Understanding Dreamweaver: Skill-based Training in a Pedagogical Context
Ed Schwartz
Manager of the Faculty Development Institute and Director of the New Media Center
Virginia Tech
Virginia Tech in Blacksburg,
Va., with more than 500 non-teaching scientific investigators on faculty, aims
to become one of the nation's top 30 research universities. This number is slated
to grow to several thousand over the next few years. For more than a decade,
the university has successfully leveraged information technology to compete
more effectively for research funding, weather campus budget cuts, and rethink
its teaching strategies. The Faculty Development Institute (FDI), launched in
1993, provides faculty with direct access to state-of-the-art technology and
the training to use it.
Macromedia (recently
acquired by Adobe) Dreamweaver
plays a key role in this skills development incentive program, which is ongoing
and campus wide.
Unlike many other institutions, we do not have a production shop on campus to
accommodate our classroom instructors. Instead of designing individual websites
or adapting content for use with a course management system, we train faculty
to do the work themselves.
Our professional development program, though voluntary, has a 96 percent faculty
buy-in rate. The huge carrot we offer each of our 1,500 faculty members is a
new laptop or desktop computer every four years in exchange for participation
in an extensive training program. Each replacement computer contains the latest
version of several software programs, including Dreamweaver. FDI
offers some 120 two-hour workshops per semester for faculty, staff and graduate
students to choose from, and a peer-to-peer mentoring program for ongoing informal
support. There is no charge for faculty to participate in the program, nor are
there charges back to their academic departments. Participants can choose from
a large cafeteria of courses that integrate skill-based training with pedagogical
and research needs.
In the early days of the program, FDI judiciously targeted instructors who
were most open to changing their teaching methods. By the third year, people
who initially resisted the project were more inclined to come on board. It helped
that faculty members volunteered to come into training sessions and share their
best practices with colleagues.
As the web evolved, we quickly moved from teaching rudimentary HTML skills,
to teaching web creation, to adopting Dreamweaver as the campus standard. Studio
components such as Dreamweaver and Flash were designed so that non-technical
content experts could create their own websites. The current version of Dreamweaver,
with its CSS templates, addresses the accessibility issue, which is becoming
increasingly critical for public institutions such as ours. As a state university,
we will need to comply with accessibility policies set by the federal government.
We are already training that first wave of interested faculty in the proper
use of these templates.
Our training sessions emphasize the whys as well as the hows-and go well beyond
the basics of learning product features. If skills are to be used effectively,
we need to place them within a pedagogical context. Dreamweaver sessions, for
instance, include a discussion and demonstration of standalone web pages--particularly
for smaller classes, as well as the delivery of content within a course management
system.
Even our non-technical faculty master the basics of Dreamweaver's layout and
design features quickly. The result is less workshop time spent on learning
the tool, and more time on actually creating media content for instruction.
There is no one pedagogical bullet-and through discussion and demonstration;
we try to target different groups.
Higher-Order Training
The program operates on a four-year cycle, with 25 percent of all faculty members
receiving new equipment and a guaranteed slot in an extensive training program
in any given year. A large number of faculty members have already gone through
our formal training program three times. Each workshop concludes with a written
evaluation and a brainstorming session to help us anticipate future training
needs.
Two years ago we introduced research oriented training into the mix, which emphasizes
ways to facilitate productivity as a researcher. In recent years, several faculty
members have requested training in Macromedia Flash for specialized pedagogical
applications. The music department, for instance, has created an online music
dictionary with a Flash-created online keyboard. By mousing over a musical term,
you can hear the term pronounced in English. Another Flash feature is the ability
to click on a musical note and hear the sound.
The current FDI staff consists of one full-time and two part-time professionals
and two graduate assistants. Since knowledgeable faculty teach the majority
of workshops across different departments, the IT and instructional design staff
at FDI and the New Media Center have additional time and flexibility to tackle
larger projects and plan for future technology needs.
The use of technology to do more with less has freed up faculty as well as staff
time. In the case of Math Emporium it has transformed the undergraduate teaching
paradigm from large-classroom instruction to one of self-paced learning. Over
7,000 students in a dozen mathematics classes from all the colleges in the university,
plus students in teacher-preparation courses now use the award-winning Math
Emporium, which opened in 1997. The university spent several million dollars
remodeling and equipping a former department store with 500 computers arranged
in study pods of six workspaces each. The emporium stays open 24 hours a day
and is staffed by mathematics faculty during 14 of these hours. Students can
pick their personal best time and learning style for achieving success in low-level
math courses. Not only d'es the Emporium alternative save money and teaching
hours, but it also enables students to perform at or above the level of students
enrolled in a traditional course structure.
The Emporium is one of several creative endeavors to reinvent learning for the
Internet age. Driven by pedagogical need, the English Department created a suite
of learning tools, which provide a fun online supplement the face-to-face courses.
The tools consist of the Grammar Gym, WIT (Write, Inquire, Think), and Rhizomatic
Writing. These tools address those skills that can most benefit the students
in their careers. They are all self-paced and always available on the web.
Being a Land-Grant Institution, Virginia Tech has a large outreach and Extension
mission. The 107 county extension offices, six 4-H educational centers and 13
Agricultural Research and Extension Centers rely on Macromedia Breeze Meeting,
Breeze Presenter, Dreamweaver and Flash as critical tools in the creation and
sharing of critical information quickly across the expanse of the state.