Faculty Spotlight
June - July 2000
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An Information Technology JourneyDr. Bill SnyderSelf-described Technologist,Former Chancellor |
In a recent conversation with a group of students about life after Chancelloring, Bill Snyder was asked what it felt like going back to the classroom. His response was, "I feel like a neophyte faculty member entering the classroom for the first time-not because of the content of the course I will be teaching but because of my commitment to utilize information technology to enhance the teaching/learning process. This technology did not exist when I was last in the classroom. The course I will be teaching is called Thermal Sciences, and it deals with the basic engineering sciences of fluid mechanics and heat transfer. The technical content of this course was established by some of the great nineteenth century scientists such as Prandtl, Von Karman, Fourier. I have taught this content many times in the past. But I have never used IT as it exists today to teach a course. I am running as fast as I can to develop a functional proficiency with IT. I will use CourseInfo and Power Point."
Bill Snyder is a technologist and is thus not intimidated by technology. He is a strong advocate of IT, not to simply digitize the content and pedagogy (both good and bad) that we have used in the past. He is convinced that if we are smart enough to learn how to use IT properly, it can be a powerful tool in motivating students, in enhancing a community of learners, and, to the disbelief of some, to actually personalize teaching and learning and the relationship between student and teacher.
It is a tired cliche to say that the role of the teacher in the future will become more of the "Guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage." Bill believes that the era in which the teacher was the sole repository of knowledge is gone, never to return. He says, "We need to shift our focus from content ( a necessary but not sufficient element for learning to occur) to the nature of the teaching/learning process. We need to understand that today's students grew up in an information technology rich era that did not exist when I was a student. It is both challenging and exciting to explore how this powerful tool (always to be a means to an end and not an end in itself) can contribute to the ultimate goal of education of developing critical thinking skills.
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