Impactful Innovation for P&T

As former Vice Provost for the Office of Academic Affairs, Susan Williams knows a lot about promotion and tenure. Last fall, right before she switched to her current role as Vice Dean and English Professor for the College of Arts and Sciences, she sat down to talk about how innovative teaching and research methodologies can contribute to a faculty's promotion and tenure prospects.

The main theme is that teaching comes first. Technology makes a difference when there's a problem it can solve. The new-ness of tablets and interactive digital media aren't enough.

Digital publishing must also be done with intention. What value does an online journal offer for your field?

"The best piece of advice I could give to a faculty member who is thinking about how to explain the value of technology for him or her in the classroom is to articulate the outcomes that he or she is trying to have in the classroom, and then really explain why the technology helped them with those outcomes," Williams said.

That's the challenge we enjoy in learning technology. Getting to know the gadgets is the easy part. Finding the best ways to use them to enhance learning is the real collaborative adventure.

Watch the video and consider how you're implementing technology self-consciously.