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Power Users and Casual Users

One of the questions that has come up as we’ve been training instructors on using the new learning management system, Desire2Learn, goes something like this: Why are they making us learn a new, complicated system when Blackboard did everything I needed it to?

It seems like a reasonable question. I’m not going to tell certain instructors that they aren’t using enough instructional technology when they’re getting their students to learn without it. If they are just using the Learning Management System to post their syllabus and e-mail students, I’m not going to tell them they should change their teaching style just for the sake of using the advanced features of a new system. And part of me feels guilty for making them take the time to learn a new system when they aren’t going to use the exciting, new features that were the reason for the change.

But for logistical and financial reasons, DePaul can only have one active Learning Management System, and the powers that be had to choose the one that they thought would best meet the needs of all instructors—including those who are teaching purely online classes and who need a lot of control and flexibility from the Learning Management System.

But this tension between different kinds of users is not unique to DePaul. It is present in all kinds of software development. Upgrades and improved systems bring new features and better efficiency, but you have to invest in installing and using the new system. And the pace of development can move faster than the ability of casual users to adapt to it.

Think about what happened when we all switched to Microsoft Office 2007. There was a major overhaul to the user interface. While those of us who do document design on a daily basis may applaud how much easier it is to access text styles and keep them consistent now, it was a big adjustment, and in the short term we all lost productivity. If you were the kind of person who only opened Word a couple times a week, it may have taken a long time for the increased efficiency in the new layout and features to cancel out the lost productivity when you were first learning the program, if that ever happened at all!

For whatever reason, software markets seem to be driven by the power users, who demand more advanced features and faster update cycles.

And more casual users are often required to update their software just to stay compatible with everyone else, even if what they have serves all their needs. If you’re using an old version of Microsoft Office, you can’t open the new file formats from Office 2007 without a special plug-in. If you’re still using Internet Explorer 6, many of the Web pages you visit may not render properly—Google Docs, for example, no longer officially supports users on Internet Explorer 6. When casual users have to upgrade their technology just to interact with the rest of the world, it’s easy to see why modern luddites claim that the technology is controlling them rather than the other way around.

I’m not anti-technology of course—I wouldn’t be in this line of work if I was. I marvel at how much more I can do with a hand-held device today than you could do with the most advanced computers on the planet twenty years ago, and I’m always excited to try the next big thing in tech. But I think we need to keep thinking about the best way to reduce the friction on more casual users as we go chasing exciting new features.

Sick? No Excuse When You’re in the Cloud!

A respiratory virus had me by the throat—literally. It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t something to share with colleagues. I avoided campus for a full week… seven days with no face-to-face time!

I did get in some total downtime, but I still “met” with two faculty members, redesigned three modules for an upcoming online course, and participated in a staff meeting.

I’ll be honest—I’m of mixed mind when it comes to 24/7 accessibility. I don’t have a handheld device, and my cell phone doesn’t even get answered all the time! Yet there are some times when things just need to get done and I’m the one to do them. Even if sick.

So how?

  • Dropbox: http://dropbox.com – This free Web tool has saved me multiple times. Some days I am on multiple campuses, and sometimes I need to access a file from home. I was introduced to this tool while collaboratively writing content for the DePaul Teaching Commons—four writers in four completely different campus locations!
  • Google Docs: http://docs.google.com – An old standby that many faculty know how to use! So good for those subject-matter-expert/instructional-designer content-building activities.
  • Wimba – The synchronous tool integrated within our learning management system—also works as a wonderful “meeting space” when discussing online course content.
  • The Telephone – Do not throw out the old technologies! The landline still has better sound than 99 percent of cell phones, so if your ear is clogged, pick up the phone! And still the best way to hear/participate in a staff meeting.

Best, of course, is not to get sick at all.

But that technology has yet to be perfected.

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What is Instructional Design?

That is the question I’m asked every time I tell someone what I got my degree in or what I do for a living. What is instructional design? How do I explain this ever-changing field? I could give them the textbook definition—instructional design is the practice of arranging media and content to help learners and teachers transfer knowledge most effectively. But this definition is only the tip of the instructional-design iceberg.

What many people do not know is that instructional design has been around for decades. The field has its roots back in World War II, when the US military was faced with the challenge of training a large number of people to use complex machinery. The training model the military created worked so well that it was applied to the civilian work force. Businesses started creating their own training program to get their workers trained quickly and efficiently, including hiring interim polonais workers to meet immediate needs. Instructional design only advanced as the years passed. It might go by different names, but there is instructional design in every training manual or tutorial someone looks at.

