Thoughts on Instructional Technology as a Discipline

At the most basic level, Instructional Technology is the application of technology to the teaching process. And while this definition is suitably broad to include the use of chalk, paper, or even light bulbs, it is usually thought of in terms of the use of specialized modern technologies, most notably computers.

And while making computers available to faculty and students is an essential element in the implementation of instructional technology, making them available doesn’t make them useful. Computers bring access to the Internet, email, word processing, multimedia productions, spreadsheets, stat packages, and countless other useful applications, but without a clear strategy on how to best employ these resources toward improving teaching and learning, we have little more than wasted time and money.

This is why instructional technology is important as a discipline, to make sure, as intellectually and as rigorously as possible, that instructors are not simply taught how to use PowerPoint, but also why to use it.

Finally, I would like to announce that the new PETAL newsletter went out today. My assistant, Susan Hales, deserves a great deal of credit for her excellent work on the layout and graphic design. She also wrote one of the feature articles, but you probably shouldn’t believe everything you read in that one.

All USA faculty should be getting a hard copy early next week, but it is also available online.

On the concept of "writerly" teaching

As some of you know, my dissertation is an exploration of how Roland Barthes’s concept of readerly and writerly texts can lead us to rethink our understanding of interaction in online instruction, although I strongly believe that it is equally applicable to any kind of instruction.

For Barthes, readerly texts, which constitute the majority of texts, have a very limited number of possible interpretations. On the other hand, writerly texts require the reader to participate in the creation of meaning, where the act of reading becomes an act of rewriting.

Of course, there is neither time nor space for me to adequately explain or explore those concepts here (although I am sure they will be visited frequently in the coming weeks and months), but I would like to offer an analogy that might bring a little light to the concept.

Consider the difference between writerly texts and readerly texts to be similar to the difference between poetry and prose. Whereas prose will attempt to cover everything that needs to be covered, poetry, on the other hand, only points the reader in the direction she needs to go, gently telling her to go over there and look around.

Another apt literary analogy might be the difference between fiction and drama. Like the prose example above, a short story will fill in all the gaps. It will provide details and descriptions, everything you need, but a play, at least in literary form, leaves much to the imagination, such that the act of reading is essentially the act of acting, directing, and producing all at the same time.

I don’t know if anyone has ever tried to faithfully rewrite Hamlet as a novel, but I certainly hope not.

Teaching Resonance

When I ponder the theoretical aspects of teaching and learning, I tend to gravitate toward two central ideas: interaction and resonance. Indeed, the intersection of these ideas undergirds my primary conceptual framework and research agenda.

This intersection can best be expressed by one of my favorite poetic passages, which is from “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens. The passage, which is actually the fifth way, goes as follows:

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

Now if we can resist, for a moment, getting too caught up in the Modernist symbolism of the blackbird itself, there is a great deal that we can learn from these lines.

From a teaching and learning standpoint, an instructor’s statement, in whatever media, however brilliant or eloquent, is ultimately fleeting. It doesn’t live on as a matter of its own existence or making, nor in the consciousness of its receiver, but rather in how it is appropriated by that consciousness, in how it resonates in that consciousness in the “just after.”

The real question is how can we write resonance in the consciousnesses of our students? How can we design our instruction to maximize that resonance? Does it have to do with the acoustical design of the environment, in the way that we prepare our students to learn in our classroom? Or rather does it depend more on the way we play the content?

Some thoughts on training issues in instructional technology

Learning to use many instructional technologies, such as an online course management system like eCollege or WebCT, requires more technical skills than using Microsoft Word. Training faculty to use these technologies also requires a unique paradigm shift. Most training efforts for these technologies use approaches similar to the teaching of Word, where the focus is on what buttons you push to accomplish a task, and where to look in this or that menu to find the desired function. Although no faculty member has likely ever developed an exhaustive level of skill acquisition on Word or WebCT, there seems to be a concerted effort to make this possible.

