departments can facilitate sustainable tech adoption by encouraging enthusiasm among professors rather than requiring compliance. At the K-12 level, education consultant and professor at the University of Portland, Peter Pappas, hosted a workshop this spring for the history department at St. Margaret’s Episcopal School in California. He was able to generate interest in technology among teachers by showing them how to use Learning Catalytics and Evernote in their classrooms, how to tailor it to their specific curriculum, and what it allows them to do with their students that they couldn’t do before. At the college level, a department-specific workshop with professors who already use student response systems or analytics in their class (from other schools if necessary) could inspire faculty to adopt the tech themselves. Professors need help with technical aspects of new programs, sure, but first they need to be “sold” on the idea of using it in the classroom, enough to modify their entire curriculum.

Pay Attention to Faculty Support Needs

Once professors are motivated to incorporate new technology in their classroom, schools needs to provide them with technical support. Rolling out a new teaching format is bound to be intimidating for professors and bumpy at times, so schools should do their best to be there for them while they do their best to serve the school’s students. At the University of the District of Columbia, the IT department has used analytics on the faculty to determine where they struggle with implementing technology in their classrooms. The information they get from analytics can provide focus for future workshops and training sessions for their faculty.

Incorporating technology into any curriculum, while ultimately worthwhile, is a really big job – one that faculty will be more able to tackle with positive reinforcement and support from administrators and IT departments.


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