Reflection on Projects

Now that I've completed my tenure on the MITTEN project, it is appropriate to reflect on what I've learned and evaluate the overall success of each of the projects. 

When I was asked to participate as part of MITTEN, I was uncertain what my role might be. Because I have been incorporating technology into all of my teaching for many years (and striving to keep up with emerging technologies), I initially believed that my role would be only to serve as a faculty resource and mentor to those who were just beginning to use technology in their teaching.  I knew that I would be able to model the various ways in which I incorporate technology into my teaching, and that by doing so,  I might give others ideas of their own. I hoped, too, that I might be able to make the paths of those new to this type of pedagogy less threatening.  After working with two cohorts of MITTEN teachers, student teachers, and faculty colleagues, I feel that I have, in some small way, fulfilled this role with the two early childhood learning circles that I was privileged to join.

When the second of my two MITTEN cohorts convened, I discovered that that my role was not only that of a mentor, but also a student. In listening to the wonderful ways in which others were striving to improve their own teaching, I realized that I was receiving as many ideas as I was conveying!  In addition, I am indebted to Drs. Duran and Fossum for challenging me to use MITTEN to not only continue to develop my own use of technology, but also to develop the use of technology by my students. I will carry this wonderful insight away as MITTEN's most significant legacy to me.

In reflecting more specifically on my two projects, I offer that both were, in my estimation, quite successful. Student feedback on my use of technology in my undergraduate Health Psychology course (Project I) has been uniformly positive. Students appreciate the "24/7" access to the course web site, which includes our mutual capacities to communicate with each other through announcements, the posting of questions, and submission of written assignments. They also have commented favorably on having access to a digital version of the course syllabus and Power Point-driven lecture outlines (which, by the way, students in my "live" class download prior to class and use as the platform for taking better lecture notes). The most popular features of Project I have been the online quizzing, flash cards, and interactive tutorials that I have included to assist their review of material.

Feedback from medical residents and teaching faculty has been equally positive and centered on the same attributes noted above. One outgrowth of my project has been that I have been invited to speak at several teaching hospitals on the use of technology in medical education. Given the extraordinary time demands on internists, residents, and senior medical staff the use of self-paced, interactive e-learning tools for all facets of medical education will almost certainly become increasingly common in the future. Surveys of these individuals clearly indicate that this is a highly-preferred instructional modality.