TLTC
Teaching and Learning With Technology Center

 
of the
Center for Teaching and Learning
Georgia State University
ITC
Instructional Technology Center
Library
GSU libraries
UETS
University Educational Technology Services
GSU Senate:
IS&T: Information Systems & Technology Committee
TLTS
IS&T Teaching and Learning with Technology Subcommittee
 
October 23, 2003
Possibilities for improving teaching and learning
Category/objective
Ways to implement
Improve distribution of course materials and course presence

Eliminate trips to the copy shop to deliver master copies

Avoid freezing course materials at the beginning of the course

Establish course presence on the Web

Put syllabi and other course materials on the web (with proprietary materials behind passwords in accordance with the Regents' Guide to Understanding Copyright and Educational Fair Use):

Select the formats of web pages depending on the intended uses, e.g., html, pdf, doc

Develop students' fluency with information resources

Identify information needs

Determine what resources meet the needs

Instruct students in using/evaluating information resources

Improve communication among course participants

Avoid being deluged by student email

Guide students to post questions, responses to others' questions, and comments to bulletin boards, e.g., in WebCT. In multi-section courses, send students to the same bulletin board.

Promote collaboration and facilitate students learning from each other

Provide ways for students to answer each other's questions

Give students access to a bulletin board, e.g., in WebCT, with appropriate discussion topics

Have students analyze and comment on each other's work

  • Require students to publish their work in WebCT and evaluate other students' work
  • Require students to develop learning portfolios in the form of web texts and publish them on the web, e.g., in WebCT

Enable teams to assess their processes

Provide team process self-assessments in WebCT on a per team basis and make results available in WebCT
Enable active, learner-centered approaches to learning

Support problem-based learning (PBL)

Guide students to develop and publish learning plans (examples: learning plan phases, plan template) on the web, e.g., in WebCT

Support constructivist approaches to learning

Stage problems and team process guides on the web, in WebCT or on a web site (example )

Make students responsible for their own learning

Prompt students to identify what they need to learn in order to demonstrate mastery of learning objectives

Ensure students reflect on what they learn

Require students to develop learning portfolios in the form of web texts  and publish them on the web, e.g., in WebCT

Provide self-assessments of mastery for learning objectives

Make practice exercises and mastery assessments (with appropriate feedback) available in WebCT

Support administrative aspects of instruction

Ensure quality of teaching and learning in multi-section courses

Reduce course administrative burden

Use online capabilities of WebCT for distributing course materials, maintaining gradebooks, receiving student submissions, grading objective questions, returning graded work
Stay aware of students that might not be making progress

Monitor students' use of course materials

Track student postings to bulletin board topics, access to content (in WebCT), and trajectory on self-assessments
Deter plagiarism (more strategies)

Decrease likelihood of receiving plagiarized work

 

  • Make assignments that are too new to have accumulated plagiarizable files by selecting contexts from current events and putting them on the web only at the beginning of the preparation period
  • Require progress submissions, e.g., outline and successive drafts

Decrease likelihood of not detecting plagiarized work

Use web services to compare student work with preexisting texts
Copyright © 2003 Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. All rights reserved. Prepared by A. Faye Borthick, borthick@gsu.edu.