Behind the Podium: Seeing Technology Support Teaching & Learning First-Hand

This semester, I'm fortunate to have been invited to teach a graduate course on Technology and Innovation for UB’s School of Management. This has provided me with an opportunity to interface and share perspectives with some of UB’s most talented and ambitious students. And given the transformative ways these young minds think about technology and its potential, I can proudly say I’m learning a lot as well.

I also have an opportunity to better understand the role of technology at UB from a teaching perspective. UBIT offers resources for instructors at all levels and in all disciplines, and knowing what’s available and how to make the best use of it can be overwhelming. Lecture recording and streaming, digital projection and playback, wireless classroom connectivity, each opens up a world of possibilities...when you know it’s there and know how to use it. I have a renewed sense of the importance of UBIT's work in reaching out to faculty and instructors to make sure we're communicating these possibilities effectively to them.

I now understand just how much instructors rely on online apps like UBlearns. This means it’s crucial that we deliver a product that just works, that’s simple to understand and navigate. It’s also crucial that we deliver the classroom connectivity that makes it possible to access resources like UBlearns (and I’m confident we’ve made progress on this front thanks to our ongoing Wi-Fi Boost initiative).

One of the things I discuss in my course is using technology to leverage the power of communities built on shared pride and passion in a common interest. It's clear to me--and, I imagine, anyone who steps foot on one of our campuses--that there’s no shortage of passion here at UB, as seen in the impact our learning communities make every day in the region and throughout the world. It continues to be our goal in UBIT to build our service around the passion that we all share in the exchange of ideas, and to support our faculty and students as they engage in that exchange.

As long as we're meeting that goal, then I’m proud to be one of the passionate ones.