In this rapidly evolving business landscape, the need for efficient accounting practices has never been more pronounced. With the integration of Bright’s comprehensive solution for streamlining accounting business workflows, many firms have witnessed significant improvements in their day-to-day operations. The software’s ability to handle complex financial data with ease and accuracy is a game changer. This has not only saved time but also reduced the margin of error in financial reporting.

Delving into employee training and development, the right data can be transformative. A dashboard that provides detailed insights into employee performance and learning patterns is invaluable. Such tools not only facilitate better training programs but also help in tracking progress. A notable example in this area is InetSoft.

Today, instructional design encompasses a lot more. Instructional design can be used to create 3D educational movies about the solar system or how to load a camera. It can be used to make fun but education games. It can be used to create flight simulators for the Air Force. It can be used to create a simple tutorial video on how to check and change your oil.

And at DePaul, we are using instructional design to help instructors create courses that are taught not in a classroom but through the computers, where students can learn at the pace that best suits their lifestyles.

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Getting Your Money’s Worth: Introducing New Technology to Your Classroom

Every time I prepare to teach a class or run a workshop, I think back to one of my favorite scenes from an episode of The Simpsons. Principal Skinner has taken an almost-bursting carload of newspaper to the recycling center and is discouraged to see that a half-ton will only get him seventy-five cents. He complains, “That won’t even cover the gas I used to go to the store to buy the twine to tie up the bundles.” The hippie running the place tells him, “It sounds like you’re working for your car. Simplify, man!”

We laugh at this bit of humor, but honestly it’s exactly what many of us do when we are preparing to teach with new technology resources. We are very sure that we want to make use of this new piece of technology; after all, we love it, so surely our students will too, right? We cheerfully load our classrooms full of hardware, software, music and video players, document cameras, interactive whiteboards, classroom response systems, and other equipment focused on accomplishing a specific set of tasks, confident that we have the knowledge and proficiency with them to accomplish what we set out to do. We’re also sure that what we do with our shiny new toys is bound to revolutionize what we do in the classroom every time we teach this material.

In reality, each of us is driving around with a carful of newspaper and no idea of what kind of results we’ll wind up with. We forge ahead into the class intent on delivering exciting new content and too often are derailed by a host of unforeseen issues either with the technology itself or the unexpected effect it has on the delivery of otherwise familiar content. We put that half-ton of effort into making the class work and wind up with seventy-five cents of educational value when it ends. Therefore, it’s up to us to make sure we have the mixture of expertise, practice, and technical know-how necessary to make technology tools work for the class and not against it. Here are five steps to think about before you add that cool new toy to your class.

 

  • Do you know your stuff?

 

 

This seems obvious at first. “Well, of course I do! I’m teaching it, aren’t I?” However, to make sure students get the most out of the class, you should know your material well enough that you don’t really need any notes. I was told by a former professor long ago that if you can’t teach your entire class session with notes on one side of a 3 x 5 card, you’re not ready. This guy used to do graduate-level lectures that lasted two hours with no notes whatsoever; he was so familiar with the material that it was just a matter of recall. This idea is great to consider when you are thinking about bringing something new into the class. In case something goes wrong with the technology, you can go on autopilot, and you can focus not on the things you already know but on the one new variable, making your technology work and using it to enhance your instruction.

 

  • Can you make it work?

 

 

Again, this answer seems obvious. “Well, it’s mine! Of course I’ve mastered this stuff!” Then surely you know how to troubleshoot all of your wireless connectivity issues, connect your hardware to audiovisual equipment in the classroom, and make sure that any content that needs to be authenticated can be. (If you’re scratching your head right now, you haven’t mastered the technology.) It’s not enough to know how to do this one really cool thing that would be so fantastic in class; you’ve got to be prepared for the fact that it might not work at first and know how to fix the problem. Although it’s always possible to call someone from the Technology Support Center to fix technology problems, there is no guarantee that they will be immediately available or that their solution will be quick. If you’re teaching an evening class, that fix might not be available until the next day or even later. This also assumes that whoever comes from the TSC knows how to fix the technology you’re having trouble with, and if it’s your new toy from home, they might not have any idea. In cases like this, you have to be the expert!

 

  • Can you teach it with this?

