Learning Technologies and Me

My role as an academic in the LT community

Within the LT community, I am a believer that innovation and responsibility go hand in hand. Being one of the digital immigrants of this information technology revolution, I would consider myself to be an enthusiastic, caring, and conscientious teacher-researcher. I have always been focusing on the need to be at the forefront of educational change and innovation.

Starting fifteen years ago, I was inspired by the power of multimedia technology as an art learner that began my life-long journey with learning technologies. I started integrating multimedia technology into Art curriculum as a grad student and teaching assistant, and later into my Social Science teaching both at a two and a four year colleges. I perceive myself as a rational LT enthusiast and educator with a caring, conscientious, and an adventurous quality to cross cultures and to immerse in multiple ways of learning.

My current career goal is to be a diligent educator-researcher. I have been designing and implementing curriculum and instruction for six years at my current work setting. I am also one of those who dare to teach-research-serve, never ceasing to learn. Thus, learning and teaching become an important part of my life. For example, the curiosity and desire to learn have led me to a multi-disciplinary background through three previous Master’s degree learning and the current Ph.D. program. I ended up having five majors and four minors: Sociology/Social Psychology, Socio-political science, Studio Art, Art Education, Learning Technologies, with minors of Computer Science, Women’s Studies, Journalism, and Military Education. Fortunately, Learning Technologies weave my previous multidisciplinary teaching and learning experience into a holistic tapestry. In this sense, I would also perceive myself as an artistic and versatile educator and learner who actively participates in many scholarly activities and productions at UW-Stout, my current work place-Chippewa Valley Technical College, as well as at University of Minnesota- Twin Cities.

Marshall McLuhan once pointed out that we shape our tools, but then our tools shape us. The dramatic change of information technology since 1960s with the PLATO system along with today’s Web 2.0 provides myriad teaching and learning possibilities for more facilitators and learners than ever before to access knowledge and management. With this constant advance in computer and communications technologies, research in educational technologies has undergone a paradigmatic shift toward a new horizon: enhancing the fluid mobility between theories in and actions? This new horizon focuses on merging the study of learning in complete, complex, and interactive learning environments with the use of emerging technology to advance the integration of contents, pedagogy, and technology.

Those Who Can, Teach – Creatively, And Responsibly. – Crystal

My teaching philosophy

In a differentiated teaching methods seminar, I found an inspirational message - “When we identify a student who doesn’t understand, louder and slower won’t do it. We need to be more creative than ever; when we identify students who already understand, doing it again isn’t acceptable. We need to be more creative than ever”. Students learn in different ways and paces under various circumstances, which is what I consider to be the most challenging issue in the Digital Age. The key solution is “we need to be more creative than ever”! This is what I meant at the beginning of this statement – Innovation and responsibility go hand in hand.
At the individual level, being a cross cultural learner and educator, immersed in this best and the most revolutionary period of time, teaching has always been a challenging yet highly rewarding profession. At the collective level, this sense of challenge is particularly acute for educators today. Educators have been facing increasingly diverse student population, and the demands of accountabilities. At the same time, education in the Digital Age is endowed with an environment of unprecedented opportunities. Learning technology is a gift to practitioners with golden opportunities that open windows for the further encouragements of students’ learning, communicating with parents, building learning communities, advocating the future of learning technologies, convincing policy makers, and empowering the human capital, just to name a few positive functions.

These opportunities demand all stakeholders reshape and reflect on the goals and purpose of education. The technology affordances of the Internet and the constant innovated interactivities make it feasible both in access and delivery of interactive/differentiated methods tailored to diverse students’ needs. Thus, it is imperative for educators to be innovative, responsible, and insightful in designing, implementing, and assessing the affordances of technologies in enhancing student learning.

As a conscientious educator, I don’t take any available opportunities to engage with my teaching and learning environment for granted. I value every engagement with students, colleagues, Union, administrators, and the whole edu-ecological system. I deeply believe that the well informed citizens are the currency of democracy. I envision the digital citizenship prevailing in every corner of human societies. And this democratic reality has been growing fruitfully via the ubiquitous NGI super Broadband accessibility. But for learning to happen effectively, it needs seamless hardware and software interface. It needs the innovative integration of contents, pedagogies with technological affordances. It needs a conscientious educator to take on his catalyst role to make it happen effectively and efficiently.

Personally, I benefit from rich media technology’s affordances that assist my teaching philosophy and pedagogies toward fruition. During the last ten years’ college teaching journey, I was a recipient of the outstanding contributor to UW-System and Color of Woman Award in 2001 representing UW-Stout, and Teacher of the Year in 2007, representing my district for Chippewa Valley Technical College. Educational technology is one of the key scaffolds supporting my pedagogical success.

A Three-Prong Sociological Approach

My Research Agenda

In the Educational Technologies field, many disciplines have assisted in building the knowledge foundation necessary to understand human beings’ learning and interacting with the aids of technologies. For example, Behavioral-cognitive-Psychology, Neuroscience, Computer Science, and numerous renowned learning technology scholars’ endeavors have contributed immensely to this understanding from a wide range of perspectives.

Having come originally from a Sociology/Social Psychology background, I envision sociological perspectives integrated into the mainstream research trends. I am interested in the social forces shaping daily reality in the Digital Age from the micro and macro aspects. These approaches such as structure and functionalism, symbolic interactionism, social conflict perspectives and their combined methods have generated three strands of research agenda that guide my current and future studies.

