Summer 2009 TLT Faculty Fellows begin investigations into teaching tools
Four Penn State faculty members are working with TLT staff to explore technologies and their potential for learning.
Four faculty members have been named 2009 Faculty Fellows by Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT): Carla Zembal-Saul, Christopher Long, Ellysa Cahoy, and Stuart Selber. The Fellows have begun collaborating with TLT staff to investigate the potential of a particular technology to enhance student learning. The Penn State community can follow their progress and reflections throughout the course of the summer by visiting http://blogs.tlt.psu.edu/fellows/. Following is a brief summary of the goals for each project.
Blogs as Portfolio: Carla Zembal-Saul, associate professor of education, will be building on her prior research regarding the use of blogs for student e-portfolios. Particular points of interest will include taking advantage of the social aspect of blogging to encourage students to participate in professional discourse communities, and to create a means of periodically capturing “snapshots” from students’ e-portfolios showing evidence of learning for assessment purposes. TLT staff collaborating with the project will be Cole Camplese, Brad Kozlek, Chris Stubbs, and Jeff Swain.
Digital Dialogue: Christopher Long, associate professor of philosophy, will be exploring how digital expression and Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs can enhance philosophical scholarship. He will focus on the Socratic practice of politics. Socrates would frequent the public marketplace, or agora, where he would dialogue with young people on the question of the good and the just. Long’s project will involve development of a digital “agora,” where dialogue around his philosophical research can be fostered. TLT staff collaborating with Long will be Allan Gyorke, Matt Meyer, and Ryan Wetzel.
Digital Literacy Acquisition: Ellysa Cahoy, assistant head, Library Learning Services, will investigate student digital literacy acquisition as part of her ongoing research. Throughout the course of the project, she plans to develop workshops, instructional materials, and curriculum support materials to assist the Digital Commons, the Libraries, instructors, and others in helping students develop digital literacy competencies. This will include outlining recommended instructional practices for the appropriate use of multimedia. TLT staff collaborating with Cahoy will be Chris Millet, Hannah Inzko, and Kim Winck.
Changing Nature in Online Instruction Sets: Stuart Selber, associate professor of English and science, technology, and society will examine the changing nature of instruction sets in online environments, including “Web 2.0” environments such as wikis, online user forums, and others. He will research and develop a rhetoric for online/electronic instruction sets which can be applied by teachers of technical writing and by instructional designers responsible for documentation, a framework largely lacking in many current technical writing textbooks. TLT staff collaborating with Selber will be Elizabeth Pyatt, Erin Long, and Mary Janzen.
For more information on the TLT Faculty Fellows program, visit http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/category/faculty-fellow/.
