Chapter 9. Educational Technology
As the previous chapters in Section II make clear, instructors have many choices and decisions to make in every course that require careful consideration and planning. This is equally important in the use of educational technology. The opportunities to integrate digital tools are quite vast for a college instructor, and can be overwhelming for someone who’s just beginning to explore these approaches to teaching and communicating. Whether and how you choose and combine tools depends on your course goals, your comfort with technology, the digital access available to your students and on your campus, and ethical considerations about the implications of the tools at your disposal. In this section, we’ll consider how you and your students can use educational technology in ways that will enhance students’ learning.
Getting Started
As a faculty member, you’ll be able to decide if and how you would like to integrate educational technology into your teaching. Before you start planning your course you should think about the ways you’ll want to communicate with your students, and how you might like to deploy digital tools to connect meetings, foster community, or facilitate specific kinds of writing and multimedia work.
Here are some questions that may help you better understand both your comfort level and goals with educational technology:
How comfortable am I with . . .
new tools?
fielding technical questions from my students?
organizing digital spaces?
Do I want to use technology to . . .
share course content and information with my students?
facilitate conversations beyond the classroom?
create a record of what’s happened in the course?
integrate open resources into my teaching?
help students acquire a digital skill?
create a public-facing project?
There is no “correct” answer to the question of how much digital technology you should use in your classes. Classes with few digital tools can of course be effective, as can those that integrate many tools, and this holds true across the disciplines. The key is to integrate digital tools into your teaching intentionally and purposefully.
Let’s consider an introductory history or literature course. You’ll likely be asking your students to
do a significant amount of reading and perhaps some limited research;
write short informal papers and longer, higher-stakes papers;
participate in class discussions;
attend lectures; and
complete assessments such as quizzes or exams.
It’s possible to integrate digital technology in each of these instructional moments in ways that can enhance the experience of your course for both you and your students. Digital tools can help you easily distribute reading materials and other artifacts to your students, while facilitating the storing and organizing of those materials for later revisiting and reuse during or across semesters, or across classes. Delivering materials via the web can also facilitate the easy integration of both open-access and primary source materials into the reading your students do.
Additionally, asking students to write in a networked, digital space (such as a blog) encourages them to imagine a range of audiences and gives them practice producing multi- and mixed-media compositions. The resulting archive of your class’s reflections can be useful as students are reviewing for exams, constructing longer pieces of writing, or revisiting the work of the class in subsequent years. Networked digital spaces also provide the instructor with a great opportunity to assess what’s worked and what hasn’t over the course of a semester.
Tip: Networked digital spaces provide students who are reluctant to participate in class discussions a potentially more controlled environment for engaging with their classmates, course materials, and you. Such reticence in the moment can result from a number of cultural, emotional, intellectual, social, and psychological factors. Digital spaces for informal participation can thus foster a more inclusive learning environment.
Digital Teaching Platforms at CUNY
Choosing a Platform
Digital tools determine how you deliver course content and how students engage with your course beyond the classroom walls. They can also shape how your course interacts with the larger world and foster the development of communities inside and outside the classroom. When choosing a platform to host your course, consider the affordances of the platform, what it allows you to do with content, what the platform can offer students and how these possibilities map onto the learning goals for your course. Making sure the digital affordances connect with specific learning goal for your course will help ensure that the digital tool integrates as seamlessly as possible into your course design.
There are two CUNY-wide educational technology platforms for teaching, Blackboard and the CUNY Academic Commons. Some campuses have site-specific, home-grown tools for instructors. The list below is likely not comprehensive, as each campus may offer additional tools that support teaching and learning. Check with your campus information technology or teaching and learning center to learn more.
A word about WordPress: Several platforms throughout CUNY run on an open-source web framework called WordPress. WordPress is a web-based publishing platform that, when used in college courses, can facilitate a variety of writing and multi-modal assignments and can help faculty harness the power of networks in and across their teaching. WordPress easily integrates a variety of web applications in ways that empower students and instructors to take full advantage of the open web, while also offering granular privacy and design controls that allow educators to build the kinds of digital teaching and learning spaces they want.