From the macro structural-functional perspective
During the last decade, research in the field of human capital management (e.g., HPI or HPT) and organizational cost-effectiveness research tinted with the flavor of this perspective. Tied to my teaching philosophy, to keep the currency of democracy up-to-date, educator-researchers have to confront the issues of empowering human capital, enhance the quality of accessing and utilizing information technology in the digital age.[1] One of the concrete examples of this research orientation is my interest in studying e-learning in a technical college setting. My last ten years’ teaching at a four year poly-technical university and current two-year technical college provides me rich information regarding how different structures and functions of educational configurations affects teaching and learning pertaining to learning technologies.

Though most two year technical colleges, comprehensive community colleges, and four year colleges tend to be lumped together as the post-secondary educational system or “higher educational” institution, [2] they are fundamentally different in many aspects. These include educational missions, climates, diversity of student body, specific roles of faculty and staff, funding, infrastructure and the overall ecological configuration, just to name a few, comprise the uniqueness of two-year technical colleges that stand out as a special and controversial educational entity. These two-year colleges play a crucial role in American economic, political, and educational reality. But there is limited amount of research focusing on the complex educational ecology of two year colleges that affects the daily teaching and learning, in particular, when relating to learning technologies. This is a field that I would like to focus on.

From the social conflict perspective
I am focused on social stratification[3] both in domestic and global domains tied to digital equity and quality which has potentials to lead to ecological/system change. For example, digital-divide is one of established fields of research tackling the gaps and effects of race/ethnicity, gender, social class, disabilities, as well as others relating socially constructed reality in the digital era. Another current example to illustrate this approach was my last semester’s collaborative “Rural Families Speak” project. It was a longitudinal multistate research focusing on rural low income mothers’ well being. My team narrowed down to study what the role of the Intent playing out in these low-income (intersections of geo-social class and gender) mothers’ lives.

From the micro symbolic-interaction perspective
The cyber phenomena [4] have been constantly created and re-created by different digital generations through their daily interactions. Hermeneutic phenomenology, ethnomethodology, virtual ethnography, and auto-ethnography are applicable research methods for this approach. A real life case to illustrate this perspective is that I am documenting my daily interactions with my four course delivery formats within current semester – online, hybrid, Live Meeting, and face to face with web-enhanced curriculum.

In short, my research agenda is based a framework integrating sociology and learning technologies to examine different scopes of digital reality shaped by multifaceted social forces.

Individually, We Are One Drop. Together, We Are An Ocean

My role-model within the LT field

All effective and conscientious scholars, practitioners, educators, policy makers and individuals with rational enthusiasm serve as my role model. A visionary role model, who is a resolute social change agent and leader, whose passion for learning, teaching and research, envisage educational technologies as a positive transformative mechanism that democratizes human societies. A rational and enthusiastic innovator who foresees the potentials of learning technologies that can lead to an authentic democratic society guides my enthusiasm and energy to the common good.
They are many of role models in our field, exemplifying tenacity and unwaveringness, so I learn and have the courage to select the road less travelled.

If Technology Is Not Used For Enhancing Humanity, Then For What?

The future of Learning Technologies
We are witnessing the accelerated effect of cybernetics which is all about humans and technology interacting to form the foundation of human infrastructure. In this cyber-structure, the high tech and high touch can be mutually complementary. Different digital generations are constructing ways of facilitating multi-generational and global communications.

The current Web 2.0 is such a transformative tool reshaping the educational experience. The line between space and time is rapidly becoming blurred and may cease to exist in the foreseeable future. The Learning in both “virtual” and “real” worlds simultaneously creates “inter-reality“ phenomenon that implies more options available to effectively merge teaching and learning in a seamless way.

I envision one day the “cutting edge” and “innovative” is no longer the nick name of business world or the industrial-military compounds. Those who can, teach – creatively and responsibly, are the catalysts to the systematic and systemic change of our society. Learning technologies will be the hardest science that requires robust digital engagers to take on studies that are under fast changing dynamics and contingent - the knowledge and skill required for effective practice tend to extremely sensitive to local conditions (Berliner, 2002). In such a challenging profession, only those stakeholders who tackle the challenge as a way of conscious living will reshape the future of our society.

I envision an omnipresent and mobile environment for all learners to create the -world-is-flat phenomenon. The current Web 2.0 encapsulates the idea of the proliferation of interconnectivity and interactivity of e-effects. It opens up sky-is-the-limit possibilities to transform learning to defy various digital divides in domestic and global domains.
The optimism and challenge are co-existent in this unprecedented epoch. Learning Technology is a gift as well as a social responsibility to the educators and relevant stakeholders. It is a golden opportunity to reach diverse learners to optimize the human capitals and shorten the digital gaps. It is time to redirect such powerful capacity of learning technologies into the humanitarian change.

It is a goal, an action, a commitment, and a responsibility!

[1] I expanded three extra current digital populations into the original categories: the “digital elite”, the digital native, the digital immigrant, and the “digital behind”, and the “digital deprived”.
[2] Technical colleges play a key role to bridge PK-12 and 15-16 educational settings. Yet, most people consider two year colleges being only a peripheral part (a step-child or child out of the educational wed-lock) of the collegiate system, or a “catch basin” for those few students unable or unwilling to enter “regular” colleges.
[3] Such as race/ethnicity, gender, social class, disability and various types of intersectional theories .
[4] e.g., formal and informal e-learning, e-community, e-communication, e-legality, and e-commerce…etc.) draft 9:00:00 PM by Li-chin(Crystal) Huang Delete
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