Throughout the month of February, Instructional Design and eTeaching Services at Boston College is asking students to nominate distinguished faculty for a Teaching with New Media (TWIN) Award in recognition of their use of innovative technology in the classroom.
"We work so closely with faculty, but we really don't have the student perspective. Faculty members like to try out new technology, but it doesn't always work. This is a way to hear from the students," said Jeanne Po, associate director of Instructional Design and eTeaching at BC. The Instructional Design and eTeaching office oversees all the technological support for WebCT, manages five computer classes, and works with faculty on large projects relating to classroom technology.
Po notes that the TWIN award program is growing steadily. "The first year, we had less than 100 nominations, and last year we had around 300. This year, we have between 160 to 170 nominations so far," she said. Students are encouraged to fill out a short nomination form on www.bc.edu/twin and comment freely on how one of their professors uses recently developed technology to assist student learning through a variety of media. This kind of new technology could include PowerPoint, blogging, e-mail, WebCT, other "virtual spaces," and gaming technology, to name a few.
The nominations are then processed and former recipients of the award are taken out of the running. Once the semifinalists have been named, a selection committee comprised of faculty, staff, and students reviews all the course material of each instructor, including any Web sites, and selects the group of finalists. Each recipient garners special recognition from the Provost and is also awarded a prize, which, in the past two years has been an iPod. "The use of technology by faculty is not acknowledged in the tenure-track program, so these awards give faculty some recognition," said Po.
Bonnie Jefferson, a professor in the communication department and a former recipient of the TWIN award, is one of those noted faculty members in the field of innovative technology. Her class, Rhetorical Tradition, was part of the pilot program for WebCT at BC four years ago. WebCT technology was primarily used in the sciences at that time, but Dale Herbeck, the chair of the communication department, proposed the idea of incorporating it into their discipline, which has the largest number of student majors.
2008 Woodie Awards
