I just finished putting together the web pages that provide information about the podcasting program ( step I) at BCC.  It’s still a work in progress and there is more material that needs to be added, but for now, I made it go live, so that the community can take a look of the kind of work we will be doing during the Spring Semester. There will be two distinct components to this project; one is to link the podcasting technical workshops lead by Albert Robinson to the newly created pedagogical podcasting workshops. The second project is in the development stage; so I will talk about it another time.

At this moment we are in the process of finalizing the schedule of our workshops that address the pedagogy of podcasting and we are certain that this is a great addition to the instructional side of technology. Once the schedule becomes official (very soon) I will be posting all these information.

I often thought about the meaning of the adjective “instructional” and realized that generally much of the focus in faculty development for online teaching is mainly on technology. I must also give credit to the work done by the OIT and the fact that the word pedagogy is always emphasized during the faculty development trainings. Faculty are constantly reminded that technology is a tool which serves the learning outcomes and is to be used to strengthen the learning of that particular subject. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why technology has the role it has, and why so much must time is spent on teaching the technical aspect. The main objective of the new pedagogical workshops is to make this feature even more evident, visible, and strong. By offering these types of workshops faculty will be able to have open and face-to-face discussions about teaching in the online environment. We hope to create a community for dedicated teachers who will find in the physical and virtual space (this site !) a comfortable environment where these issues can be addressed.

After all, we are mostly a teaching college, and more conversations on teaching and learning should be created.  These pedagogical workshops, I believe, will fill this gap.

Apart from the podcasting pedagogical workshops already planned for Spring 2010, we will offer other workshops that specifically address the academic side of the online environment. Topics will range from fostering interactivity, and to the pedagogy of web 2.0 and screencast. If these sound interesting, and you don’t want to miss out stay tuned!

Photo: Chart created by the University of Alberta, Canada

This image illustrates the relationship between content, technology and pedagogy