Contribute to the planning, development, communication, implementation, and evaluation of technology-infused strategic plans at the district and school levels. (ISTE 2011)
One of the biggest challenges in teaching computer science in higher education is keeping up with the developments in the field. New computer programming languages, platforms, and development environments seem to come up every year. This can make the computer science educator’s task of avoiding ‘educational stagnation‘ (Wright, 2014) very challenging. Indeed, I found this very thing happening to me in several of the computer science courses I taught at a community college.
I discuss several ways to meet this challenge in my article on initiating innovation at community colleges. One of the best ways that helped me with this challenge is to communicate and collaborate with my fellow faculty. This works well for my school because many courses are taught by multiple faculty members. In particular, my courses that needed an updated lesson plan were all taught by other instructors. I took it upon myself to reach out to the other instructors that taught my courses, and work on a way to update our lesson plans.
The meeting with my co-instructors has turned into an informal faculty learning community (FLC) that has continued to this day. It also enlightened me on how different faculty use our learning management system (Canvas). I had fairly aggressive goals in to update my lesson plans. However, after evaluating the results of other instructors, I came up with a much more realistic and strategic plan that has allowed me to work with my fellow faculty.
Today, the FLC is focused on sharing experiences around teaching courses online. This is particularly relevant during the current worldwide pandemic and the state requirement for schools to offer remote learning. The FLC and eLearning committee asked the school administration to offer training on various technologies, such as Zoom conferencing, to help instructors come up to speed on online learning technologies. The training occurred the week before the quarter began, and was captured in a Canvas course that instructors could review at home on their own time. This is a great example of how my FLC can contribute to the planning, development, and implementation of professional development at my school.
References
- International Society for Technology in Education. (ISTE; 2011). Standards for Coaches. https://id.iste.org/docs/pdfs/20-14_ISTE_Standards-C_PDF.pdf.
- Soricone, L., McDonnell, R., Couturier, L., Endel, B., & Freeman, J. (2016). Scaling innovation for community colleges. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Retrieved October 23, 2019 from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED567865.pdf
- Wright, M. (2014). How we can propel ourselves out of “educational stagnation”. Jobs for the future. Retrieved October 23, 2019 from https://www.jff.org/points-of-view/how-we-can-propel-ourselves-out-educational-stagnation/