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LTAs – Replacements for the Missing “Professional Development”
3/10/2004
Another good Web site about LTAs is the Low Threshold Applications site maintained by Charles Ansorge, of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Both the TLT site and Charles' Web site collect and publish informative "how-tos" explaining useful LTAs.
Featured on Charles' site right now, for example, is his LTA#36, "Using an 'Aggregator' to Capture RSS Feeds: A Technology for Keeping Up-to-Date." Recently featured are such LTAs as #35, "Monitoring Web Page Changes," #32, "Partnering with Students to Avoid 'Cut and Paste' Plagiarism," and #30, "Screen Captures and What to Do With Them." The TLT Group's site also collects examples of LTAs shared by subscribers to Steve's immensely popular TLT-SWG e-mail list (formerly known as AAHESGIT).
Characteristics of LTAs include:
· Low incremental cost - based on using technology applications that
are already almost ubiquitous, already essential for the discipline, and inexpensive
· Easy to learn and access - part of this is ubiquity; everyone already
has it and probably already knows how to use it
· Not intimidating - faculty and students do not perceive the LTA as
requiring major adjustments in their roles or lives; they're already familiar
· Observable positive consequences - anecdotal testimony from peers and
colleagues confirm desirable results from similar activities
· Reliability - they work as intended most of the time, not likely to
break down during valuable class time
· May precipitate or facilitate long-term changes - using LTAs can give
faculty confidence and instill trust in technology
Now, if these LTAs sound just a little bit like the sharing, from experience, of what really works, well, that's certainly a part of it. In our conversations, Steve more or less suggested that a lot of the work that the TLT Group engages in probably fills in some of the huge gaps left where our institutions simply do not devote meaningful resources to professional development. To me, the reasons behind that are some amalgam of faculty resistance to being subjected to "professional development" that relates to teaching or administration as opposed to the academic subject matter which is their knowledge forte, and the perhaps subconscious administrative realization that with such a highly educated body of employees, we can get away without adequately supporting continuing professional development.
Steve also shared that his observations of LTAs over time are beginning to reveal two major categories, those, which pertain more directly to, teaching and learning and those, which are more widely applicable to general work and administrative, uses. That's why, although the TLT Web site defines them as necessarily related to teaching and learning, I have few qualms about applying the concept outside the classroom.
LTAs also "get around," and in doing so somewhat expose a techie-tendency to want to build new and interesting things, as opposed to perhaps just using lower technology we already have more efficiently, but that's another issue.
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