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Kevin Martin is a technology enthusiast with a background that spans military, IT and academia. Combining his expertise, the new Director of Library Services and Educational Technology Specialist, is driving a classroom revolution

TOMORROW’S TEACHERD epending on your year of

enrolment, understanding the application and possibilities

of education technology, or Ed Tech, will vary. For those who enrolled in 2014 it is digital blackboards, paper-free classrooms and e-books on mobile devices. For those who enrolled in 1994, it is a level of advancement that would make Back to the Future’s Marty McFly quake in his self-lacing Nike Air Mags.

Ed Tech is a big bucks business, which is driving innovation at a heady pace. A market study published by Future Source predicts the sector will reach values of $19bn by 2018, demonstrating a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of eight per cent.

Applications vary wildly, from cloud-based storage to a fully digitized library and curriculum.

But what is critical to remember is that this is more than just iPads in classrooms and remote learning.

Since arriving on campus in July 2014, Director of Library Services and Educational Technology Specialist Kevin Martin, has been assessing AUD’s Ed Tech in order to benchmark adoption and drive progress.

Holding a Masters degree in Information and Learning Technology and a second in Library Science, his domain may be the traditional library, but his task is to gradually transform AUD’s library into a space equipped with the technology to support the process of learning. In the classroom, his task is to ensure that course delivery is

informative, efficient and inline with the level of technology students interact with elsewhere in their lives.

Both physical libraries and the concept of Ed Tech are built on filing systems. That is, knowing where and how to store – and retrieve – knowledge.

The intersection at which education and technology meet brings a philosophical element to the table; posing many questions about where the responsibility for in-class innovation lies and how the message of Ed Tech should be disseminated. Kevin says: “As I studied, I began also to develop

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INTERVIEW

an interest in library work and then there was a realization that there is a need for Ed Tech in libraries. But where does the knowledge of Ed tech live in an institution? Who shares it out? That became an area of interest to me.”

A NEW SET OF TOOLSBefore any progress can be made, Kevin is measuring and increasing levels of information literacy, teaching students how to search, research and understand the process of writing. In short: learn how to use your tools.

Kevin explains: “We have 40,001 volumes in our current collection and these print collections are really good but they are mostly designed to inspire. It’s the springboard.

“What you’re seeing is a real shift in how students work. Today, information can be accessed from anywhere and the library is an academic commons. It’s a work space that isn’t the cafeteria and that is important to an academic institution.”

Describing his immediate six-month task list as the “unflashy period”, initial focus will fall on integrating AUD systems and testing compatibility.

Individual departmental requirements will be discussed and met: as AUD’s School of Business Administration phases out print textbooks, he will ensure vendor relationships exist and students are equipped with reading devices to endure their entire course. As he explains, content delivery is device-agnostic and therefore content must meet the student on their chosen device.

As work processes become more efficient, Ed Tech programs take care of formatting for example, thus eliminating the need for a lecture and freeing up teacher-time for critical thinking.

“Technology is really allowing us to begin to kill the lecture and that is the most exciting thing happening in Ed Tech and the broader field of education right now. Previously, lectures were the most logical use of time. Now you

can pre-record the lecture, so students listen in advance and classroom time with the teacher isn’t spent in a one-way dialogue, but in an interactive conversation and exchange.”

TESTING THE WATERAt the opposite end of the scale, The Minerva Project is taking Ed Tech a step further by reforming how the modern liberal arts education system achieves it goals.

Founded by Ben Nelson in 2012, the project’s ambition is to use technology to make education accessible to “the brightest and most motivated students from around the world… with a pedagogy and curriculum specifically designed to teach critical and creative thinking and effective communication, combined with a technology platform built in to service

to the science of learning”. Eliminating the requirement for the

physical educational space and extra curricular, recreational, facilities a network of global Minerva campuses will provide the ultimate educational experience.

The school retains some social and collaborative learning spaces, but all else takes place in the ether.

Unlike online learning, which relies on mass enrolment – and often inferior accreditations – Minerva retains a selective attitude to enrolment and course provision, designed to compete with the elite.

Without the need for a physical environment in which to conduct classes, Minerva hopes to offer courses intellectually equivalent to those of Ivy League schools while charging around $28,000 for each year of tuition,

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including room and board. While AUD’s reasons for integrating

technologically-advanced teaching methods is not down to its business plan, it is attributable to a desire to enhance the educational tools at students’ fingertips, and provide a method through which each student can build an academic portfolio, in the cloud. He explains: “Whether you are in traditional subjects such as Engineering and Architecture or Philosophy, you should have a capstone project with a portfolio to understand what you have just done. So many people go through their entire degree and come out unaware of what they have achieved.”

Despite the differences, commonalities remain in the outcome.

Kevin adds: “The goal is critical thinking. Coming out with a skill set that isn’t just ‘I learned about this’,

but knowing how to really talk, write and think and using that as an equally important reason to be hired. That is the goal for Ed Tech and all of our education here.”

FUTURE LEARNING COMMUNITIES Prior to the 1990s, Ed Tech was a theory that started and ended with the idea of isolated home learning and lessons beamed to students through a desktop computer. Today, the concept isn’t to remove the community learning experience, or put it behind glass, but to create time for face-to-face dialogue.

Ed Tech is about enabling efficient reference and storage, better collaboration and more contact, in order to facilitate more discussion time.

“AUD’s is about teaching the skills of critical thinking and getting those skills into people. So technology now is about getting us out of the lecture mode and into the seminar mode because there are more opportunities for active dialogue.

“The pie in the sky vision isn’t just that it is going to take us to this strange utopia of education, but back to Aristotle in the forum.”

Ed Tech doesn’t just question how courses are taught, but what teaching is and how we, as humans, respond to different learning styles and learning environments.

Kevin elaborates: “I did a great deal of paper reading while growing up and attending academic institutions. But that is changing. Slowly, we are seeing fewer books are being bought but all this material is still being read.

“The goal for 2015 is about creating demonstrable success and communicating that to the other schools; making sure they understand there are resources to help them do these things and the creation and addition of the Ed Tech function and the library role is not only to coordinate all this, but facilitate its roll out and support the faculty members during that process.”

CVKevin Martin holds a B.A. in Anthropology and Ethics, an M.A. in eLearning Design and Implementation and a Graduate Certificate in Designing eLearning Environments from the University of Colorado, as well as a TESOL Certificate from Pusan University of Foreign Affairs. He is also currently a candidate for the M.L.I.S. at San José State University.

As with the Ed Tech industry as a whole, development and implementation on campus will be progressive; systems do not require building, but clarification.

This year, around 10 per cent of AUD Library’s oldest items will be removed and the collection updated. More study spaces will be created by digitizing niche items in the journal collection and the library’s own systems will be modernized to speed up check out and archiving.

And academic innovation beyond that? “Technological evolution over the last two decades tells me there is a push for paperless. It isn’t just about more databases and E-books, our 3,000 students printed over 100,000 pages last semester. Why?

“Students should not turn in a single assignment on paper. That is my goal as Library Director and Educational Technology Specialist,” Kevin shares, before concluding: “So a paperless university experience and the entire academic portfolio and history in the cloud, stored forever.” n