The Advocate

Interactive Technology & Pedagogy Certificate Draft

Masha Rumer

Here’s a list of glitches encountered by a grad student teaching for her very first class:

* Ignoring a student when she calls your attention by “Professor.”
* Student leaving the classroom after lecture: “Thank you.” You, [gleefully], “Thank you!”
* “I didn’t know there was a rule that missing five classes lowers your grade!”
* “I didn’t know there was a rule that saying ‘smoking dope’ in an essay lowers your grade!”
* Spending over ten minutes fast-forwarding or rewinding a VHS tape, your back turned to the students.
* “I couldn’t pick up the midterm review because I was visiting my grandmother in the hospital and my roommate (hung over, slouching in the corner) had food poisoning.”
* Xerox machine jamming as you make 40 copies right before class; the secretary is talking about her hairstylist and ignoring your pleas.
* Panic at hearing things like Blackboard, PDF, JPEG, URL, online research, and receiving student emails at midnight.

If you’re teaching at CUNY or elsewhere, chances are you will be launched into the higher education field without any training. You will be green, underpaid, and idealistic, pursued by late-night grading, stage fright, and nightmares about lecturing in the nude or secretary conspiracies.

But you don’t have to accept this as just the way things are. The Graduate Center’s Interactive Technology & Pedagogy Certificate was created to address this very problem. This certificate program teaches graduate students how to effectively use digital technology in a classroom and allows them to discuss teaching in a formal setting.

“Lamentably, we teach a lot about how to do research; we tend not to teach about how to teach the disciplines,” says Dr. Steve Brier, Associate Provost for Instructional Technology and Dean for Interdisciplinary Studies, who launched the program in 1999. “I came to quickly realize that the Graduate Center was not doing enough for the doctoral students in helping prepare them for employment in the new world of instructional technology that they would be finding when they went out to get jobs and look for positions in the academy.” In response, Brier put together a task force of students, faculty, and administrators to devise this program and get it approved by the CUNY Central Office and the State Education Office in Albany.

The certificate is a nine-credit, three course program. “History, Theory, and Practice of Interactive Media” deals with the theoretical foundations of technology. “Theory, Design, and Practice” offers the valuable hands-on application of that knowledge. Finally, for the Independent Study course the student gets to create his own project. There is an array of workshops covering topics such as HTML, discussion boards, list-serves, Photoshop, DreamWeaver, Final Cut Pro, and Microsoft Access, among others. Considerable space is devoted to issues such as intellectual property, copyright, and keeping a seminar lively and interactive.

Some of the instructors are Professors Joan Greenbaum, George Otte, David Jaffee, Penne Bender, and Steve Brier himself, who helped design all three courses and frequently supervises the Independent Study. Mariya Gluzman, a web developer, doctoral student in Philosophy, and DSC Adjunct Project Coordinator, also teaches web design. Many courses are team-taught.

Says Brier, “We take the P in our name [for practice] as seriously as the T in our name [for technology]. Everybody thinks since it's a tech program it must be about teaching people how to use computers, and it is that, to be sure. But the P is just as important. This is not just a skills program, it is meant to be a serious intellectual engagement with notions of the impact of technology on teaching and learning [and] about how teaching is done.” The program ultimately strives to make education more active and efficient, keeping pace with the times. It also fosters better professor/student and student/student communication. Those enrolled in the program get a chance to discuss their teaching experiences, concerns, and frustrations in a constructive manner.

Kimon Keramidas, a Theater student, came to the Certificate Program his second year and claims it has been one of his best experiences at the Graduate Center. One of his favorite aspects is the diversity. “In my group we had a couple of musicologists, someone from musical performance and social services; one woman was doing her work on breastfeeding; we had a criminal justice PhD. We all got along really well and it made for diverse discussions. It was wonderful to see how different people were looking at the same topic.” Now, Keramidas works as a researcher for the Associate Provost and also teaches a number of workshops in the program.

Whether teaching writing, political science, physics, or anthropology, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to bypass technology in the 21st century, especially when dealing with young people, many of whom grew up with the computer as their nanny.
“If you're going to teach students in this day and age, and not use a computer, you're not going to connect with them,” Keramidas believes. “You are loosing a whole portion of their sensory reception that they are so attuned to. We are in a visual culture and interactive age. They want a website, they want to get their readings online. We need to adapt to the state of technology in our culture.”

That line on the diploma that says “Certification in Interactive Technology and Pedagogy,” and the knowledge it entails, can also make a difference during a job search, whether for an adjunct or a full-time professor position. As the GC President refers to it, a student thereby gains “an extra arrow in the quiver.”

Brier encourages students on or after their second year to enroll in the certificate program. “In a world in which there is enormous competition for the few academic jobs, it has become increasingly clear to me that lots of academic institutions are looking for new younger faculty members to join them who come with the skill set, who are familiar with and are able to use instructional technology to teach. It is an important certification.”

Masha Rumer is a student in the PhD program in Comparative Literature and a freelance journalist.

For more information,
check out:

http://web.gc.cuny.edu/provost/apit/itech/index.html
(Description of program and samples of syllabi)

http://web.gc.cuny.edu/provost/apit/ids/media_power/
(Sample Independent Study Project)