 

 

Especially when adding new technology to the delivery of a lesson, it is extremely important to make sure that the instruction itself is well paced and makes good use of all available resources. It’s also important to make sure that you know exactly when, where, and how the technology piece will integrate with the lesson. Are you adding in a new delivery system to be used all the time, or is this only for one lesson? Is your new technology going to be a central feature of the lesson, or is it really just a cool “bell-and-whistle” feature that will ultimately distract your students and detract from where you wanted to go? Be sure that the “cool factor” of your new device will be outweighed by its instructional value in the classroom. Don’t think about the neat stuff it can do; think about how you can use it to enhance the quality of your instruction. Too often we assume we can enhance a lesson we’ve had trouble teaching in the past with that exciting, new piece of technology; it usually only makes things worse, because students get distracted by the cool stuff when there is already weaker instruction and lose track entirely.

 

  • Do you have a backup plan? Or, “What if it doesn’t work?”

 

 

Most of us remember back to those days when we didn’t have computers in every classroom, when we didn’t have projectors and interactive whiteboards, when we didn’t have iPods and iPads, et cetera. We still learned just fine, and our instructors taught us without all of the equipment we take for granted now. The question we forget most often when bringing new technology into class might just be the most important: what happens if it doesn’t work? There is no bigger disaster than having your presentation take a nosedive because you were counting on the technology and found that it didn’t work the way you figured it would, or refused to work at all. Just like with everything else, technology-integrated lessons need an emergency plan. Be ready to do it analog-style if the tech won’t work this time, and have a plan ready in case it never does. The students have to learn this stuff whether or not you wow them with fancy devices!

 

  • How will you evaluate your results?

 

 

In the case of technology, there aren’t always well-defined ways to assess the effects of your technology use on instruction. If you’re simply using new technology to teach old material, the only benchmarks you may have are students’ comprehension rates compared to you not using the technology. If you’re using a new tool to deliver specific content types that you haven’t taught before, you don’t even have a frame of reference to compare it to. In this case it might be useful to survey your students on their reactions to the new instructional tool to gauge its effectiveness before you use it a second time. If you’re using the tool to present material that they will be tested on later, test scores are a great measure of effectiveness; you can see right away what they did and didn’t get, and that can be directly attributed to your performance in front of the class.

I don’t in any way want to discourage anyone from experimenting; after all, that’s what my job, like my other stay at home jobs, is about! I think one of the most important aspects of being a good teacher is the willingness to explore and expand the scope of what instruction is and how to go about it. However, we have to make sure that whatever we do is backed by solid pedagogy, content knowledge, and a well-developed game plan. Armed with this set of tools, we can get our money’s worth for that half-ton of work!

Desire2Learn Primer

There is always a learning curve when it comes to making a major change. DePaul’s switch from Blackboard to its new learning-management system, Desire2Learn, is no exception, but don’t be afraid! With some knowledge, training from Faculty Instructional Technology Services, and a little practice, Desire2Learn skills are easily within your reach.

First, Consider the Metaphor

In Blackboard, course materials, whether for a fully online class or a hybrid course, were posted in a folder structure, with folders generally as buckets for weeks or modules. A syllabus, for instance, would be uploaded as a new “item” into a specific location, which was a folder.

Desire2Learn has a tree-structure, rather than folders. Navigation is across the top of the course, rather than on the left, as my colleague Eric talks about here. In Desire2Learn, a course generates with a more fluid structure in place, as opposed to Blackboard, which had a handful of set menu items. In Desire2Learn, you get to decide how you want your course to look and where your items should be.

Next, Decide How It Should Look

Think about how you want your course structured: Do you just need a place for students to access your syllabus and weekly readings? Are you teaching fully online in a weekly schedule? Do you use modules? Is your course ten weeks? Five weeks? FITS has a variety of templates for download, that, when imported into your course, will create a basic structure in which you can organize your course. The templates will build the empty “buckets” in which you can upload or create the course materials you need.

Then, Begin to Build

Once you’ve determined how your course should be arranged, you can upload files through the “Manage Course Files” section of your course (accessed when you click “Content” in the Navbar). Once you’ve uploaded the files you need in your course, it is easy to drag and drop them into the module or structure where you want it to live using the “Course Builder” tool. The Course Builder also allows you to create new pages, like a new “item” in Blackboard. You can copy text from Word documents (from, example, a syllabus) and paste it into a page.

And of Course, Ask for Help

Getting from your empty course shell to a fully built, fully featured course offering might not happen the first time you sit down in front of Desire2Learn. When you get caught up in a question you can’t answer, FITS is here to help. DePaul Faculty have access to on-campus training at Lincoln Park and in the Loop designed to teach the basics of course building, as well as proficiency with specific tools. FITS also offers an online, self-paced training course, which offers documentation, tutorials, and point-of-contact support.

