Into the community: collaboration produces learning.

Abstract

Information and technology have made it possible for instructors to dramatically change the way in which course content is presented and processed. Yet, in practical terms, how can this revolution have a tangible impact on learning? Collaboration between instructor, technology/instructional designer and library personnel can produce motivated, active learning. This paper presents a model for such collaboration and details how it can create experiential learning that goes beyond the classroom into the local community.

Then and Now

Eight years ago, I asked my students to find an article on Latin America they might share with their classmates. Without exception, each brought in newspaper articles they had bought at a local bookstore. None of the articles was current. Most dated from two weeks to a month previous. The students complained about the cost of such a purchase and I was dissatisfied that, given the lack of current events materials available through our library, I was not able to assign a specific task. I had asked for "something related to Latin America" knowing this was the best I could do.

That was my first year teaching. Today, each of my courses has its own course site where I post syllabi, assignments, hand outs, exams, lecture outlines, and any other materials needed for learning and teaching. Through this site the students can connect to external links, engage in online peer review, submit an oral dictation exercise, participate in both written and oral discussion boards and on and on. No longer do they bring to class dated and expensive "current events" materials, but they can read news from almost any part of the world updated several times a day. They can also connect to our library's Web site in search of texts shelved there and elsewhere. They can access tutorials on that site and academic sources through such engines as EBSCO are also available.

As instructor, I now have available to me not only this plethora of information, but several media through which to explore it with my students. I can use what is available on the Web, but I can also generate materials myself and ask my students to do so as well. I no longer require students to use a cassette player to tape an oral exercise that we have practiced a couple of times in class. I create a way file and then make it available to students online. They listen to it as many times as needed, create their own wav file and then send it to my online digital drop box. In the comfort of my office or home, I listen to the recordings and grade them.

The process of using information and technology effectively appears seamless. Yet, as an instructor, it often seems overwhelming. What information should I use for teaching? How should I best share this information with my students? Which exercises will they find engaging? What information should I ask my students to bring into their and their classmates' learning experience? Can they evaluate that material appropriately and cite it correctly? How much technology should I use and expect them to use? What do they already know?

As I have integrated information and technology into my teaching, it has become abundantly clear that in this process of integration, I need help. I do know something about using information effectively and about several of the "new" medias, but I am also responsible for class content. The latter is and must be my primary focus. But, help is available. In my view, utilizing appropriate university staff to teach, share, and support information and technology as it is wed to course content is both necessary and effective in the current teaching and learning environment in which we find ourselves. In what follows, I hope to demonstrate this by describing and analyzing a course in which technology and information were wed to course content through the assistance of colleagues in the Center for Instructional Advancement and Technology as well as library reference. In it, I wish to demonstrate how this collaboration provides one model for instruction.

Into the Community: Making the Transition

For years, I have taught a rather dry text-based course on "Latin American Culture and Civilization" and, for years I have been frustrated by students' lack of engagement with the subject. Over that period, too, Baltimore's Latino population has grown. From 1980-2000, the US Census Bureau calculates an increase from 21,634 total Latinos to 51,329 (CensusScope, 2003). Perhaps, I thought, if students approached the issues and concerns of Latino culture through their own environment, they might gain a deeper and longer lasting engagement with the subject. The idea was that students should engage directly with the Latino community and bring that experience back into class to reflect on such issues as identity, discrimination, family, and women as they affect the Latino community in the U.S. as well as Latin Americans elsewhere.

While I had knowledge of the content issues under study and pedagogy useful in their instruction, I needed to decide how to bring the students' experiential learning into the classroom in a meaningful way. I was able to do this with the help of colleagues at Towson University's Center for Instructional Advancement and Technology (CIAT).

The Instructional Designer's Perspective: CIAT's Role and Assistance

Core to CIAT's philosophy is allowing faculty to become independent users of sound instructional tools and/or to enhance teaching and learning through infusion of supporting and appropriate technology. Combining instructional design, technology, and multimedia services, CIAT is a one-stop shop for faculty to work with a variety of classroom and online applications focused on effective student learning. Faculty who seek the assistance of CIAT are supported by a team of staff members who first look at an instructional issue from the most effective instructional strategy(ies) to the most appropriate supporting technology and/or multimedia.

