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While faculty are often willing to
learn new techniques and technologies to enhance the learning
process, their main mission is teaching, research, and service--
not technology development. With that in mind, the CITL is
here to help you with your project design and development
needs. This may be either a one-time consulting session, a
series of sessions, or if the project warrants we may even
take over a part of the project for you. This is a particularly
important process to consider if you are funding a project
with grant money.
There are a number of different development models that you
can use to guide your project and they all boil down to a
few key questions:
What is the problem you need to
solve?
Sometimes it can be difficult to discern
what the real source of a particular problem is. For example,
are your students doing poorly on exams because they don't
understand the material, or because they lack prerequisite
knowledge? We'll help you get to the root of the problem so
that you can be sure you're attacking the right source.
What is the best solution to that
problem?
For any given problem there are bound
to be any number of possible solutions. However, not all solutions
are feasible. This is particularly true with technology, where
costs can be high and solutions that appear simple can in
fact be technically very difficult to pull off. Unfortunately,
this is sometimes not apparent until it's too late. At the
CITL, we can help you come up with solutions that are reasonable
given your particular working constraints. For example, we'll
ask you how much time you want to invest in authoring materials,
what technical skills are you willing to learn, and will you
be able to manage the project as it grows?
How do you implement your chosen
solution?
This is where you really get your hands
dirty and flesh out the design for your solution and then
build it. We can help you work through this process to ensure
that your project goes as smoothly as possible. Typically
this will involve some form of design and prototyping, and
may also include usability testing if the project warrants
it. We have found that it is enormously useful to anticipate
problems that will occur under real-use conditions!
How do you evaluate the impact
of your solution?
Evaluating the success of any intervention
can be tricky, and the addition of technology sometimes makes
the problem worse. We are experienced in evaluating technology-based
solutions, and can offer help developing tools and techniques
to best measure the impact of what you create, whether you
need a formative or a summative evaluation. Choosing to use
technology-based instructional materials can involve some
risk, therefore, we can help you avoid costly mistakes and
unintended consequences.
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