From "teaching technologies" to "teaching innovation"

Abstract

Exposing faculty to one another's instructional challenges and accomplishments and enabling them to network has been the motivation behind an annual conference at the University of Maryland for nearly 20 years. The instructional technology experiences of three intrepid early adopters were showcased in the University's first half-day Teaching with Technology symposium in 1993. By 1999 the symposium blossomed into a full-day conference where presentations by 12 instructors continued to emphasize different forms of technology in the classroom, but, oddly enough, integrated only minimal use of technology in the presentations themselves.As technology in the classroom became ubiquitous, the sponsoring conference hosts believed it was time to change the focus of the conference from technology in teaching to innovation in teaching and learning. This paper will briefly trace lessons learned in the evolution of the Innovations in Teaching and Learning Conference[1]. It will additionally focus on our recent integration of technologies such as Twitter, lecture capture tools, QR codes and streamed broadcasting, which enable us to model uses of instructional technology tools and to make the conference available to a broader audience