Dos for Working with Students: Notes from the Institute on Teaching Strategies

Part of today's program in the Institute was to have two of our own faculty, Alex Reid from Professional Writing and Paul van der Veur from New Media talk about their work with the millennial students.

Paul gave a low tech list of Do's for working with students and technology. He began by saying that incorporating media takes time. Our incoming students assume that technology will be there and they are not intimidated by it. They tend to be great consumers of technology and yet are not at a point where they are able to create good media content nor are they at a point where they are able to think critically or reflectively about it. And here are some do's Paul recommended to faculty integrating technology into their teaching:

• only ask students what you're willing to do yourself
• you can learn it with them
• be honest with your students
• be enthusiastic
• think about ways to support student learning: peer to peer, groups, individual projects
• take advantage of the resources available
• keep them moving on their assignments
• frequent assignments work better than one big assignment
• set boundaries, expect students to push them but it's better than no boundaries at all
• keep assignments meaningful and relevant to students, their lives now and their aspirations after graduations
• keep your expectations low
• be prepared to change and adapt
• prepare for contingencies
• be prepared to put in a lot of extra time.

I would also add be prepared to be engaged, challenged, stimulated and changing. It will be a lot of fun!!!

The Institute on Teaching Strategies begins to day

Today was the first day of the first [of many, I'm sure] Institute on Teaching Strategies hosted by the Faculty Development Center in partnership with the Provost and Information Resources. Faculty applied to attend the retreat, aimed at helping them redesign courses to reach today's millenial student. We began our meeting today overlooking the beautiful gardens of the SUNY Cortland Alumni House.

Our two speakers were Chuck Dziuban of University of Central Florida and Gardner Campbell of University of Mary Washington. They both gave wonderful presentations enlivened with humor and their obvious love for what they are doing. Technology is a large part of developing and designing course for millenial students. For them, it is an immersive experience rather than an add-on. Technology is a large part of the world of today's students; so ubiquitous they don't imagine a world without it. At the same time, students do not want technology for technology's sake. It's part of their world, one of communication and community. They live with each other and live to interact with each other.

One of the things said early in the day was that the millenial students welcome disruption. In their multi-tasking lives, they understand the constant move from one thing to another and back again.

One of the things I've noticed about students in the library, especially in the Learning Commons, is that our students are also used to be the center of attention. They can ignore it but they certainly don't mind it. They are incurious about the behind-the-scenes and the details of the processes that serve them. They expect it. As we librarians and administrators have toured students around the Commons, the students generally ignore us and remain immersed in their own world. It's as if they are in a river. The follow the current, ride the rapids, swim and have fun--whatever it is they want to do. The rest of us are on the banks doing whatever it is we must do. Should they need something on the shore, they will pull themselves up to our piers and ask their questions. And then back to the mainstream of their lives.