CCE Faculty Articles
Teacher-Student Collaboration on Designing Instructional Multimedia Materials: A Case Study of Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages
Abstract
To keep up with the rapid innovative advances in technology, many institutions in Taiwan have increased their demands for technologically literate faculty. The problem is that such demands increase faculty’s workload and create additional time commitments on faculty who are already overburdened with traditional face-to-face instruction involving large class sizes. To date, few faculty at Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages (WUCL) consider themselves prepared to meet such demands. Mitra (2003) pointed out that students have the potential to contribute their opinions to the school and can serve as a catalyst for improving teaching and curriculum. This benefit also serves to improve students’ learning by creating opportunities for students to work with and to provide an effective technology support for faculty. All students at WUCL are required to take computer courses. If engaging students as multimedia designers and technology assistants for their non-technology discipline faculty to create instructional multimedia materials, it may not only reduce the faculty’s workload but also enhance students’ learning by providing students with meaningful learning opportunities (Thomson, 2007). In this study, collaboration between discipline faculty and the students helped to ensure that the faculty benefited from the students’ technology assistance and the students enhanced their learning experience.