Digital Tools in the Classroom

Grademark, Turnitin, Moodle, Blackboard, Google Docs...

Many of these tools are being used in classrooms across the country. The question is: To what end?

As a community college professor, I am required--at the barest minimum--to use the course management system (CMS) Blackboard to post student grades and my syllabus. Beyond those two requirements, the rest is up to me. Like many old dogs, I am somewhat slow to learn new tricks. In the late 90s, I was one of the first teachers to have a computer in my classroom in Georgia. It was one I had brought from home, and the IT guy at school helped me get it set up and online. For years, I used an excel spreadsheet that I created in 1996 to calculate student grades. Even in the early 2000s, I had a pretty extensive web page when I taught at Pennsylvania College of Technology. Even so, I have had difficulty utilizing the Blackboard resource to its fullest potential. After reading Lisa Lane's article “Insidious Pedagogy: How Course Management Systems Impact Teaching,” in the online journal First Monday, I now know why. Lane argues that there is a very real difference between instructors' teaching and discipline expertise and their information literacy expertise. In other words, individuals may excel at traditional classroom teaching but fall seriously short in their ability to use digital tools to instruct. Lane dubs us "novice faculty."

I am a prime example of what she talks about. Though I have experience with some technology, I am not trained to use technology to teach in the classroom. I have stayed primarily within the first tier surface layer of Blackboard and used it mostly as a course management tool to grade and provide information, rather than as a teaching tool to engage students is blogging, portfolios, instant messaging, and research. Lane says "Expert users contextualize their resources fluidly and organize materials effectively, while novices just upload and share files, hoping students will find them."

Lane also notes that "Blackboard can be highly intimidating to learn, and may 'seriously hinder' choices the faculty member makes while using the tool." It's not that I haven't been offered countless opportunities from my school's resident Blackboard expert, it's just that, like many others, I have not chosen to avail myself of them. Part of this stems from my own busy schedule and part of it, as Lane notes, is that "faculty requests for help focus on what the technology can do, rather than how their pedagogical goals can be achieved." What that means in practical terms is that too often the Blackboard training offerings are the same thing over and over, just trying to get faculty up to speed with the basic functions.

On the other hand, there is ample opportunity for me to tinker. In part because of this class, I have spent far more time fiddling with Blackboard and its myriad uses than I have in the past. In his most recent podcast, Dr. Chuck Tryon stated that part of his purpose in the Technology 518 course is to overwhelm us as students. It's an important reminder to us as faculty that our students are under pressure, not only to complete their assignments, but to learn new technologies along the way. Mission accomplished, Dr. Tryon!