DIIA Convenes the Instructional Development Collaborative
The burgeoning field of instructional technology brings a huge and confusing set of choices to the educational community. Parsing out which systems to create, which systems to buy, and prioritizing criteria for each is a daunting task, especially for a university as large as the University of Texas at Austin. The Instructional Development Collaborative (IDC) is the Provost's answer to this dilemma, gathering some of the best instructional and technical minds at UT Austin to share, discuss, and coordinate the campus's development of instructional resources.
Executive Vice President and Provost Sheldon Ekland-Olson first proposed the initiative during the summer of 2004. He asked the Division of Instructional Innovation and Assessment (DIIA) to convene campus stakeholders and developers to discuss the current status and future goals for UT Austin's development of instructional resources. DIIA Director Judy Ashcroft and Associate Director Susanna Herndon choose the topics for each collaborative session. Next, a facilitator or topic expert is chosen from the DIIA staff to guide the discussion both during and after each IDC session. Campus stakeholders are invited to join the discussion and share knowledge concerning in-house and commercial tools on a particular IDC topic.
During the fall semester, Coco Kishi facilitated the first IDC session on e-portfolios. The group discussed the maturation of the technology surrounding e-portfolios, benchmarking the development efforts of various colleges on campus. They communicated technical and design needs for their respective disciplines in an effort to find common needs in the creation of a campus-wide tool. Similarly, Morrie Schulman facilitated the dialogue for the IDC on electronic classroom response systems. The session focused on faculty and student response to date, technical issues, and current and future wireless systems standards.
A recent IDC on SAKAI, an open source course management system (CMS) development project, provided an opportunity to discuss features, cost, customization, and support issues. Dave Campbell, shown in the foreground, led the session. The group encouraged UT Austin's continued involvement in the SAKAI development community; viewing this as a collaborative opportunity for UT Austin, and other leading universities, to drive standards while building and sharing modules for use within Blackboard.
The IDC initiative has been successful at gathering experts from UT Austin's diverse academic community. "Each college has a different emphasis and different development effort and DIIA is poised to gather everyone together to see what can be shared and what has to remain unique," said Herndon. Future IDC topics for the spring include an April 14 session on survey tools facilitated by Dave Campbell, and a May 26 session on Blackboard and building block development led by Carolyn Thomas.