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When “The Social Network” Penetrates the Rest of our Lives: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

When we learn something new, it’s natural (and often helpful) to reference previous experiences. In the trainings we’ve been holding for Desire2Learn, we’ve often found ourselves making comparisons to other Web tools in hopes of fostering connections to the new system.

With D2L, one of the first comparisons that comes up is Facebook. When we show people how to create a profile, they are entering information “as they would on Facebook.” Then, once they’ve added a picture of themselves, that picture displays in discussions “like it does on Facebook.”

I wanted to step back from this comparison for a moment, though, to ask, “How useful is this practice? What is the cost-benefit ratio?”

The Good: Familiarity Breeds Usability

In many cases, yes, using knowledge of other tools to learn a new tool is helpful. Usability studies (often from Jakob Nielsen, a usability expert I love to cite) show that features of websites that we can “learn” will make our experiences with a site better.

For example, on most websites, companies place their logo in the upper-left corner of the screen, and this logo serves as a link to the site’s homepage. This wasn’t always the case, but once this feature became available on several websites and users “learned” to click the logo to go back to the homepage, it caught on as a common feature across the Web.

Profiles and other tools operate in D2L do seem to be taking cues from social networking. It’s helpful to see a student’s face next to their discussion posts, and students in online classes appreciate the extra touch that “seeing” their instructor throughout the course provides. Since this is a familiar feature from Facebook, it can make the Discussions tool more usable.

The Bad: Identity Crisis

Unfortunately, something that we learn in one tool doesn’t necessarily translate to every other space on the Web. If the Discussions tool in D2L looks like a Facebook wall, will students have the savvy to switch to a professional tone when they enter an area whose appearance usually reads “social”?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I would argue that this is an important teachable moment. We are communicating more and more online or via text, and the ability to switch your persona and your tone in different scenarios is a valuable one. These can be the most difficult learning curves to overcome, since it’s harder to differentiate between two similar items than it is to differentiate between opposites. In this case, familiarity is at the core of the problem, but by setting clear expectations and modeling effective professional communication, you will help students learn a skill that is a “must” for their future professional lives.

The Ugly: Social Network Contempt = New Tool Contempt

I can’t say that I’m as big a fan of Facebook as others in my demographic, and I sometimes worry that making comparisons to Facebook can be problematic for our audience in trainings. Many people aren’t the happiest with Facebook right now due to some recent troubles with changes they made to privacy settings, so I don’t want to bring any negative baggage to the new system.

While these are negative experiences we may not want to associate with a new tool, I think they can also make us smarter users overall, which never hurts when we’re learning. Rather than encountering a rude surprise when we discover that our D2L profile information (where we shared our love for bubble baths and interest in YouTube videos of babies using iPhones) is available to everyone in our academic classes, we know to ask questions about information availability up front.

Whether you’re thrilled or horrified to see features familiar from social networking sites find their way into your learning management system, remember that you don’t need to use these features any more than what helps you as an instructor. There may be a trend toward social networking, but don’t let that force you into constructing 140-character assignments.

Blackboard and Desire2Learn

Having worked with instructors over the summer and during the fall quarter on transitioning from Blackboard to Desire2Learn, I understand the frustration and confusion many have experienced regarding DePaul’s decision to change learning management systems.

As one of the participants in the LMS review, I tested Moodle, Angel, Desire2Learn, and Blackboard 9. I’ll cut through all the pros and cons and just say that I thought Blackboard 9 would be the best decision because we were already using Blackboard 8. Obviously, the decision has been made to move to Desire2Learn, and that isn’t going to change.

Instead of talking about why I wanted to switch to Blackboard 9 or why we should all appreciate (or hate) Desire2Learn, I’d rather talk about the confusion and frustration in moving to Desire2Learn.

I am teaching a section of WRD 103, Composition and Rhetoric I, this quarter, and I am using Desire2Learn as a supplement for the course. I post my daily agenda, readings, assignment sheets, and other “stuff” on my course site. So far, none of my students have had any trouble accessing the course site or the materials there, and while some might give Desire2Learn’s usability all the credit for that, I’d say that my students’ determination and experience with networked computer interfaces helped them more.

