Donna Price is coordinator for ITD communications. In a recent survey of members, Educause Quarterly reported that faculty development, support and training in information technology ranked as one of the top two issues members felt were strategically important for their institution's success. Increasing numbers of faculty are employing interactive conferences and websites to publish course information and syllabi. Others are migrating entire courses into web course-management software and rethinking traditional pedagogies.
Some faculty are early adopters of technology-enhanced teaching methodologies.
One of those is Joseph Justice, Winship Distinguished Research Professor and chair of chemistry. Justice had considered offering the course to seniors, but since there were very few freshman seminars in science, he decided to shape it for first-year students and at the same time experiment with innovative pedagogy. To know what the advantages and limitations are. His goal was to get the students excited about the science and to teach the background material in a way that might motivate them to study it in more detail. But web software has evolved that doesn't require knowledge of HTML or the ability to write code.