If using technology and/or multimedia will enhance student learning, the role of the CIAT consultants is to examine the instructional project and identify the most appropriate delivery tools, and to partner with the professor to create an effective instructional experience. What McKeachie (1994) tells us about learning is: "Experiential learning has both cognitive and motivational goals" and such experiences "not only motivate students to learn current course materials, but also increase their intrinsic interest in further learning." With this in mind, technology provides the opportunity for students to gain field experience both inside and outside the classroom walls (Pescosolido and Aminzade, 1999). By video taping people and traditions of Latino culture in the Baltimore area and embedding these tapes into online instruction and by assigning students to follow this model in conducting their own research in the Latino community, we were able to open avenues not readily available to the faculty member and her students in a traditional delivery of instruction.

This instructional project encompassed all three functions within CIAT (i.e., instructional design, technology, multimedia) and developed an exciting and cooperative relationship with the professor as each of us contributed ideas to the success of this teaching initiative. In working with the professor on this Latin America Culture and Civilization course, it became apparent that the student learning and retention of the course content could be greatly enhanced through supporting technologies such as digital images, video and audio recordings, and electronic postings and feedback tools. In addition, because of the scope of this instructional project, this professor was awarded a very prestigious CIAT Technology Fellowship in the fall of 2001--providing a faculty stipend and University-wide exposure and recognition.

Effective Instructional Strategies

As an instructor, I know that modeling can be extremely effective as a pedagogical tool (McKeachie, 1994). Thus, the project was initiated with the premise that I, as instructor, should model what I would expect the students to do. Therefore, I conducted video taped interviews (in Spanish) with seven members of the local Latino community. The interviewees represented a range of social and economic classes, different ages and races, educational backgrounds, and histories of immigration to the United States. All interviewees were asked to respond to a series of questions on topics we would later study in Spanish 312 (Latin American Culture and Civilization) in the context of Latin America: identity, family, religion, women, and discrimination. With the help of a CIAT video expert, three to five minute selections were made on each topic from each interviewee, compressed and loaded to my server space. The interviews were accessed by students through links via our Blackboard course Web site. There students could view a still photograph of the interviewee as well. Each interviewee had his or her own page with a list of the topics discussed in the interview. The task of the students was to listen to each clip, summarize its content, and utilize the material in several ways to reflect on the same issues within the context of Latin America. This integration and intersection of the real (Baltimore) with the abstract (Latin America) brought about broader and deeper reflection from the students on both. It also served the ever-present goal of any foreign language program of providing practice with the language through real experience.

While I had previous experience with the content I wished to discuss with the interviewees, I had never video taped before. CIAT staff provided instruction in video recording and lent the necessary equipment. It was in their offices as well and through their staff that the digital video tapes were compressed and uploaded to my server space. CIAT staff also created the interviewee templates uploaded to the course's Web site that were later downloaded by students. I had used Blackboard previously and do so in all of my courses, so I was able to create links to the tapes once they were on my server space and also to provide instruction to students on how to access and use these materials.

The more actively students participate in the learning process, the deeper and the more lasting learning becomes (Feden and Vogel, 2003). Therefore, the next stage in the project required students to put into action what I had modeled for them. This stage also required support from CIAT staff. Student teams were asked to conduct their own taped interview of a member of the local Latino community. Each team was required to ask their interviewee a set of questions similar to those discussed in the instructor-modeled interviews. Students in the class were not mass communications or film majors and, for the most part, had limited video taping experience. Thus, in addition to receiving instruction on the content to be included in the interview, students also received in-class instruction on videotaping from CIAT staff. Tips on taping were also available through our class Web site.

After conducting their interview, each team completed a "video template" or written summary of the interview to which was attached a five-minute video clip from the interview. Students downloaded the template from our Blackboard site, filled in the necessary written content, and attached the video clip. Once this had been completed, the entire class had access to some 12 additional interviews from which to reflect on the issues we were simultaneously studying in relation to Latin America through textbook, film, and audio materials. Once students had completed their interviews and these were incorporated into class content, the next stage of the process was to create and share a research project.

Research Assistance

Experiential learning had proven most profitable to content study and would also provide the stimulus for research. Student teams were required to choose a topic from the interview they had conducted and about which they wished to learn more. From this topic they created a research project. Most students are required to do several research projects during their academic career and many have found the Internet to be an excellent source for material. As anyone who teaches is aware, numerous problems arise as students use new technologies to meet class assignments. Few know how to access academic materials available through their libraries yet unavailable through a "Google" search. Often students do not know how to assess sources; even more infrequently do they know how to cite sources appropriately.