Blackboard
Blackboard, the CUNY-provided learning management system, is considered a “siloed” environment where the course content and student work is only accessible to participants in the course. Students cannot share their work or view other courses beyond those in which they are enrolled. Moreover, Blackboard charges CUNY a fee for use (profiting from underfunded public institutions) while also retaining access and rights to the student data and work that is turned in on the platform.
The CUNY Academic Commons
The CUNY Academic Commons, a WordPress teaching and learning platform based at the Graduate Center, is being used by faculty in a variety of graduate and undergraduate courses across CUNY. Courses can be hosted on the Commons via a course website, a course group, or both. Sites and groups offer varying affordances that will facilitate different pedagogical approaches. Faculty have used WordPress/CUNY Commons in place of and in conjunction with Blackboard. To explore open courses on the CUNY Academic Commons, visit the “Courses” tab on the Commons homepage.
Campus Specific Platforms
Blogs@Baruch (Baruch College)
Blogs@Baruch is a WordPress platform for teaching and learning at Baruch College. All faculty can sign in with their email username and password. It is maintained and supported by Baruch’s Center for Teaching and Learning. Staff in the CTL can provide hands-on guidance for setting up and running your course on the platform.
Commons in a Box (Borough of Manhattan Community College)
BMCC CBOX is a new WordPress platform based on the CUNY Academic Commons specifically for faculty and students at BMCC. Contact the BMCC E-learning Center in the Library to learn more.
OpenLab (City Tech)
City Tech’s OpenLab is a WordPress-based, open-source digital platform built by and for City Tech faculty and staff and is designed to provide opportunities for students, faculty, and staff at the primarily-commuter campus to connect and collaborate. The OpenLab is used widely for teaching and building community at City Tech. Contact the OpenLab to learn more.
QWriting (Queen’s College)
QWriting is a WordPress platform for Queens College faculty and students focus primarily, but not exclusively, on engaging students in digital writing.
Vocat (Baruch, CUNY Law)
Vocat is a video and image annotation tool. Instructors can upload images, audio, or video to be annotated collaboratively by students. Students can also upload media and receive feedback from their instructors and peers. Vocat also offers built-in rubrics to conduct assessment.
Webwork (City Tech)
http://mathww.citytech.cuny.edu/webwork2/
Webwork is a platform to facilitate online homework and quizzing for math courses at City Tech.
Digital Tools
Apart from the platforms explicitly supported at CUNY, a myriad of digital tools exist that may be useful to you and your students. Within each instructional moment, it’s also possible to integrate digital tools in support of your learning goals and to facilitate active and engaged learning. For instance, you might have your students:
organize their research literature from various databases in Zotero;
actively read by annotating website or articles using Hypothes.is;
build maps to visualize course content using Google Maps, Carto, or Story Map;
construct timelines to highlight historical context using TimelineJS;
Compose responses to analyze or digest course concepts on Twitter or Slack;
build digital archives and exhibits using Omeka or Prezi; and/or
launch their own WordPress sites to foster digital literacy or create a digital portfolio of their own work.
It’s best to start with one tool and one assignment in order to grow accustomed to integrating digital assignments into your course and to troubleshooting any tech issues. Whether and how you do choose and combine tools depends entirely on the intersection between your course goals, your comfort with technology, and the level of uncertainty you’re willing to tolerate in an assignment or a class. To learn more about how to integrate digital tools into your course, see the TLC’s guide on Educational Technology:
https://tlc.commons.gc.cuny.edu/educational-technology/.
Flipped Classroom and Content Delivery
A flipped classroom model shifts the content delivery to online spaces, reserving class time for discussion, active learning, and group work. In a flipped classroom model, you will want to set up a deliverable weekly task for students to complete before coming to class. This deliverable task has students demonstrate online participation to ensure they engage with the content before coming to class. Online content delivery and deliverables can include reading texts and writing a short summary or analysis, annotating texts to take notes, participating in an online discussion board, or completing an online quiz or assignment. Be sure to clarify what kinds of communication will happen in which spaces, at what times, and with what expectations. If explained and set up properly, flipped classroom models can promote student engagement with course content outside of the classroom, and increase participation and critical thinking during class meetings.
