One of the greatest, and most important challenges education institutions face is adoption of technology by the faculty.  This challenge is common across geographies and at all levels of education.  And it’s a major issue.  If we can’t get the very individuals who deliver education to change the way they think about technology, then we will fail to prepare our students with the 21^st century skills required to compete in a global economy.

Over years of talking with education leaders who have shared a number of insights on professional development, and exploring how to use some of our own technologies, I’d like to share some of the best and most impactful ways we can turn the tide:

1. Show faculty members what’s in it for them.  Help them to understand time savings they will realize when they use new technologies.  Remember how resistant some teachers were (and some still are) to keeping track of grades and taking attendance online?  Remind them of how much time they saved from past technology innovations.
2. Give faculty members a laptop, web access, and a mobile device.  Tell them they can attend their next staff meeting from home.  All they need to do is login to a website, follow the audio instructions, and they’ll be in attendance.  Or, make the next staff meeting online only.
3. A recent study that we did with Clarus Research showed that faculty members learn best from one another, and that’s their preferred method of learning.  Give all faculty members FLIP video cameras, and ask them to find a faculty member who has a great reputation and student following.  Ask them to video record one of their classes, make observations about what makes the teacher great, and post the videos and observations on an internal web portal.
4. Many teachers and professors (and people in general) struggle with using technology and are too embarrassed to admit it.  Identify your top 20 most tech-savvy students, and set up an incentive program to receive an IT certification for helping teachers use technology.  If you have a Networking Academy Program, even better.  Pull students from here.  Let teachers know they are helping students by providing access to their classrooms. Give the students an opportunity to learn more about technology and exposure to teaching by helping teachers use technology in their class curriculum.
5. Encourage an online community of best practices.  Allocate a portion of your intranet for best practice sharing.  Enable the posting of blogs, videos, and compelling content so that all teachers can access the information.
6. Use those same FLIP videos and ask students how they learn best.  Make a video montage of students talking about what engages them most in learning, share this at a staff meeting, and post it on the portal.
7. Have faculty members ask their students to record their world around them with FLIP video cameras and have students share these videos over a laptop and projector when they’re back in class.  They could, for example, record incidents of natural selection, take footage of their favorite building, capture parabolas, or record a dialogue in Spanish.  This is one of the simplest ways to engage students and show faculty members how easy technology can be.
8. Invite a guest lecturer to your next staff meeting, over video-conference.
9. Join a community such as the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration (CILC), GETideas.org, or ePals Global Community, to network and collaborate with other educators. These resources are a rich source of great, proven ideas about how to incorporate collaborative technologies and web-based delivery strategies into your curriculum.

Please add your ideas to this blog.  Together, we can highlight the best of the best, and support all faculty members as they identify and implement new ways to use technology to improve efficiency, engage students, and move quickly with the new generation of learners.

Much has been written about the detrimental effects of micromanagement, but there’s another less talked-about style of management that can be just as crippling to organizational efficiency: undermanagement.

"Based on workplace research we’ve been conducting since 1993, there is a widespread undermanagement epidemic, which hides in plain sight in most workplaces," said Bruce Tulgan, founder of RainmakerThinking Inc. and author of It’s Okay to Manage Your Boss.

For instance, research shows that 9 out of 10 employees fail to receive basic direction and support from their bosses, and 9 out of 10 leaders, managers and supervisors undermanage their employees.

"The vast majority of supervisory relationships between employees and their bosses lack the day-to-day engagement necessary to consistently maintain the very basics of management," Tulgan said.

This translates to inadequate time and effort spent on employees’ performance expectations, the resources required to fulfill expectations, regular performance feedback, and suitable rewards and recognition.

One noteworthy consequence of undermanagement is direct reports performing their tasks or responsibilities incorrectly for extended periods of time. Additionally, managers are more likely to spend their efforts putting out fires as opposed to providing strategic direction and support. Ultimately, undermanagement can lead to high performers becoming increasingly frustrated and seeking employment elsewhere.

Some of the underlying factors that lead to undermanagement, according to Tulgan, revolve around the fact that managers wish to be perceived in a certain light by their direct reports.

Tulgan identified seven reasons why managers undermanage:

1.    They are afraid of micromanaging.
2.    They’re afraid of being unfair by not treating all employees the same.
3.    They are afraid of being perceived as a "jerk" and want to be seen as "nice."
4.    They’re afraid of having difficult confrontations with employees.
5.    They are afraid to break organizational rules and procedures and feel constrained by bureaucratic red tape.
6.    They’re afraid they are not good at managing.
7.    They feel like they don’t have enough time.

One of the first steps bosses can take to combat undermanagement, Tulgan explained, is to utilize the following verbiage to communicate how they are invested in employees’ success:

•    I’m going to spell out expectations for you every step of the way.
•    I’m going to work with you to clarify goals, guidelines and specifications.
•    I’m going to help you break big deadlines into smaller time frames with concrete performance benchmarks.
•    I’m going to go over standard operating procedures with you.
•    I’m going to provide checklists and other tools.
•    I’m going to help you keep track of what you are doing and how you are doing it every step of the way.
•    I’m going to help you monitor and measure and document your success every step of the way.

Other measures managers can take to remedy or eliminate undermanagement include:
•    Scheduling and conducting regular one-on-one meetings with every direct report.
•    Learning to speak like a teacher or coach.
•    Customizing dialogue to each individual, recognizing that one-size-fits-all speeches won’t suffice.
•    Continually making expectations clear.
•    Tracking employee performance in writing.

