n o t e s&NEWS Center for Teaching, Learning & Technology
Volume 5, Issue 2 • August 2004
Finding the Right Support: Outsourcing
by Dan Madigan
Many faculty use technology in their course to enhance the way students are learning in a particular content area. While using technology can be an effective way of learning about a concept or idea, it may also cause problems when a faculty member has to take time out of their course instruction to teach specific software to their students. Here is the problem. You want to have your students learn the latest technology and how it can enhance their learning in your content area. Yet, you don’t want to take too much class time to teach the technology at the expense of learning the necessary content. Teaching can really be a Catch 22. Finding the right balance between teaching the technology and teaching students to think critically about content is not always easy. Many issues come to mind. What do you do, for example, if some of your students already know the technology you require for your course? When would redundancy be a waste of their time…and yours? You may want to think about this issue in terms of outsourcing part of your teaching. No, we are not advocating that faculty shirk their responsibilities as teachers. But we would like them to think about this technology issue in a broader sense.
ITS supports the Student Technology Center so that they can provide workshops and one-on-one tutoring to students in need of assistance in learning software and hardware (such as video and still cameras) that their instructors might be requiring them to learn for a course. Faculty should take advantage of this service and “outsource” some the teaching that can be done well by this support group. Another way of outsourcing is to have your students learn the technology on their own through tutorials that either you create (CTLT can show you how to create video tutorials) or that are created by Atomic Learning for BGSU students. Your students can log on to the ITS supported Atomic Learning site at http: //www.atomiclearning.com and do the tutorials on their own. These great tutorials help students learn about such software as Excel, Microsoft Word, iMovie, Photoshop, PowerPoint and more. So, do yourself and your students a favor, when you are having trouble balancing the teaching of content with teaching the technology in your course. Where you feel it is appropriate, try outsourcing!
Most faculty know where to go to learn about the latest technology and how to integrate it into their coursework. CTLT, for example, conducts workshops and works one on one with faculty to help them learn about new technologies and how to use it for professional development and teaching. What many faculty don’t know is that there is a unit on campus that provides a similar service for students. That is, the Student Technology Center in Saddlemire, 372 9277.
check out our workshop SCHEDULE
on page two!
To access the Atomic Learning Tutorials from off campus, you will be propted for an ID and password. Call the Student Technology Center at (419) 372-9277 and they will provide you with the logon information.
201 University Hall • (419) 372-6898 • http://ctlt.bgsu.edu