Digital Literacy
Just because your students may look to be seamlessly integrated with their mobile devices, have mastered SnapChat filters, and know 743 Pokestops in Queens doesn’t mean that they have a critical understanding of digital technology and how it impacts our lives. CUNY students may have irregular access to the web, may be able to access the web only via devices that have data limits, or may be relying entirely on services provided by the school for access to technology. Thinking about how you will teach students digital literacy skills will help you then make more informed choices about the tools you deploy in your classes; doing so will allow you to pass on a critical sensibility about using digital tools to your students.
Many students are quite comfortable using technology, but have little experience reflecting upon their choices in doing so. At CUNY, you can also be quite certain that you will have at least a few students in your class who have far less experience engaging with consumer technology than other students, and who need extra guidance and may be uncomfortable asking for it. Your choices and instructional design should take both of these common personas into account. Acquiring digital literacy is a worthwhile use of class time and should be considered as part of the course content itself, no matter the discipline.
Accessibility and Educational Technology
As discussed in the Accessibility chapter of this handbook, all faculty must be mindful of and vigilant about questions of accessibility in their courses, which has significant implications for choices around educational technology (ed tech). Your campus likely has an office that provides services for students with disabilities, which may or may not have expertise in educational technology and instructional design. This is understandable; ed tech is a rapidly changing field and sometimes it’s impossible to make certain tools completely accessible to every student. For instance, students who are visually impaired may not be able to view videos, and students who have auditory impairment may not be able to listen to audio files. This doesn’t mean that faculty should strike audio and video from their pedagogy. With mindfulness and ethical commitment, faculty members can make sure their courses and assignments are accessible, and that all students with particular needs get the support that they require in order to participate fully in the course.
Faculty should keep in mind that some CUNY students may have limited access to computers and high-speed internet at home. Many students use tablets and smart phones to keep up with work, often completing reading assignments on their commutes. It’s best to make sure that the web platforms and digital tools used in your class are “responsive,” meaning that they are accessible and legible on various devices.
When deciding upon and using ed tech tools, consider taking Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles into account. For instance, will students with visual impairments be able to use screen readers (using Optical Character Recognition [OCR]) for PDFs? Are any videos or sound clips you plan to use available with captioning?
In-class device use is an accessibility issue for you to consider carefully before you ban devices in class. Some students may use assistive technology devices to take notes or record the class session for study use; others may be using their device to take notes or manage the classroom experience as someone with ADHD. Keep in mind that not all disabilities are visible and that useful accommodation may be different from student to student--it may be as simple as sharing your PowerPoint slides with the class after the session or converting your PDFs to Word Documents for use with certain OCRs.
Student Data and Privacy
Before requiring students to use a particular tool, instructors should assess how the tool approaches its users’ data. Here are some questions that can guide such an evaluation of a digital tool:
Assuming it’s web-based, does it require users to display their name or other identifying information such as an email address?
Does it allow users to do their work with the tool under an alias?
Does it afford users control over who sees their content and activity, or does it require all work to be done on the open web?
If you’re planning to have students use a mobile application, does it depend upon location services in order to function?
Does it require access to other applications to unlock its full functionality, and if so, might a user’s privacy be undermined?
You’ll find that tools you use, from Blackboard to Twitter to WordPress to publishers’ tools, have different approaches to protect user privacy, and some may be more in line with your values than others. Though our preference at the TLC is for tools that give end users total control over their privacy, there may be use cases where this is not possible. In those instances, it is the instructor’s ethical responsibility to make sure that students understand the privacy implications of assigned tools. If students are uncomfortable with what an application asks of them, you should be prepared to offer them an alternative method to complete the assignment.
Understanding User Data
When assessing a tool’s functionality, consider how it approaches the question of user-produced content and data.
Who owns content produced through a tool?
What rights to user-created content does the company that supports or hosts the tool claim?
If a student wants to remove, revise, remix, or otherwise make changes to the content after they’ve produced it, are they able to do so?
Can students easily take their work with them after the semester has completed?