I personally haven’t had any major headaches in using Desire2Learn. I never taught in Blackboard so I can’t compare the teaching experience, but I have built and provided support for about a hundred courses in Blackboard in the past two years. Fundamentally, the process for building “stuff” in either LMS is the same. You click buttons, point to files or areas in the course, type, and click more buttons. I’d argue that an instructor who knows how to build course content in Blackboard could do the same in Desire2Learn once he or she finds the appropriate buttons in Desire2Learn. I think Blackboard users are having a harder time finding the appropriate buttons in Desire2Learn because it uses a horizontal navigation instead of a vertical navigation like Blackboard.

Desire2Learn:

Blackboard:

     

Neither navigation is inherently better; it’s a matter of becoming familiar with one or the other, or in my case, both. I think a lot of faculty and staff are initially confused that there isn’t a menu along the left-hand side of the screen, and out of this confusion arises frustration.

Sometimes, confusion and frustration can be productive. But in the cases I’ve seen faculty experience frustration and confusion with Desire2Learn, they tend to manifest in negative, unhelpful ways. It generally follows a script something like this: “Help, I can’t figure ‘X’ tool out. What do I do? Desire2Learn is so dumb/hard to use. Why did the university even decide to switch to this? It’s so stupid. You know, there have been schools or departments where the faculty refuse to adopt a new LMS.”

I certainly sympathize with this sentiment, but I tend to think it’s a waste of time. My advice would be to just forget about how you did thing in Blackboard, Angel, or whatever other learning management system you were in before, and just think more generally about computing. When you get some new software, you can rely on your prior knowledge to expect that the “File” menu in the new software will be similar to the “File” menu in other, similar software. So the “Content” link in Desire2Learn is going to be similar to the various course content areas in Blackboard, like “Course Materials,” “Readings,” and “Instructor Information.” So when I said that it’s less about Desire2Learn and more about my students’ determination and experience with networked computer interfaces that has helped them with becoming familiar with Desire2Learn, I’m hoping you can find a similar determination and can call on previous general computing knowledge to help you.

I leave you with a flowchart to help with figuring out Desire2Learn: (ref)

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Keeping it on the Web

Our department fielded a question from a student recently about a Blackboard app for the iPhone. The student saw the app in the Apple App Store, but when she tried to use it, she found that it had to be enabled by the university, which it hadn’t been. Now, this is a bit of a moot point now since our university is transitioning from Blackboard to a new learning management system this year, but it got me thinking about the trend of apps for mobile platforms.

I got my first smartphone not too long ago—an Android device—and like anyone who gets a new smartphone, the first thing I did was download dozens and dozens of apps. How exciting it was! Games, maps, video services, content delivery! For the next few weeks I kept my eyes peeled on all of my most frequented websites. Does this site have an app? Does this company? Does this service?

But when the excitement wore off, I looked at some of the content-delivery apps and thought, why does this app exist? Couldn’t this information just be displayed in a mobile-friendly Web page?

Web pages—you remember those, right? The pages that display content by coding it into universally standard, non-proprietary HTML code. The pages that can be accessed from any computer or Web-enabled device with any browser and look and behave mostly the same. The pages that are not subject to any kind of approval process. I’ve seen an unfortunate trend lately where smartphone owners see their platform’s app store as their primary portal to the Internet and forget about the Web browser. If you’re on the look out for great websites to visit, you may use directories like 세상의모든링크.

More and more people, especially young people, are carrying a smartphone, and I think that trend is only going to continue. And as online educators, it’s going to be hard for us to not accommodate the one Internet-enabled device that students have with them at all times. In the next couple of years, departments like mine are going to have to start testing how usable educational Web tools are on mobile devices before recommending them to faculty, considering potential challenges related to internet crime.

Diving deeper into legal specialties, the expertise of cyber crime lawyers like this criminal lawyer Milton is increasingly relevant. These professionals, skilled in navigating complex internet crime legal challenges, play a pivotal role in today’s digital world. Their understanding of both technology and law helps in crafting robust defense strategies. It’s essential to have access to such expertise in our tech-centric society.

But locking content into a specific platform with an app isn’t the way to go. It isn’t ethical, because we shouldn’t be telling students they’ll be at an advantage buying one brand over another. It isn’t practical, because we would have to keep up with all new developments in mobile operating systems. And it isn’t necessary, because these devices have perfectly capable Web browsers.

This isn’t to say apps don’t have their place—there are many things a Web page just isn’t capable of. But for content delivery, let’s spend our time developing mobile-friendly Web pages rather than making apps.

