Whitney Ransom McGowan

The PowerPoint presentation on SlideShare I chose to look at was titled Teaching Well Using Technology. This presentation immediately caught my eye because my thesis and dissertation both involve improving teaching and learning. Two years ago I also interviewed more than 60 faculty to discover the value of large and small technology projects in teaching. This PowerPoint presentation gives some good statistics profiling the average learner in college. It also provides some good thoughtful questions every faculty member should ask when thinking about using technology in the classroom.

I have attached below an excerpt from John Hilton’s blog. I highlighted a portion of his blog using Diigo, a fun tool that I like.

I am actually having the same problem John is experiencing with getting Google Analytics on my site. I believe the problem stems from not having the latest version of Word Press downloaded. I did download the files, however, the problem is that I don’t have access to the server at the moment where I can upload those files, and then insert the code into my blog. Hmm. I will have to figure something out.

We do use Google Analytics where I work at FamilyLink.com. I think analytics are very important. They help you know what is going well with your site, what is not working well, where people are visiting on your site, how long they are staying there, who is visiting, what kinds of browsers they are using, etc. Information is power. Google Analytics are powerful information.

I think we should definitely utilize analytics more readily in education. First, I think we need to teach students how to use access and use this information. Second, we need to have something in education that we are trying to measure or simply something that we want to make better. This way we can use the analytics as a guide for improvement.

My master’s thesis within the Instructional Psychology & Technology Department at Brigham Young University is on contributing factors to improved teaching and learning. This is a topic that I feel is really important and also one that I feel will yield information and results that can benefit faculty and administrators, not only at BYU, but hopefully throughout the world.

Some of the individuals who have had the greatest impact on my life have been teachers. These are individuals who have mentored, encouraged, loved, and assisted me through the years. They have taught me about various types of subject matter, but usually I have learned more from them by their examples. Thank heaven for teachers!

My target audience for my study is a pool of more than 300 BYU faculty members who have made significant improvement in their teaching over a three-year period. I just sent out the initial survey on Friday, and will start doing some of the interviews next week!

I am excited to talk to the faculty about the things they have done to improve. I’m hoping that part of the results from the study will show that all faculty can become better in their teaching, regardless of their personality, the subject matter they teach, their class size, or any other factor.