This is Nancy Millichap's and Rebecca Davis' presentation from the breakout discussion session "Virtually Anywhere: Sharing Effective Practices for Innovation in Liberal Education," January 22, 2010, AAC&U Annual Conference, Washington, DC.

1. Virtually Anywhere Sharing Effective Practices for Innovation in Liberal Education Nancy Millichap and Rebecca Davis National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE)

2. NITLE An initiative working with 128 liberal arts colleges and universities, as well as with partner organizations and consortia Helping liberal arts colleges explore and implement digital technologies Concerned with the integration of technology into teaching and learning

3. NITLE Network

4. Plan for This Session … In a discussion of videoconferences that faculty have used to share their teaching innovations … We’ll show two clips from a session We’ll share their impact as faculty development We’ll invite discussion of such sharing on your campuses We’ll pull you back together for a final discussion

5. The Problem? A Vicious Circle …

6. One Solution: Sharing Classroom Innovations Digitally At NITLE colleges, faculty lead short interactive videoconferences over the Internet on their pedagogical practices Brief (60 to 90 minute) presentations reach faculty in their offices 22 such programs over past 2 academic years, in several series

7. Experience a Virtual Event Highlights, Notes, Tags, & Comments: Teaching Critical Reading of the Internet with Diigo Social Bookmarking & Website Annotation Gabriela Torres, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Wheaton College

10. Why Faculty Lead Gain recognition, exposure for pedagogical innovation without expense, time commitment of conference attendance Discuss innovations with interested peers (campus colleagues may not share the specific interest) Develop connections with other early adopters – eventual goal is to forward inter-institutional collaboration

11. Why Participants Take Part Opportunity to gain fresh ideas without leaving campus Opportunity to engage in discussion with peers from other campuses who share an interest in the innovation/technology being considered Easy to fit into busy professional life

12. Professional Development Preferences Evaluations of these programs, recent surveys of faculty, observations by academic support staff suggest that faculty today care about specific affordances of technology, not technology in general faculty learn most readily from other faculty

13. Response to these programs Topics are rated highly Mean, 4.38; median, 5 Time is the scarcest resource: faculty want immediately useful information directly available to them

14. Representative Topics Teaching with Blogs History Engine: Tools for Promoting Collaborative Education and Research among Students Imagining the Unseeable: Molecular Visualization with UCSF Chimera Technology and Less Commonly Taught Languages Digital Identities: Maintenance, Boundaries and Ethics for Students and Faculty

15. Responses to Technology Ease of use of technology Mean, median responses were both 4 of possible 5 Likelihood of attending future videoconference programs

16. MIV Sessions as Campus Resources Are webcams scary? Not so much … Some groups participate as faculty/campus “brown bags” Recordings, whiteboards available after the program for review, sharing

17. Discussion: Sharing Innovation Innovative Practices on your campus Small groups of 4-6 each Take 10-15 minutes to discuss your question Share results with the full group

18. Questions, follow-up? NITLE – www.nitle.org Nancy Millichap – nancy.millichap@nitle.org Rebecca Frost Davis – rebecca.davis@nitle.org