Academic Technology Support

One of the most effective means of empowering large numbers of students with technology is by supporting faculty in their use and integration of technology in their teaching. Academic Technologies staff provide support as problem-solvers, technical consultants, connectors, teachers, and co-instructors.

Technology support can take many shapes depending on the needs and wishes of the faculty. The expected result is an increasingly technology-savvy cohort of faculty, capable of weaving technology into their programs, improving delivery of content and student experience. Below are the methods used to achieve these goals.

Consulting

Curricular requests are typically faculty-originated and are often the starting point for identifying needs with follow-up work. Understanding what faculty are trying to do and helping move them towards the appropriate technology typically requires meeting or consulting over the phone or email to understand the faculty's goals. This can be followed up by one or more consultations where the staff can train the faculty in using the solution of choice.

Custom solutions

If a need is expressed for which there is not a stock answer, it may require a custom solution. Within reasonable expectations, staff will extend our existing tools if possible or integrate third-party solutions to fit the faculty member's particular need. Custom solutions are what inform us as to what is possible, but can also be a huge time consumer. If a custom solution is developed for a faculty, this customized approach is expected to carry beyond this one classroom experience so others may benefit from our internal knowledge base.

Workshops

Engaging with students in the classroom is a high-value connection that directly informs our working understanding of students’ relationship with technology. Partnering with Media Services, Library Reference and Scientific Computing, Academic Computing staff will find the best person on campus to teach your workshop.

• Connecting faculty to the appropriate areas to provide specialized workshops (such as media, library, science, etc) allows us to leverage the expertise of others in the institution and provide quality instruction. If we determine that a workshop request fits best in a specialty area, our role will be to contact and arrange for that workshop with the specialty group. If it is determined that one of the Academic Computing staff are the best fit to teach the workshop so be it.
• Co-teaching with the faculty is the model we typically support. Technical workshops are planned and co-taught with the faculty, serving the dual purposes of providing quality instruction for the students and building faculty understanding and skill in using the technology. The goal is to build faculty efficacy so they may be comfortable teaching future technology workshops.
• Multiple/progressive workshops are generally avoided within Academic Computing as this extracts considerable resources from an area that needs to be able to support all faculty equally.