This “technical” approach is often criticized by those who want more of an “instructional” focus in trainings, and while the considerable level of knowledge required for mastering the technical aspects of the online systems and their effective use does require considerable attention, this in no way alleviates the need for pedagogical training on these systems. In the same way that understanding the technical aspects of Microsoft Word does not make one able to write effectively, knowing what buttons to push in eCollege will not make one an effective online instructor.

The output of a word processor is in virtually the same form as the output of a typewriter, with only the functionality in achieving that output being changed. The output of an online course management system, however, is markedly different than traditional teaching. For online course management, the concept of knowing “what buttons to push” must go far beyond the browser interface.

Thoughts on online learning v. the traditional classroom

It goes without saying that the digital campus cannot fully replicate the traditional environment of the college campus, and this is true on many levels—socially, instructionally, developmentally, even aesthetically (Noble, 1997-2001). It has also been demonstrated that, even with the digital divide, online education increases access to many people who otherwise would not be able to go to a university (Shea, Pickett, & Li, 2005). There is a trade-off here that is very important, but it might not be as significant as we might think. Face-to-face interaction is a valuable part of education, so vital in fact that perhaps we should, when possible, look more seriously at distributed (or blended) learning, which is a blending of traditional and distance technologies. Regardless of one's particular attitude toward online learning, however, we must recognize that, at least for the foreseeable future, it is not going to go away. While the ramifications of its continued presence and growth are open to debate, whether or not it threatens the core of what we consider to be of most value about the university, it is the responsibility of the university to ensure that what online learning does in the name of the university is not a travesty.

That is not to say that the online classroom should seek merely to replicate the traditional classroom. It is highly unlikely that the best classroom practice can be replicated online, but it is equally unlikely that these best practices can be widely replicated in the traditional classroom either. Even more unlikely is the notion that we could ever clearly identify any kind of replicable essential element that makes the "best" practices best. The presumed existence of this sort of je ne sais quois, and more importantly the qualities that make it unknowable, is behind much of the thinking that motivates my interest in educational research. It is also indicative of what hinders the design of a lot of the research heretofore done on online learning. This mystical reality, this essence of good teaching, is simply not something that can be reduced to a dependent variable; nor is it translatable into any kind of statistical formulae or, for that matter, into theoretical exposition. Perhaps the biggest lesson we can take from all of this is that the comparison between traditional and online learning is at best problematic, especially when we recognize that virtually all of the education research outside of that which focuses on the online classroom tends to be fairly critical of the quality of instruction in the traditional classroom, especially at the higher education level. One need not look far to find that the fetishism of this traditional classroom is merely an unfounded rumor.

Our search for that je ne sais quois that represents the "best" of educational practice also demonstrates the value of a postmodern or poststructuralist approach to education. Through the lens of poststructuralism, we can recognize the search for a reified "best of" as a demonstration of the metaphysics of presence, a search for a transcendental signified. I believe that there can be quality online courses, but that quality cannot be easily quantified or automatically implemented. More importantly, however, I believe that the best university education experiences, whether online or in the classroom, are writerly experiences that allow the student/reader an opportunity to participate dialogically in the production of meaning in the classroom.

Welcome to the PETAL Blog

Hello. My name is Rob Gray, and I am the new Director of PETAL at the University of South Alabama. I am truly looking forward to the opportunity to work with all of the faculty here at the University, as well as with other faculty development programs on this and other campuses.

I am currently putting the finishing touches on my dissertation for a PhD in Instructional Technology from the University of Alabama. It is entitled "Towards a Writerly Conception of Online Courses: A Critical [Re]figuration of Interaction" and examines the role that literary theory (particularly the work of Barthes, Bakhtin, Eco, and Hall) can play in our understanding of interaction and content development, particularly in online courses, but in the traditional classroom as well.

Finally, and most importantly, we are offering a large number of faculty roundtables and brown bag lunches this year, as well as many workshops on integrating technology into the teaching process. We are also introducing a new activity, the PETAL Panel Discussion Series, which will feature important issues or innovations in Teaching and Learning, so please visit our website often for the most updated schedules and resources.