ETS' Teaching Enrichment Program pilot

In summer 2009, ETS’ Faculty Development and Support team launched a new program designed to better support the use of technologies for teaching and learning. Called the Teaching Enrichment program, the program leaders—ETS Instructional Designers Jon Hays and Angela White-- aim to identify instructors who express an interest in the use of technology for teaching, discover the full scope of their pedagogical goals, and design a solution that meet those goals in the course of a semester.

The resulting solution may encompass technologies that are already supported on campus such as bSpace or podcasting, for example; it may also, however, extend to new and emerging technologies.

How can I benefit from this program?
The best way to understand the usefulness of this kind of program is to look at one of our projects. One instructor in the Spanish and Portuguese department came to ETS asking how she could teach peer editing skills to her students; she also wanted to minimize the amount of paper she used. With the help of our staff, she facilitated the use of peer-to-peer feedback using an MS Word feature. By tracking their comments, students could critique each others’ writing, and the student whose work was being reviewed could easily distinguish between and compare the input of their many reviewer. The instructor then used the bSpace Assignments tool to comment on the students’ incorporation of their peers’ feedback, and exchange the assignments with her students. This process enabled the students to evaluate and work with the different levels of feedback they were receiving. It also enabled the instructor to share her thoughts on her students’ learning process easily.

Other faculty are benefiting from our staff’s services in other ways. Projects are underway with instructors from Near Eastern Studies; Chinese; Summer Writing program; and Film. Faculty on other campuses also value this kind of assistance with technology. Stanford, the University of Minnesota, and Indiana University offer similar services to their instructors and faculty.  

How can you sign up?
If you are interested, simply contact one of our instructional designers, Jon Hays (jon@media.berkeley.edu) or Angela White (angela@berkeley.edu). One of them will contact you to follow up with questions and/or schedule a time to meet.