The number of technologies available to individual instructors in higher education institutions seems to grow each day. With so many tools that promise to enhance teaching and learning, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Teaching with technology isn’t just about staying current on the latest tools. How to successfully incorporate into teaching with expected outcomes is also important. For example, YouTube videos which dealt with serious literary and scientific topics and had re-enactments of experiments with volatile organic chemicals can be incorporated into classes. But it requires proper selection after background preparation. Interactive, synchronous web conferencing software such as WebEx, Blackboard Collaborate and even Skype are becoming part of academic world. These innovative tools can be implemented by faculty teaching both hybrid and fully online courses.

In this session, using some lessons learned from science education, we will explore: why some technologies do not help achieve learning outcomes, while others do; the lessons from outside of the classroom using discussion boards and blogs; applications of smartphones and digital cameras in the classroom; and the new reality of higher education in its adoption of technologies in and out of the classroom.

"Here's your textbook, see you next class!" What else can an instructor do to set the stage for an engaging, well organized course? This interactive session will explore student engagement and setting the tone in the first class. We will introduce some simple steps to begin preparation: the countdown to teaching, how to design a course syllabus/outline, how to design lessons and activities that encourage engagement. You will have a chance to examine intentional lesson planning and use of learning outcomes to enhance teaching, and student learning.

Whether they're for students or for research/conference presentation, visual presentations are an unavoidable part of doing business. For years, Microsoft PowerPoint has been the standard bearer of slide presentation applications, but several alternatives have emerged. The alternatives offer different functionalities and may even help in avoiding "death by powerpoint." In this session we will explore alternatives to the standard presentation tool, including when and when not to use them.

During the first half of this session, participants will take part in roundtable discussions led by CTL staff. Topics will include the use of CLEW, videos, consoles, and smartboards in your teaching, booking CTL services, and using virtual learning environments. The second half of the session will include interactive video demonstrations. Attendees will also participate in a video production of a mock simulation, and will go through the process of uploading the video to a CLEW website.

Part of our role as instructors and librarians in an academic institution is to introduce students to academic information culture. Many students come equipped with research skills that are useful in their daily lives, such as using short snippets of information, cutting, parsing, and pasting information without restrictions, and freely sharing what they find. But these skills are often at odds with academic culture. This session will explore some of the issues related to student use of information in both academic and popular contexts. Participants will have an opportunity to brainstorm strategies for bringing students into the academic information culture and how new information technologies can help.

This session will cap off the Summer Series with a constellation of Tech Talks from faculty colleagues from Arts, Business, Kinesiology, Nursing, and Science. The talks will cover a range of topics related to how technology helps student learning and our teaching. Participants will be exposed to a variety of technology uses in and out of the class, all of which carry lessons that can be transferred to various settings.