ATAGWKU

There is an abundance of inspiring scenarios about innovative schools and groundbreaking educational practices. However, practices that work well for one school do not necessarily yield the same positive impact in another. Unique organizational school structures, varying experience of educators and students represent different sets of complex challenges. Often, this complexity is not reflected in the scenarios, making the active implementation of change is difficult to introduce and sustain.

Edukata is a starting point. It provides a glimpse at, not a blueprint of the successful design of quality learning activities.

it also leaves out the fact that technology is trying to be worked into the current classroom structure (instead of disrupting it), which doesn’t necessarily mean students are learning better than without it.

EMC's Pat Gelsinger discussing Big Data.

At present, DSC is moving forward with campus-wide e-text adoption, following a leadership transition that included welcoming a new president in August 2011. Though we have not set a timeline for going e-text, through our study we have identified a list of key considerations our institution and others like it will need to address: Avoid top-down mandates. Institutions that require all instructors to simultaneously go e-text might be courting disaster. An effective approach will encourage, but not require, e-text adoption. Should reluctant faculty members observe demonstrable benefits in the classrooms of colleagues who have switched, they will soon decide to go e-text as well. Know your technological limits. Investing in infrastructure increases and upgrades prior to going e-text — not during, and not only as needed — will help create student and faculty buy-in by demonstrating a commitment to the project and preventing technology failures. Help students see the advantages. A sizable number of students who otherwise welcome technological expansion in their lives draw the line at textbooks. Clearly communicating to students how much money they will save and what new educational objectives they might meet will lessen resistance to this major change. Involve student support services. Faculty are never an institution’s only teachers. Collaborate with IT personnel, writing consultants, learning specialists, supplemental instructors, on-campus tutors, and other support staff in the e-text selection, implementation, and training process to ensure that the assistance students receive campus-wide is both consistent and valuable. Provide instructional support and training for faculty. Ultimately, faculty will bear the biggest responsibility for making e-text adoption successful. The development and dissemination of best practices for teaching with e-texts should be fully supported at the college, program, and department levels. Implementing a new campus-wide solution to the problem of prohibitively expensive textbooks is not without risks. But, as our study has shown, careful planning and piloting can help institutions develop strategies for using e-texts to ensure that this enduring problem troubles students much less in the future