As in past years, this year's Summer Institute brought together a community of campus staff and faculty trading knowledge about technology teaching tools.

"By all accounts this was a very successful SITT," said Victoria Cross of the TRC. "We, once again, had an increased number of participants and were particularly pleased at how involved everyone was. Partly because of the large turn-outs, we had very fruitful discussions about uses of educational technology."

In fact, due to the efforts of SITT's coordinators, which include Cross, Andy Jones, Barbara Sommer and Dick Walters, as well as an apparently increasing interest in technology among instructors, enrollment has increased from about 40 participants in 1998 to 70 in 2002.

"SITT was informative, well organized and a great source of information," stated Simone Monnier Clay, a participant who teaches French and Italian. "It is always a great forum for the exchange of ideas between teaching faculty and to learn about various programs available on campus. It is also an opportunity to meet, begin and renew friendships."

Instructors were introduced to a range of teaching tools, a few of which tackled specific subject areas, but all of which taught universal lessons to instructors.

For example, Chris Calvert gave a presentation on "What-If Questions and the Virtual Tissue Program," discussing a computer model that helps students apply the information they already know to new circumstances. While this model was particularly steered toward students in the biological sciences, the notion of encouraging students to "think mechanistically, rather than empirically," could be relevant to instructors across disciplines.

In a lively SITT luncheon, Provost Hinshaw demonstrates one of the many hats UC Davis instructors must wear as they learn to integrate technology in their teaching to improve "access to lifelong learning."

Even so, the leaders of SITT acknowledged that not all technologies are ideal for all forms of instruction, an issue that was the grounds for a "Computer-Based Teaching: One Size Does Not Fit All" discussion led by Roger McDonald. He noted that mostly-online courses work best in disciplines such as Chemistry, where the content will not change over time, while more face-to-face interaction is desirable for courses with subjective or changing content.

"A computer is a teaching tool when it is used for processes that humans can't do," McDonald said. Other highlights of SITT included lunchtime presentations with notable campus speakers like Provost Virginia Hinshaw and Vice Provost of IET John Bruno.

And with presentations and elective lab classes, participants had the opportunity to develop new skills with such technology as 3D animation, Web design and PowerPoint. Yet while these teaching tools contributed to the instructors' pool of resources from which to draw upon, none of them would have held much value without their tying into that ever-recurring word at SITT — pedagogy. SITT coordinators and participants made certain that the overarching goals of teaching be the primary focus of the conference, with pros and cons of educational technology broached throughout the conference.

For example, Andy Jones of the English department led a discussion about "The Online Writing Project" at http://cai.ucdavis.edu/, a TRC-sponsored Web site designed to supplement courses with a writing component. Some participants in this discussion said they believe that this Web site can also be a helpful source for alumni who may not have put much effort into their college English classes and are finding themselves lost in a work world that requires writing proficiency. Others said they feel that immediate human feedback is sometimes a necessity for struggling writers.

A round table discussion, facilitated by Sommer and Walters, was also held to delve a little deeper into the topic of "The Implications and Outcomes of Teaching with Technology," allowing for the exchange of critical thoughts.

Some of these hard questions were "What are our expectations that we have for students' computer literacy that may not be communicated to them?," "What are we doing to prepare our students to become life-long learners?" and "Which media best engage students?"

While there was considerable division on some of these issues, some of the most agreed-upon inferences were that some degree of "fuzziness" must be inserted into online courses, that cross-disciplinary learning should be encouraged and students' varying learning styles considered, and that students should not expect everything to simply be handed to them online.

"We must design imperfect models [of online tools] so that students can think for themselves," Walters said.

Whatever their take on educational technology, instructors were united by their eagerness to get involved in this new way of learning.

"A real community was built in these four and a half days," said Cross.

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