Back See this section in context: Criterion 3 Core Component 3B

3B.4: Support for Faculty Use of Technology

Sauk maintains an Instructional Technology Office  (IT) that is charged with the combined task of keeping abreast of technological advances and curriculum design principles that can enhance teaching and learning and of delivering that information to the faculty. To that end, the Director of Instructional Technology makes information about teaching and learning available in various formats:

• Website: The IT webpage carries links to a variety of information sources, including online tutorials, many of which have been developed in-house; archived training sessions; and links to current research on topics related to teaching and learning.
• Face-to-face training: IT surveys faculty on their training needs and offers a regular schedule of workshops, which include the use of applications, course design, use of multimedia to enhance learning, open educational resources, the Internet, and software tools for the classroom. Each semester IT distributes a training schedule booklet that lists and describes the face-to-face scheduled sessions for the semester. Faculty may attend as many of these free sessions as they wish. Many of these sessions can also be attended via webinars, which are then stored for future use.
• Instructional Technology Center (ITC): The ITC is a specially equipped computer lab space for faculty to visit for consultation with instructional designers, to attend a training session, to receive one-on-one instruction, to get help with course management system features, to use specialized software, or to have a quiet place to work on course design with assistance near at hand.
• Innovative Internet Instruction (i3): IT offers a free eight-week online workshop called i3 (Innovative Internet Instruction). The course presents online teaching strategies for hybrid, web-enhanced, and fully online classes through hands-on experience in course design and delivery. The i3 Workshop is required of any faculty new to teaching online and is open to all faculty who are interested in online teaching or in enhancing their live courses with online support. Faculty earn two promotional hours for completing i3. Since its beginning in 2005, 21 full-time faculty, 25 adjunct faculty, one staff, and one community member have completed the i3 Workshop.
• Technology show and tell: Periodically, IT will hold a tech show and tell where faculty who have attended a conference can share any technology that they have learned about. Various web tools have been presented such as use of Second Life for office hours, cell phone polling, Google Docs, etc.
• Classroom Technology Showcase: An annual showcase is held during the spring faculty workshop day. The Showcase is held in the East Mall where IT and Informational Services staff and various faculty present different technologies that are currently being used in classrooms and around the campus. The technology showcase, which began in 2003, had almost a dozen faculty demonstrate classroom technologies at the 2010 showcase. The technology showcase provides an opportunity for faculty to network with faculty from other disciplines and to learn about new classroom technologies. In fall 2009, an adjunct version was added just prior to their evening orientation session.

As a result of the efforts of the IT staff, the faculty is well-equipped to enhance learning by incorporating solid course design principles and the latest in classroom technologies. According to the fall 2010 survey, 100% of faculty respondents indicated that they use the features that are available in technology-enhanced classrooms. Here are examples of several faculty who are using some of the latest technologies in their classrooms:

• A criminal justice professor uses polleverywhere.com to conduct in-class cell phone surveys on controversial topics.
• A physics professor uses clicker technology to assess physics students’ retention of class presentations.
• A history professor has transferred teaching notes, texts, and resource materials to a tablet computer.