March 26, 2014

2014 TLT Symposium at Penn State

Posted by Dr. Laura Guertin

Another year, another great Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium (known as the TLT Symposium) held at Penn State!  This is “the” event for faculty, graduate students, and instructional designers from across all campuses of the university to come together to share their best practices and innovative approaches to using technology in the classroom – whether that classroom be face-to-face, blended, or fully online.

I blogged about the TLT Symposium on my Journeys of Dr. G blog, and you can check out my summaries for Saturday AM and Saturday PM (posts will be updated as Symposium videos are placed online).  It was quite a day with keynote speakers Daniel Pink and Robbie Melton, and lots of interesting technological approaches and ideas.

In addition to the information in my blog posts, my main takeaways include:

(1) Think carefully about motivation – and how can I address motivation to learn with my students, especially the non-science majors I teach?

(2) Be thoughtful about how to approach and address creative problems – and how can I get my students to have a more expansive view, bringing in ideas and innovations from science and art and psychology, etc., etc., to think about how to tackle some of the greatest Earth/environmental challenges?  And what role will technology play in this process?

(3) I’m wasting my energy fighting mobile devices – students are bringing them to class and using them anyway.  Is there a way to have students use these devices to keep them on task for learning?  Can/should I adopt a BYOD policy and practice?

So much technology to think about, so quickly the technology changes, and so little time to think about thoughtful approaches to using technology to enhance student learning…. but clearly, the technology is here, so the time has come to move forward with big ideas (yet not lose focus of my overarching course goals and objectives).  Wish me luck!