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Technology has grown in relevance to teaching—and there are no signs of its importance diminishing. Not only do students benefit from learning technology and its real-world applications, but they can also be intellectually stimulated by the incorporation of technology into the teaching and learning process. The integration of technology with pedagogy is the goal of five workshops hosted by the Office of Information Technology and the Center for Teaching Excellence for Maryland faculty and instructors.

“Simplifying the Peer Review Process: The Calibrated Peer Review Tool,” the first workshop in February, reviewed the use of the Calibrated Peer Review tool, where faculty can enter a rubric of assignment examples online and rate them as poor, fair, or excellent. Students are then similarly calibrated according to their skills as peer reviewers. When students enter assignments online, they will get three reviews of their papers back. Before they see the ranking and comments of each anonymous reviewer, students will have the opportunity to review their own paper to compare it with rankings by their peers.

“Peer review has long been an excellent way for students to hone their editing and critical thinking skills,” said Paulette Robinson, assistant director of teaching and learning in OIT. “We’ve just updated the means for them to do that using technology.”

The second workshop, “Improving Your Assessments: Rubrics and Respondus,” was also held in February. It focused on improving assessments of student work using Rubrics and Respondus, a quiz creator tool.

Faculty can also learn how to use different tools for communication in their teaching in March’s workshop, “Talking Beyond the Walls: Tools for Communication.” The workshop will focus on tools available both at Maryland and on the Web as a means for stimulating interactions not only between students and faculty, but also between students facilitating teamwork and collaboration.

April’s first workshop, “Saving Yourself a Step: Using Content Repositories,” highlights content repository sites. These are online resources instructors can use to find lesson plans, simulators, case studies, and other creative tools to enhance teaching.

“Content repositories are valuable because they bring instructors together to benefit from one another’s creativity and commitment to quality teaching,” said Dr. Robinson. “Not only can they use the resources they find, instructors may also contribute ideas of their own and leave comments about the resources they’ve tried.”

The final workshop, “Enhancing Your Teaching With Microsoft Applications,” focuses on using traditional software found on most desktops in new and different ways.

“This really is a great way for instructors to use tools they already have at their disposal—like Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.—in creative, out-of-the-box ways,” said Deb Mateik, manager of training services in OIT. “For example, you can create newspapers with Word or keep your grades using Excel.”

Each workshop lasts an hour and a half and will be held in the Faculty Training Center, 4404 Computer and Space Sciences.
For more information, see www.oit.umd.edu/as/TWT_Workshops/index.htm.