by Li-chin (Crystal) Huang Fall, 2009
In the EL/T community, I am a believer that innovation and responsibility go hand in hand. Being one of the digital immigrants of this information technology revolution, I would consider myself to be an enthusiastic, caring, and conscientious teacher-researcher. Focusing on the need to be at the forefront of educational change and innovation has been an important part of my academic endeavors.
Inspired by the power of multimedia technology as an art student in1995 began my life-long journey with learning technologies. I started integrating multimedia technology into Art curriculum as a grad student and teaching assistant, and later into my Social Science teaching both at two and four-year colleges. I perceive myself as a rational and zealous LT educator with an adventurous quality to cross cultures and to immerse myself in multiple ways of teaching and learning.
To be/Being a diligent educator-researcher is my life long learning inspiration.
I have been designing and implementing curriculum and instruction for 10 years at my current work setting. I am also one of those who “dare to teach-research-serve, never cease to learn”. Thus, learning and teaching become an important part of my life. For example, the curiosity and desire to learn have led me to a multi-disciplinary background through three previous Master’s degrees and the current Ph.D. program. I ended up having five majors and four minors.[1] Fortunately, Learning Technologies weave my previous multidisciplinary teaching and learning experience into a holistic tapestry. In this sense, I would also perceive myself as an artistic and versatile educator and learner, who actively participates in many scholarly activities and productions at my previous workplace, UW-Stout, and currently - Chippewa Valley Technical College, as well as at University of Minnesota -Twin Cities.
In connection to technologies, Marshall McLuhan once pointed out that we shaped our tools, but then our tools shaped us. The dramatic change of information technology since the 1960s with the PLATO system along with today’s Web 2.0 and the evolving semantic Web 3.0 provides myriad teaching and learning possibilities for more facilitators and learners than ever before to access knowledge. With this constant advance in computer and communications technologies, research in educational technologies has undergone a paradigmatic shift toward a new horizon: enhancing the fluid mobility between theories and actions. This new horizon focuses on merging the study of learning in complete, complex, and interactive learning environments with the use of emerging technology to advance the integration of contents, pedagogy, and technology.
Those Who Can, Teach – Creatively, And Responsibly. – Crystal
My teaching philosophy
In a differentiated teaching methods seminar, I found an inspirational message - “When we identify a student who doesn’t understand, louder and slower won’t do it. We need to be more creative than ever; when we identify students who already understand, doing it again isn’t acceptable. We need to be more creative than ever”. Students learn in different ways and paces under various circumstances. This is what I consider to be the most challenging issue in the digital age. The key solution is “we need to be more creative than ever” which I emphasized at the beginning of this statement – Innovation and responsibility go hand in hand.
At the individual level, being a cross-cultural learner and educator, immersed in this best and the most revolutionary period of time, teaching has always been a challenging yet highly rewarding profession. At the collective level, this sense of challenge is particularly acute for educators today. Educators have been facing an increasingly diverse student population and the demands of accountabilities. At the same time, education in the digital age is endowed with an environment of unprecedented opportunities. Learning technology is a gift to practitioners with golden opportunities that open windows for further engaging with students’ learning, communicating with parents, building learning communities, advocating the future of learning technologies, convincing policymakers, and empowering the human capital, just to name a few positive functions.
These opportunities demand all stakeholders to reshape and reflect on the goals and purpose of education. The technology affordances of the Internet and the constantly innovated interactivities make it feasible both in access and delivery of interactive/differentiated methods tailored to diverse students’ needs. Thus, it is imperative for educators to be innovative, responsible, and insightful in designing, implementing, and assessing the affordances of technologies in enhancing student learning.
