Implement strategies for initiating and sustaining technology innovations and manage the change process in schools and classrooms. (ISTE 2011)
In my post about sustaining innovation in computer science education, I describe the difficulty I had engaging with my fellow faculty. This proved to be a particularly painful issue when I first starting teaching at my school. The first course I taught had been developed by another faculty member – Programming in C++. I was informed that I had to build a syllabus and create a lesson plan in the school’s learning management system – Canvas. This was my first teaching experience and the quarter started in three months. I had a lot of work to do, including understand teaching requirements, learning the classroom configuration/hardware, and delivering a lesson plan. My one relief is that I would not be starting from scratch on developing the course content, as the course had been taught several times in the past.
I started out by learning the common teaching requirements – syllabus design, Canvas basics, etc. I felt pretty good about the pace of my work, even though I had not dived into the course content. A month and a half before the quarter started, I was told that I would be teaching a different course – Programming in C#. I knew both programming languages really well, so I initially did not think this late change would have much impact on me. This turned out to be a really bad assumption.
The Canvas course content for Programming in C++ was extensive – with assignments and assessments. However, the Canvas course content for Programming in C# looked more like an outline than an actual course. There was a syllabus, but only one assignment defined in the course. The course textbook was outdated and very expensive to students. I quickly realized I was fortunate to be teaching only one course in my first quarter of teaching, since I would not have survived if I were assigned additional courses (which did happen in the falling calendar year). I remember distinctly the large amount of work it took to pick a textbook, develop a lesson plan, define assignments and quizzes. All of which had to get done in a month. I quickly realized that I would not have enough time between Fall and Winter quarters or between Winter and Spring quarters to put in the same amount of work. It simply was not sustainable. This is when I reached out to my fellow faculty for help.
“Print” by chrizinger is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
I was assigned a different course in the next quarter – a SQL programming course. This course had been taught by another adjunct faculty at my school. I reached out early to this faculty member, and was able to communicate my experience in the first quarter. Fortunately, I was able to re-use the textbook and much of the Canvas content that this instructor had developed. This was a life-saver for me, giving me enough confidence that I actually took on two courses the next quarter. I have since worked with this instructor and other instructors on sharing our work in Canvas. This led to my discovery of the Canvas Commons feature that allows instructors to share bits and pieces of a Canvas course. I have also discovered the importance of building a modular lesson plan that my fellow faculty can re-use and extend with ease. This has turned out to be a fundamental part of initiating and sustaining innovation in my department.
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.
<< Previous: 1C Next: 2. Teaching, Learning and Assessments >>