Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts

Department of English

375 Church Street North Adams, MA 02147 Phone: 555.555.5555 Fax: 666.666.6666 E-Mail: engdept@mcla.edu Web: eng.mcla.edu

To: All Faculty, English Department From: Nicole Love, Devan M. Monroe, Emmitt Wyche CC: Dr. Nancy Pawlyshyn Date: March 2, 2014 Re: Teaching with Technology

Memorandum
Dear colleagues, As you may be aware, President Grant attended the annual American Council on Education conference last week in Washington, DC. Yesterday, during our monthly Senior Academic Administration meeting with the president, she articulated some key takeaway points from the conference, emphasizing our need to continue along a path of innovation and adapt to the changing landscape of higher education. It is no secret that the future of the liberal arts education is in serious jeopardy and the recent economic climate has not been kind: applicant pools have diminished while expenses continue to rise. President Grant sees a special challenge for MCLA, especially considering our size compared to other, larger institutions, both in the Berkshires and across the country. In order to ensure we continue along our path of innovation and maintain our adaptability, President Grant has outlined a basic plan for implementing technology in MCLAs classrooms. The plan includes incorporating educational technology into our classrooms as instructional aids and supplements as well as to offer entire classes online; a long-term goal of creating an entirely online degree program is also included for rollout during academic year 2018-2019. Educational technology has been in use since the 1990s and other institutions similar in size and scope to MCLA have incorporated technology into their classrooms with great success. Our colleagues at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania have documented great success in using educational technology as a supplement for course lectures and classroom discussions. Use of these technologies will enable us to provide further academic support for our students who are struggling and the creation of online classrooms will allow you as faculty to exercise more flexibility and create more depth to your courses by mandating use of web discussion boards, viewings of pertinent video clips outside of face-to-face meetings, and through electronic, self-grading exams.

We, along with President Grant, feel moving toward using educational technology is a positive step forward. Studies show todays youth are extremely interconnected via the Internet and smartphones. Through implementation of these technologies, we can further engage our students, allowing them to easily and efficiently access course materials twenty-four hours a day, whether from their personal computers or a smartphone. Research surrounding these new educational platforms has been very positive thus far: students tend to be more active in courses containing a technological component, they tend to learn more in a blended (online and face-to-face) learning environment, and many students desire to use technology in connection with their course materials. There are several vendors and options for the campus community to consider over the upcoming months. The Academic Technology Committee (ATC) will initially pre-screen potential options for adoption. Once they have tested these options, they will present them to the campus community for feedback. President Grant has charged each Department Chair(s) to develop a focus group from each department to form a unified opinion on these technologies on behalf of the faculty. Based upon the response of these focus groups, the ATC will decide the most appropriate option for MCLA to adopt. Following the final selection, the ATC will hold several trainings on how to use, and make the most of, the new technology. Several in-person sessions will be offered, as well as web-based trainings and videos. The aim of these trainings is to ensure that all of MCLAs faculty are adequately prepared to actively use the new platform in the development of courses and their instructional materials. In the next few weeks, we will be sending around a survey to gauge your current computer literacy, your feelings about the steps toward using educational technology, and whether you would like to sit on the English Departments focus group. We will compile all the data, remove all identifying information from it, analyze it, and prepare a report for submission to the ATC and to President Grant. This report will help the administration take the proper steps toward making this transition as smooth as possible. If you have any questions about this campus-wide transition, please contact us immediately. Warm regards,

Nicole Love, Devan M. Monroe, and Emmitt Wyche Co-Department Chairs Department of English