As a conscientious educator, I don’t take any available opportunities to engage my educational environment for granted. I value every interaction with students, colleagues, unions, administrators, and the whole edu-ecological system. I deeply believe that well-informed citizens is the currency of democracy. I envision the digital citizenship prevailing in every corner of human societies. And this democratic reality has been growing fruitfully via the omnipresent NGI super Broadband accessibility. But for learning to happen effectively, it needs a seamless hardware and software interface. It needs the innovative integration of contents, pedagogies with technological affordances. It needs a conscientious educator to take on her/his catalyst role to make it happen effectively and efficiently.
Personally, I benefit from rich media technology’s affordances that assist my teaching philosophy and pedagogies toward fruition. During the last 14 years’ college teaching experiences, I was a recipient of the outstanding contributor to UW-System and Color of Woman Award in 2001 representing UW-Stout, Teacher of the Year in 2007, representing my district for Chippewa Valley Technical College, as well as nominated to the 2010 Fuerstenberg Teaching Excellence Awards. Educational technology is one of the key scaffolds supporting my pedagogical endeavors.
An Integrated Research Approach
My Research Agenda
In the Educational Technologies field, many disciplines have assisted in building the knowledge foundation necessary to understand human learning and interacting with the aids of technologies. For example, Behavioral-cognitive-Psychology, Neuroscience, Computer Science, and numerous renowned learning technology scholars’ endeavors have contributed immensely to this understanding from a wide range of perspectives.
Having come originally from a Sociology/Social Psychology background, I envision sociological perspectives well integrated into the mainstream research trends. I am interested in the social forces shaping daily reality in the digital age from the micro and macro aspects. These approaches such as structure and functionalism, symbolic interactionism, social conflict perspectives, and their combined methods have generated several strands of research agenda that guide my current and future studies.
The macro structural-functional perspective sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability. During the last decade, research in the field of human capital management (e.g., HPI or HPT) and organizational cost-effectiveness research tinted with the flavor of this perspective. Tied to my teaching philosophy, to keep the currency of democracy up-to-date, educator-researchers have to confront the issues of empowering human capital and enhancing the quality of access and application of information technology in the digital age.[2]
One of the concrete examples of this research orientation is my interest in studying e-learning in a technical college setting. My last 14 years’ teaching at a four-year poly-technical university and current two-year technical college provide me rich information regarding how different structures and functions of educational ecology and potential changes affect teaching and learning pertaining to learning technologies.
Though most two year technical colleges, comprehensive community colleges, and four-year colleges tend to be lumped together as the post-secondary educational system or “higher educational” institution,[3] they are fundamentally different in many aspects. These include educational missions, climates, diversity of student body, specific roles of faculty and staff, funding, infrastructure, and the overall ecological configuration, just to name a few, comprise the uniqueness of two-year technical colleges that stand out as a special and controversial educational entity. These two-year colleges play a crucial role in American economic, political, and educational reality. But there is a limited amount of research focusing on the complex educational ecology of two-year colleges that affects the daily teaching and learning, in particular, when relating to learning technologies. The socio-economically induced digital gap between 2 and 4 year -college is a field constantly fascinates me.
The social conflict perspective is a framework for building theory that sees society as an arena of inequality that generates conflict and change. From this aspect, I focus on social stratification[4] both in domestic and global domains tied to digital equity and quality, as well as the potential systematic/systemic change. For example, digital-divide is one of the established fields of research tackling the gaps and effects of race/ethnicity, gender, social class, disabilities, as well as others relating socially constructed reality in the digital era. One of my previous studies of this approach was the last semester’s collaborative “Rural Families Speak” project (2007-8). It was longitudinal multistate research focusing on rural low-income mothers’ well being. My team narrowed down to study the role of the Intent playing out in this low-income (intersections of geo-social class and gender) mothers’ lives.
Furthermore, the most relevant one tied to my daily learning and teaching is witnessing the stratified educational institutions in the higher education domain in terms of funding/technological affordance, academic freedom, accountability, educational quality and equity situated in the national edu-policy agenda that affect the life chances for different social classes intersecting with other diverse dimensions.
