As faculty, you are in the business of teaching students. In a liberal arts environment, the teaching you do transcends your own discipline. Your efforts result in students mastering critical thinking skills, one of the underpinnings of a liberal arts education. Ideally, students should be able to make connections across curriculum and life experiences and move toward metacognition.

“Metacognition is selectively taking information, then connecting and comparing it to prior knowledge in an attempt to make sense of the information or what is
being received” (Olson). In this way, we link prior knowledge with present
experience to gain understanding.

Technology is one of the many tools available to you as an instructor, to help you deliver content for metacognition. How are you using technology? Chances are, you are already a technology user. Do you word process? Research databases? Send and receive email?

How do you move from this functional level to the next level, the level of using technology to enhance your classes?

Set goals.

According to learning style guru Kolb, “you can increase your learning by up to 50% if you set clear and meaningful goals” (1985). You should define goals for yourself as well as your students when you decide to use technology.

Questions to ask:
What are your goals?
How does technology promote these goals?
Are you incorporating technology to: entertain or motivate? (Olson)

Stamm’s “WOWDOC”
1. Identify level of online involvement
2. Define pre-instructional activities
3. Select content and determine presentation format
4. Determine learner participation
5. Develop assessment procedures
6. Review activities

More Pre-Technology Assessment
Bells and Whistles
http://www.cofc.edu/bellsandwhistles/research/integration.html

Your Role
In all this, remember that if you use technology, your role as instructor becomes more important, not less. When you use applications to demonstrate principals, you must make sure you have taught your students the concepts they are supposed to learn. Without teaching the basic concept, you give students “knowledge structures that crumble under the slightest cognitive stress.” (Olson)