I, myself, find the plethora of information now available through electronic media daunting. Nevertheless, I wanted my students to use this information and also recognized that they, like I, needed support. Not only did we need help and instruction in finding and using available information, but also clearly neither the students nor I had the time to wade through this abundant information and make an appropriate selection. We needed support and a filter.

Fortunately, staff at Towson's Cook Library offer instruction in the use of electronic media and support in gathering and selecting material. First, for our course, they created a Web site of electronic, print, video, and audio materials available to students and relating to Latin America in general, as well as to the specific research questions chosen by each team. Second, they offered students instruction during two separate class periods on accessing, evaluating, and citing sources. Finally, they worked on an individual basis with teams on using information effectively to create their research projects. The reference support was key to the course. I could not have done what they did!

Final Project: Experiential Learning, Technology and Information

The final step for students was to present their research project to the class. Topics presented ranged from unemployment issues in Guatemala (this team wondered what employment was like in that country after their interviewee informed them that he had immigrated to the U.S. because he could not find a job in his homeland) to how first generation immigrants maintain native culture in their families and resources available to them for this purpose. These in-class presentations were, for the most part, engaging. They were a product of interest in a topic that was the result of direct contact with the local Latino community. Topics explored were not, however, limited in scope to the local community. Furthermore, students presented topics well-grounded in academic research that included several types of source materials. And, finally, teams felt comfortable with and competently utilized several types of media in preparing for and presenting the topic chosen.

Summary and Results

The materials prepared for this course by the instructor and during the course by students will be used in the future as the class is taught again. The video recordings have already and will continue to be incorporated into other classes in different ways and on different levels (for language learning in Spanish 1, for example, to content study in more advanced courses). The instructor gained valuable insight and knowledge in effectively using several technologies to enhance as well as create course content. And, the instructor gained experience in sifting through and then effectively making information part of the teaching/learning process.

Students gained experience in both the use of information and technology they will carry with them into further studies and beyond. In evaluations written at the end of the semester, students took pride in the computer skills they had learned in class and liked the constant access to information provided by the class Web site. It was, however, the integration of technology with information and hands on experience that earned the highest acclaim from students. Many commented they had enjoyed and learned much from the interviews conducted by the professor and fellow students with members of the Latino community. One student wrote: "The personal interviews gave us a perspective on the real 'Latino world' as opposed to the Latino world described in books or other media." Through their own interviews, students became active learners and participants. Another student wrote: "It is hard to try to participate in a community that is foreign to you without some sense of context. The interviews provided that context." Interestingly, several teams chose to do further interviews with Latino community members in support of their research once the single required interview had been completed. From interview to in-class and Web presentation, the students were highly motivated. Simply put, they did more and were more active in, learning. Overcoming the problem of motivation was key to learning in the course. As Meyers and Jones (1993) write in their Promoting Active Learning, students find active learning interesting. Increased interest improves motivation

and ultimately makes "learning more meaningful" and "teaching more enjoyable."

The entire project and its effect on student learning were a product of the cooperation between CIAT staff, library personnel, and the instructor. This collaboration provides what we believe is an effective model for teaching and learning in today's academic environment.

References

CensusScope. "Population by Race. Baltimore, MD." Census 2000. The Social Science Data Analysis Network. January 21, 2003. <http://www.censusscope.org>

Feden, Preston D. and Vogel, Robert M. Methods of Teaching: Applying Cognitive Science to Promote Student Learning. New York, New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2003. p. 337.

McKeachie, Wilbers J. Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers. 9th ed. Lexington, Massachusetts: D. C. Heath and Company, 1994. pp. 140, 355

Meyers, Chet and Jones, Thomas B. Promoting Active Learning. Strategies for the College Classroom. The Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1993. p. 157.

Pescosolido, Bernice A. and Aminzade, Roland, Eds. "Beyond These Walls: Teaching Within and Outside the Expanded Classroom." The Social Worlds of Higher Education: Handbook for Teaching in a New Century. Boston, Massachusetts: Pine Forge Press, 1999. pp. 582-601.

Colleen Ebacher, Towson University, MD Gloria Palumbo Holland, Towson University, MD

Ebacher is Associate Professor of Spanish. Her research interests include technology and pedagogy, Latin American culture, colonial studies and film. Holland is Executive Director of the Center for Instructional Advancement and Technology.