This can result in fewer conflicts and personnel problems and can enable talent managers to utilize their time more strategically. Ultimately, Tulgan explained, it can help weed out low performers, allow average performers to improve and retain more high performers.

• Know us personally, our interests and strengths
• Let us know who they are as individuals
• Smile at us
• Encourage us to participate in school activities
• Spend time beyond class time to help us be successful in their class
• Give us descriptive feedback on assignments
• Tell us why
• Share how what we learn is connected to real life
• Apologize when they make mistakes
• Give meaningful work
• Are energetic, enthusiastic and enjoy their job

As one looks at this list of attributes identified by students, it is evident the words of Dr. James Comer capture what the best teachers know: "No significant learning occurs without a significant relationship."
One can’t argue with the importance of content knowledge, but that alone is insufficient to capture the essence of great teaching. At the heart of effective teach is relationships.
Put simply, the words and actions of teachers and how they are internalized by the student are powerful! They either impede or enhance the learning process.
Hopefully, each student has at least one teacher in his or her life making a significant difference. This teacher is one who conveys high expectations; who encourages, prods and even challenges students to pursue a path they never imagined for themselves. One would like to believe that every teacher aspires to this level of positive influence in the lives of the students they instruct. However, stories from students and adults reveal this is not the case.
So why aren’t there more educators who could be characterized as great teachers? There are a myriad of possible reasons.
One might be because the relationship and making connections aspect is not emphasized in teaching schools, nor as an intentional focus by the leadership in schools. People assume positive relationships already exist.

In addition, high-stakes testing often relegates an intentional focus on relationships as fluff or something that does not truly impact achievement. However, that is an erroneous assumption because research is replete with the importance of forging positive relationships in schools.
There’s also an assumption by some instructors that "I am here to teach content and students just need to do what they are told."
Research also suggests we should acknowledge, as a profession, what the best teachers know and do. We teach students first and foremost. What they bring to the learning experience must be incorporated into the planning of effective lessons, using appropriate strategies and formative assessments.
Robert Marzano, a respected educational researcher and writer, suggests in some of his work that relationships are crucial to what happens in schools, not only as it relates to classroom management, but maybe to the "entirety of teaching."
Once the education profession is aware and embraces the professional literature suggesting the best teachers care and make connections with their students, the next step is learning how to do this effectively. This is where the words of students, as well as research, can guide the work that is done in schools.

Kelly E. Middleton is associate superintendent of Mason County Schools and co-author with Elizabeth A. Petitt of the recently published book "Simply the Best: 29 Things Students Say the Best Teachers Do Around Relationships" as well as "Who Cares? Improving Public Schools Through Relationships and Customer Service."

Wilbert J. McKeachie
Author of Teaching tips: Strategies, research and theory for college and university teachers, Houghton-Mifflin (1998).

Active Learning *

Most of the time, in a typical classroom setting, students are involved only passively in learning, i.e., in listening to the instructor, looking at the occasional overhead or slide, and reading (when required) the text book. Research shows that such passive involvement generally leads to a limited retention of knowledge by students, as indicated in the ‘cone of learning’ shown below.

The Cone of Learning

(According to Ronald A. Berk in his book "Professors are from Mars. Students are from Snickers" (Mendota Press), the only way to get 100% retention of information is by:

" … hearing, seeing, doing, smelling, feeling, tasting, inhaling, injecting and purchasing on credit … "

some of which are highly illegal in the classroom!)

However, research also indicates that by re-organizing or adapting the ways they present material to students, instructors can create an environment in which knowledge retention is significantly increased; of course, such situations require the cooperation of the students themselves. One of the best methods is to implement so-called active learning.

OK, so what is active learning? Quite simply, it is involving students directly and actively in the learning process itself. This means that instead of simply receiving information verbally and visually, students are receiving and participating and doing. The latter grouping is what is meant by active learning. So, in simple terms then, active learning is:

engaging students in doing something besides listening to a lecture and taking notes to help them learn and apply course material. Students may be involved in talking and listening to one another, or writing, reading and reflecting individually.

A process I use a lot in the classroom is collaborative learning, which is:

a subset of active learning activities that engage students in interacting with one another while learning and applying the course material. Usually it involves breaking the class into small groups (of 2 or 3 students) and me posing a question, often of a conceptual nature, and allowing each group to discuss a possible answer for a period of a minute or two. I then seek answers at random.

It is important to realize that students sitting in a group and studying together, or group projects in which one or two students do all the work, do not constitute active nor collaborative learning.

Instructors and students alike will want to know … "What are the benefits of active and collaborative learning?" In addition to the obvious advantages of information retention many research studies show that there will be improvements in:

• student-faculty interaction,
• student-student interaction,
• academic achievement (i.e., grades),
• communication skills,
• higher-level thinking skills,
• teamwork,
• attitude towards the subject and motivation to learn.

The reason why it works is that:

• individual students may get stuck on a problem and give up, whereas groups of students tend to keep going,
• students become exposed to alternative problem-solving strategies,
• students are much less fearful of generating and answering questions among themselves than individually and directly to the instructor in class,
• and as McKeachie says, (see the quote at the top of the page), students learn best what they teach!

I am an advocate of active learning because I have used it and seen that it really does work! … honestly!

* Adapted from R.M. Felder and R. Brent Effective Teaching Workshop, North Carolina State University, 1997.