Appropriate(d) Technology @ Wesleyan

ap·pro·pri·ate
adjective
: especially suitable or compatible ; fitting
transitive verb
1 : to take exclusive possession of : annex <no one should appropriate a common benefit>
2 : to set apart for or assign to a particular purpose or use <appropriate money for the research program>
3 : to take or make use of without authority or right
Copyright 1999 Merriam-Webster, Incorporated

To take seriously the proposition put forth in our Academic Strategic Plan that information and communication technology can serve as drivers of innovation in teaching and scholarly communications and research means that consumers of such technologies, be they faculty, students, or administrators, must evaluate all technologies by their approriateness,  by the technology's ability to be appropriated in the service of its consumer's particular pedagogical, research, or communications goals.

This site serves as a gateway to technologies presently available at Wesleyan for faculty to use in their teaching and scholarly communications. For each technology, we provide the following types of information:

• what it is
• how to use it from a technical standpoint
• how others on campus and elsewhere successfully use it from a pedagogical or functional perspective

Communication Channels
To document these activities in this manner requires the active participation of those who are using these technologies. To arrive at solutions that are in the words of our Academic Strategic Plan "as efficient and transparent as is technologically possible" requires that the users of these technologies think out loud about the goals of the activities that they are engaging in, and reflect on how the technologies we provide may or may not help serve to meet these goals.

In to facilitate this thinking out loud, we provide a range of channels for these sorts of communications:

Academic Computing Managers
Teaching Stories Database and Teaching Profiles
Academic Technology Roundtable
Focus Groups

Types of Technology
We have divided the appropriable technologies into 6 broad categories :

• web tools
• media
• communications
• data and data analysis tools
• instructional software
• course management systems

Examples and links
Who else is using technology in their teaching on campus? Who else in your field is using technology effectively? What are some good examples that can be appropriated for your particular goals? For each type of technology listed, you will find a growing set of links to stories of how these technologies are being used.

Assessment and Evaluation
In addition to providing a forum to document how these broad classes of technology are being used on campus, for individual faculty members we provide tools for assessing the pedagogical effects of this technology. You can use these assessment tools  in your courses to help understand the consequences of using technology in teaching. In addition, we provide links to provocative studies that analyze the real and purported benefits of technology in higher education in particular, and in education in general.