Five Tips for Faculty Working with an Educational Technology Designer
1) Trust me. I know how to use at least two different learning management systems, including the one at our school. I can train you to use at least a dozen different technologies to help you create interesting multimedia or content for your online course. I’m familiar with all the things that do and don’t work about Blackboard. This is my job. I’m good at it. Trust me.
2) Have some humility. It’s okay if you don’t know what a measurable objective is, or how to write a rubric. I do. I can teach you how to do that. It’s cool: You’re a college faculty member, which means you didn’t jump through the hoops of pedagogical training and teaching licensure that your K-12 colleagues have. And I’d be happy to show you the best ways to do these things if you would just…
3) …Stop fighting me. You think this course won’t work online. So did all the other faculty I’ve worked with. With respect, I’m going to prove you wrong. And stop complaining about objectives. The reason you don’t like my way of doing them isn’t because my way is wrong (it isn’t), it’s because it’s not easy. Writing objectives the right way is hard. It’s time consuming. So is making a proper rubric with defined criteria, appropriate levels of proficiency and clear examples of what it means to meet them. I know how to do this, and I will take the time to share what I know with you. Stop fighting me.
4) Follow my process. I don’t like wasting time. I’m probably building a few other courses alongside yours, or at least working on about two other projects at any given moment. My process is refined and structured to be as efficient and easy as possible for everyone involved, especially you. No, you can’t start building your schedule or syllabus until you’ve finished your course level objectives. Why? Because those objectives should define and guide every learning activity and every piece of learning material that goes into that course. If you do it the other way around, it’ll be a huge mess, you won’t have any focus, and I’ll be adding in content at the last minute as you scramble around trying to figure out what you forgot. Because you didn’t follow my process. Follow my process.
5) Keep some perspective. While my job responsibilities may include helping you build your course, you are not by any means my only project. When you miss your deadlines, it puts me behind and steals my focus from other work I have to do. I am not here just for you. That doesn’t mean you don’t have my full attention at our meetings (you do), or during the time I block out to build your course and content. But if you don’t meet your deadlines and provide me with content, I can’t build it for you. I also have to divert time from my other responsibilities to finish something I could have done for you earlier. Please don’t think you can put off working on your course, or miss a deadline because you are under the impression that your course is the only thing on my plate.
Those are my top five. Anyone have anything else to add?
