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Joyce Winslow
jwins@uoregon.edu
The first thing you notice about Skip McFarlane's tiny office tucked away in an obscure corner of Millrace I is that toy superheroes are lined up on his bookshelf. Many of these, it turns out, were made by Skip as part of his 1998 UO MFA project. The protagonist in this tableau is "The Designer," a four-inch-tall replica of Skip himself, dressed in a blue smock, pointing the way forward with an extended paintbrush.
Now that Skip's real-life role is serving as technical coordinator for Distance and Continuing Education, it seems fitting that his early persona was a far-seeing trailblazer. As technical coordinator, Skip is charged with exploring new technologies and tools for education, as well as providing assistance to other faculty who want to incorporate some of these tools in their own classrooms.
Fortunately, he is uniquely suited to take on this daunting task. Thanks to a deep background in digital arts, he knows his way around the rapidly changing world of multimedia. And, being the son of an electrical engineer, he grew up surrounded by electronics and has no qualms about tinkering with computers.
Last summer, fired up by Scott Huette's Teaching Effectiveness Program presentation on teaching with technology, Skip took the plunge and introduced wikis into his curriculum. Before he could launch the new teaching tool, however, Skip decided he needed to build his own server to run the wiki software--a step many faculty would doubtless rather avoid. But Skip likes to explore and figure things out for himself. "I'm kind of stubborn that way," he admits. "As my wife says, I'm just 'nerdy enough' to tackle this kind of project."
So he set about upgrading an old G4 and, after a bit of research, opted to install MediaWiki (www.mediawiki.org), the free wiki software that runs Wikipedia. Although downloading the software and building his trial wiki took only about five minutes after his server was functional, Skip subsequently had to spend several days troubleshooting and upgrading various software packages to get it all to work. His early misadventures included getting hacked by Romanian spammers and having his server balk when numerous students tried to log on simultaneously. Fortunately, other tech support staff on campus were ready and willing to help him troubleshoot. Chris Wiesemann (Architecture and Allied Arts) and Ryan Stasel (Journalism) both came to his aid when the going got rough. "We have a nice community of tech support on campus," Skip says gratefully. "It's a great resource."
Aside from the satisfaction of meeting the technical challenge, Skip was most enthused about finding new ways to engage his students, get them involved, "let them have some say in what they're learning." His teaching philosophy is to provide direction, not micromanage, and the wiki format provided an ideal opening for students to participate in their own education.
For those unfamiliar with wikis, they are often described as a combination website and Word document. After logging in to a class wiki with their user ID and password, students can contribute to the class website without having any special skills other than being able to type on a computer keyboard. Using wikis enables students to learn basic web publishing, engage in collaborative work, and learn from each other while editing each other's work throughout the term.
When used to post reading lists and other class resources, wikis can also free up some lecture time, leaving more class time available for discussion. This proved to be the case in Skip's Dreamweaver, Flash, InDesign, and Photoshop workshops, which were offered through a collaboration between the UO's Continuing Education and Fine Arts departments last fall. Skip used a wiki in these classes to post resources for reading and further study, and invited students to contribute their own list of resources and to update the list's URLs as needed. This eliminated the need for printing and distributing resource lists in class, expanded the scope of the resource material, and ensured that the list was current (no broken links!). In addition, involving the students in creating the course list gave them a vital sense of ownership of the material.
In his summer 2006 Digital Illustration Class, which is part of the A&AA Digital Arts program, and his Information Design Trends class (part of the Applied Information Management master's degree program), Skip used the wiki tool to foster collaborative work among students and to solicit feedback on the class.
This term, for his Digital Letterform class, he is looking to expand the wiki's role to include group design projects and critical peer review sessions.
Do you have to be a superhero to try a new teaching tool? Skip doesn't think so. "You just have to be willing to put yourself in a position where its not about succeeding or failing, but learning--and see what happens," he says. However, he cautions that anyone testing a new technology for the classroom must initially invest extra time figuring out how best to use it, as well as working out the inevitable start-up glitches--usually with the help of technical support staff. In addition, faculty must be prepared to sell students on the idea of using the new tool and find ways to entice them to participate, at least in the beginning. Despite their familiarity with the Internet and all manner of cutting-edge technologies, not all students immediately jump at the chance to use a classroom wiki, blog, or podcast without some incentives.
Caveats aside, web-based teaching tools have the potential to add an exciting new dimension to classes and engage students in a stimulating dialog with their instructors and each other that extends beyond formal class time.
Want to learn more about wikis? See our list of Wiki Resources.