Notes from the Field: Migration to Desire2Learn

Back in June, in “Resistance Is Futile: Embracing an LMS Migration,” I wrote about the challenges of SNL Online’s migration of about eighty fully online courses to Desire2Learn. I’d like to revisit some of the key discoveries and thoughts.

Time Is Not on Your Side

How much time do you think you’ll need to implement the learning management system, get all the stakeholders on board and trained, and successfully migrate your courses? Double that. Then double it again. You’ll thank me later.

It Won’t Happen That Way

As mentioned before, the migration tool that was supposed to make transferring courses from Blackboard to Desire2Learn easy didn’t work as advertised, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s sat through any vendor demo and then worked with an actual instantiation of the product. What was billed as a relatively seamless and problem-free process has been anything but, with a difficult and ongoing integration process with PeopleSoft making our production timelines irrelevant. Key tools, roles, and functionalities we’d relied on having either aren’t yet available or never will be, putting our design specs constantly in flux and making our production workflow reactive and inefficient. It’s certainly not the end of the world, but even our conservative estimates of production time and costs have proven overly optimistic in light of the D2L/PeopleSoft integration difficulties.

Did I Mention You’ll Need More Time?

We have a lot of talented people working really hard to make sure everything works as it should and ensure that this migration is a success for students and faculty. And they’re discovering on roughly a weekly basis that things we thought would work don’t. They need more time to test everything, and so will you.

An Ounce of Prevention

Our course design specs are the result of an iterative process that included a couple of rounds of user tests with students and faculty. As a result I’m able to rely upon real data when I work with faculty to explain our new design and protocols. I’m pleased to say that most seem to understand and appreciate what we’ve done and why. Some don’t though, and a disproportionate amount of time and energy is expended trying to sell them something that has already been made departmental policy. You might avoid this uncomfortable situation by bringing stakeholders to the table at the beginning of the migration planning. Of course, that will likely delay things, which will require yet more time.

Pain Is Growth

It’s really easy to get caught up in the stress of things and lose sight of the goal and its rewards. Disruptive and maddeningly frustrating as much of this process has been, we should ultimately have a much better learning environment for students and faculty. I’m learning I can juggle more cats than I’d imagined, and I marvel at the talent of my co-workers and the grace they show under pressure. Because of their dedication we’ll have a shiny new LMS ready to roll out in January. I’ll keep you posted.

To Act or Not to Act

For the past twelve years, I have worked in academic technology at an institute of higher education (with a brief eight-month corporate stint that taught me that my heart and soul truly is in education). However, my academic background is not instructional design but rather in communication arts and theater. I have to say this pairing of work experience and academic education has served me well, as the two routinely go hand in hand with my job.

 



Toronto – Wintergarden Theater by Cannon in 2D (http://www.flickr.com/photos/16462767@N00/3286021531/)

 

If you think about it, teaching can be seen as a performance. A performance occurs when there is a performer and an audience and there is communication between them. Sometimes it’s unidirectional coming from the presenter to the audience, and sometimes it is bidirectional with feedback coming from the audience, so the communication cycle is completed. This is the topic for this academic year’s Teaching and Learning Conference at DePaul University—the play and performance found in teaching and learning. The keynote speaker, Nancy Houfek, head of voice and speech for the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard University, will focus her presentation on the “act” of teaching. She will present specific skills that can be used by instructors to be more effective.

I have to agree that these skills are important for any instructor who lectures. The “Sage on the Stage” model of instruction will, in my opinion, always be present somewhere in our classrooms. There has, however, been a move away from a full “sage on the stage” model to a “guide on the side” model, where the instructor is more of a facilitator than a lecturer—a director rather than a performer. So how does the concept of theater play into this type of a classroom? Are the ideas and skills learned in a theatrical setting still useful?

Yes.

The classroom moves away from instructor-based play to student-based play. The students are the ones who experiment, create, and play with the content in order to present the material. They construct their learning like an improv actor would construct the scene or a playright would construct the script. The instructor needs to be well versed in the skills necessary to present, create, and perform in order to guide the students. He or she needs to be proficient in all of the beneficial performing and theatrical skills in order to be effective models for the students.

Theater skills in the classroom are twofold: for the instructor to use himself/herself in presenting content and modeling techniques for the students as well as for the instructor to teach to the students as they construct their own learning and become the “actors” in the room. While not every encounter needs to be worthy of an academy award, the basic skills of vocal projection, blocking, storyboarding, subtext, and storytelling, just to name a few, are skills that all students, regardless of disciple, will find valuable in their own teaching and learning.