Instructional Technology Conference 2008

Title: "How to Increasing Student Engagement in Interactive Television Courses";

Name: Laura K.M. Donorfio, Ph.D. & Keith Barker, Ph.D.

Audience Level: All

Audience: All

Length: 1 hour

Abstract:
This session describes the transitions involved in developing and incorporating engagement strategies in an interactive television course (iTV). The course has been taught a total of four times, first as a traditional one-site course and as an iTV course delivered to three sites. Details are provided on the design and implementation of a teaching platform that was thought to be "engagement ready."; Systematic student feedback will be provided, along with the most successful engagements techniques.

Description:
Engaging students in an interactive television course is a challenge, to say the least, and if not addressed proactively, rarely happens. Unlike a traditional one-site course, having to get the students engaged with each other, the instructor, and the course content in the confines of four walls, an interactive television course must also contend with multiple sites, a room filled with intimidating technology equipment (e.g., large plasma and projector screens, microphones, and seeing oneself on screen), and the quick (and often unhappy) realization that the instructor is not always in the same place as the students.

This session will present successful engagement techniques developed for, and incorporated in, an interactive television course. The course was taught a total of four times, first as a traditional one-site course and then subsequently as an interactive television course delivered to three sites. Because the course was taught a total of four times, we were able to target what worked and didn't work by collecting formal student feedback at strategic intervals throughout the semester. We quickly learned that activities suitable for face-to-face delivery did not always work in an interactive television learning environment and thus alternative and often innovative activities needed to be created. It is a common belief that the conversion of delivery from a traditional one-site classroom to interactive video to multiple sites is simple — just stand in front of the camera! This assumption is only true if all that is required is to deliver material as a non-iterative lecture. However for a richer experience for the students more consideration is required of their role as the learner. A great deal of work goes into the pre-course planning and week by week class preparation is more time consuming than it is for a traditional class.

This session will capture what engagement strategies worked and did not work in an interactive television environment, what technological strategies worked and did not work, and the necessary and evolving partnership between the instructor and the University's Institute for Teaching and Learning. This session should be most helpful to persons involved in teaching an interactive television course, although it can also help with the overall course design and development of creative engagement strategies to be used in a traditional one-site classroom.

Session Type: Lecture/Presentation

Contact information/affiliation:
Laura K.M. Donorfio, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Human Development and Family Studies
University of Connecticut (Tri-Campus Waterbury)
99 East Main Street
Waterbury, CT 06702

Keith Barker, Ph.D.
Associate Vice Provost
Director, Institute for Teaching & Learning
University of Connecticut
CUE, 368 Fairfield Road, Unit 2142
Storrs, CT 06269-2142

Equipment: Data/video projector and sound system (will bring own laptop)

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