Selecting tools that empower users to own what they’ve created can signal to your students that faculty see the knowledge and work that they are producing during the course of their studies as valuable and connected to work that moves beyond the boundaries of a single assignment or class. The Domain of One’s Own project at the University of Mary Washington (http://umw.domains/) takes this idea a step further by giving students their own web domains, and then offering curricula that empower students to build their digital and scholarly identities completely within spaces that they own and control.
A project like Domain of One’s Own requires resources, support, and community that you may not have access to on the campus where you are teaching. Nevertheless, the principles of such a project can be applied to both how you assess and select a tool, and then how you nurture your students’ understandings of its utility.
Student Privacy
The 1974 FERPA Act or Buckley Amendment is designed to give students some control over how their information is shared and amended. Universities have slightly varying policies about how to disseminate student information such as grades in compliance with FERPA. Though the act has not been updated to account for web-connected communication, FERPA impacts how campuses and instructors approach the use of educational technology. If you try a new tool, you may have a colleague or an administrator ask you if it is “FERPA-compliant.” To answer this question, you will have to consider the privacy implications of the tool you’ve selected and have a strong pedagogical argument for its deployment.
A good rule of thumb is to select tools that require little to no personally identifying information to use beyond supplying an email address. Even if a tool does require additional information, that doesn’t necessarily mean it violates FERPA. As long as students are made aware of what a tool captures and displays about them and they have the ability to opt out, your use will comply with FERPA. If you’re unsure of the policy on your campus, ask your department or the campus registrar, but a guiding principle is to try to avoid exposing student data, and to allow students who are concerned about doing work on the open web to opt out or complete required assignments via other avenues. Finally, never post student grades to a public or non-secured environment, which is a clear violation of FERPA. Many faculty members maintain grades in the gradebook on Blackboard, even if they use other tools for more dynamic activities in their classes.
Some schools interpret the Act to mean that no grade information may be shared over email, while others allow grade information sharing through the internal school email system, and others still allow comments and scores on individual assignments but not midterm or final grades.
Online and Hybrid Courses
An increasing number of college courses are being offered either partially or fully online, necessitating the use of ed tech. Successful online and hybrid courses often require even more intensive planning than face-to-face classes. This is especially true if it’s your first time teaching in this instructional mode. Very few Graduate Center Teaching Fellows are assigned online or hybrid courses, but it does happen from time to time. You may find yourself assigned to teach online or hybrid courses for a number of reasons. You may be approached by a department chair and offered the opportunity to teach in these modes, and receive support in developing your course. You may be applying for a position where teaching in such modes is expected of you. Or, you may be told just before the semester begins, “Oh, by the way, your course is completely online. And it starts tomorrow!” Once you know you will be teaching an online or hybrid course, you should email your students to make sure they also know that it will not be a traditional in-person course.
One challenge of hybrid or online courses is that there are fewer built-in opportunities to gauge student comprehension in-person. Often students are confused about what faculty expect of them, and this is true of classes in every mode of instruction. In face-to-face classes, this confusion often becomes readily apparent to mindful instructors, but it can be harder to detect online. Careful assignment design clarifies the expectations you have of students in your online or hybrid course. Creating an organized and well-structured course is especially crucial in these contexts and harnessing educational technologies to connect with students outside the classroom is paramount for delivering course content, checking student understanding, and facilitating discussion to develop class community. Once you have a structure in place that connects online deliverables and face-to-face interactions, it becomes easier to carve out time and opportunities for you and your students to improvise.
Here are some guidelines for scaffolding assignments in a partly or fully online course that will offer you multiple opportunities to intervene in your students’ knowledge-making process:
Consider workflow: Ask yourself what assignments from face-to-face classes might be better accomplished online.
For hybrid classes, design online assignments that prepare students to take full advantage of the time the class spends meeting in person.
Articulate for students the reasons for assignments, the method of assessment, and the grading process.
Tie low-stakes and high-stakes assignments together to build upon each other in a gradual progression.
Construct tasks that give students practice before assessment.
For more details, see our TLC Guide to Online/Hybrid Course Development at
https://tlc.commons.gc.cuny.edu/hybridonline-course-development/#Instructional_Design.