The micro symbolic-interaction perspective sees society is the reality that people construct for themselves as they interact with one another. The cyber phenomena have been constantly created and re-created by different digital generations through their daily interactions. The formation of learning communities, TPACK integration in classrooms, and quality assurance in online learning are the three fields that I would like to investigate in the higher education setting within this perspective. Hermeneutic phenomenology, ethnomethodology, virtual and auto-ethnography are applicable research methods for this approach. A real-life case to illustrate this perspective is that I am documenting my daily interactions with my four-course delivery formats within a current semester – online, hybrid, Live Meeting, and face to face with the web-enhanced curriculum.
Generally speaking, my research agenda is based on a framework integrating sociology and learning technologies to examine different aspects of digital reality shaped by multifaceted social forces.
Individually, We Are One Drop. Together, We Are An Ocean
My role-models within the LT field
All effective and conscientious scholars, practitioners, educators, policymakers, and individuals with rational enthusiasm serve as my role models. A visionary role model, who is a resolute social change agent and leader, whose passion for learning, teaching and research envisage educational technologies as a positive transformative mechanism that democratizes human societies. A rational and enthusiastic innovator who foresees the potentials of learning technologies that can lead to an authentic democratic society guides my enthusiasm and energy to the common good.
They are many role models in our field, exemplifying tenacity and unwaveringness, so I learn and have the courage to select the road less traveled.
If Technology Is Not Used For Enhancing Humanity, Then For What?
The future of Learning Technologies
We are witnessing the accelerated effect of cybernetics which is all about humans and technology interacting to form the foundation of human infrastructure. In this cyber-structure, the high tech and high touch can be mutually complementary. Different digital generations are constructing ways of facilitating multi-generational and global communications. The current Web 2.0 and the evolving Web 3.0 are such transformative tools reshaping the educational experience. The line between space and time is rapidly becoming blurred and may cease to exist in the foreseeable future. E-learning in both “virtual” and “real” worlds simultaneously creates an “inter-reality“ phenomenon that implies more options available to effectively merge teaching and learning in a seamless way.
I envision one day the “cutting edge” and “innovative” are no longer the nickname of the business world or industrial-military compounds. Those who can, teach – creatively and responsibly, are the catalysts to the systematic and systemic change of our society. Learning technologies will be the hardest science that requires robust digital engagers to take on studies that are dynamic and contingent. In such a profession, only those stakeholders who tackle the challenge as a way of conscious living will reshape the future of our society.
I envision an omnipresent and mobile environment (facilitating the M-learning) for all learners to create the -world-is-flat phenomenon. A new term of Blog 2.0 encapsulates the idea of the proliferation of interconnectivity and interactivity of the e-effects. It opens up sky-is-the-limit possibilities to transform learning to defy various digital divides in domestic and global domains.
The optimism and challenge are co-existent in this unprecedented epoch. Learning Technology is a gift as well as a social responsibility to the educators and relevant stakeholders. It is a golden opportunity to reach diverse learners to optimize human capital and shorten the digital gaps. It is time to redirect such a powerful capacity of learning technologies into humanitarian change.
It is a goal, an action, a commitment, and most importantly, a responsibility!
[1] My majors are: Sociology/Social Psychology, Socio-political Science, Studio Art, Art Education, Learning Technologies. The minors are Computer Science, Women’s Studies, Journalism, and Military Education.
[2] I expanded three extra current digital populations into the original categories: the “digital elite”, the digital native, the digital immigrant, and the “digital behind”, and the “digital deprived”.
[3] Technical colleges play a key role in bridge PK-12 and 15-16 educational settings. Yet, most people consider two-year colleges being only a peripheral part (a step-child or child out of the educational wed-lock) of the collegiate system or a “catch basin” for those few students unable or unwilling to enter “regular” colleges.
[4] Such as race/ethnicity, gender, social class, disability and various types of intersectional theories.
