Tuesday, March 28, 2006

The Idea

I'm really excited about this group! Knowing how easy it is in our jobs to be consumed with button-pushing matters, I think it'll be great to gather to discuss themes that force us to reflect on our role in an institution of higher education—themes such as faculty culture, pedagogy, and instructional technology.

I like the idea of using themes to frame our juntos, examining one theme per junto by way of selected readings and then focusing discussions with pre-arranged questions. The "reflective" themes I had in mind are listed at right in the sidebar and are, naturally, open to revision—wanted to give us a point of departure for the first meeting.

I was thinking we could choose one person to moderate each meeting, making her/him responsible for selecting the meeting theme and reading(s), as well as for coordinating scheduling and publicizing. The moderator will kick-start the junto by revealing why s/he chose the specific reading and wrap up the junto when time's running out, allowing a few minutes for the selection of the next moderator. As you might have surmised, I've volunteered to moderate our first gathering. Lucky you.

I've reserved UMC 335 for the first Friday of the month from April through August from 8-9:30a, so if we decide to meet elsewhere or at a different time, we should give UMC Scheduling the courtesy of cancelling the reservation for that day. Whatever we can't discuss during the gathering, we can continue in the asynchronous space of this blog.

Thanks very much for participating! I look forward to our discussions, and please, please feel free to suggest/revise the themes, readings, and questions I've proposed above.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Useful Resources

Hi everyone,

I found a few interesting online educational technology resources. I thought you might want to know about them.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a blog for educational technology: http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/

That page also has a link to an interesting blog on ed tech: http://tama.edublogs.org/

Mark.

Anonymous said...

More Reading Suggestions

Hi Everyone, Here are some suggestions for our DATC Junto readings: I would like to do a thread on technology transfer.

There are a few classic readings in this area that I've found helpful to my own work as a DATC.

1. (1995) Rogers, Everitt, "Diffusion of Innovations" Fourth Ed. The Free Press. NY, NY. (we would need to select some pages out of the book to read).

2. I have an article by Rosabeth Moss-Kanter on how technology and people have to change to adapt to one another. I think it's an excerpt from this book: (1983) Moss-Kanter, Rosabeth. "The Change Masters," Simon and Schuster, NY, NY. I noticed, too, that her web page has a lot of interesting readings.

One set of readings is on learning styles: http://www.onepine.info/modlrn.htm .

(1993) Fowler, Priscilla, and Linda Levine, "A Conceptual Framework for Software Technology Transition." Software Engineering Institute Technical Report.
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/pub/documents/93.reports/pdf/tr31.93.pdf (I was Priscilla's and Linda's research assistant at the Software Engineering Institute and I helped them exploring models like this one. I think this one is so central to what we're doing right now with the egg model). (

1982) Conner, D, and R. Patterson. "Building Commitment to Organizational Change." Training and Development Journal. April. pp. 18-30. And finally, under the category of Faculty Culture, we should read the classic by C.P. Snow: The Two Cultures. I have a copy of this. I believe it came out in Atlantic Monthly in 1959.

Anonymous said...

Hi Everyone,

Here are some articles I think we should read for the DATC Junto:

Arthur W. Chickering and Steven C. Ehrmann, "Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever," AAHE Bulletin, October 1996, pp. 3–6.

National Research Council, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School, John D. Bransford, Ann L. Brown, and Rodney R. Cocking, eds. (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 1999). (It appears that some of this book is online. It has several good chapters in it).