School Evaluation Summary

This assignment was interesting and difficult. Interesting because it exposed me to a side of the college which I really had no familiarity with, its technology. What surprised me the most was that the college has a comprehensive Technology Master Plan, which outlines the technology goals for the institution for the long term. It also releases yearly reports on the objectives that have been met, are in progress, or require funding.  Another aspect of the college that I had no idea about was the Technology Planning Committee. I am embarrassed to admit it but I have worked at this institution for over three years now and I had no I idea that this committee even existed. I never went out of my way to ask about the existence of such a committee, but it was never mentioned in any faculty meetings, or if it was mentioned it was just in passing.  

As far as teacher use of technology is concerned, it was not surprising that not as many faculty members use technology in their courses as there could be. As I mention in my summary, many faculty members have access to technology for the classroom and even readily accept new technologies but implementation is another story. Technology in many departments means a Scantron machine for assessment and an overhead projector for lectures. However, the instructors who do use technology use it creatively and effectively in their classrooms and as supplementary material for students to access online.

This assignment was a bit difficult mainly because of the Maturity Model Benchmarks. First, many of the benchmark labels and definitions seemed to overlap.  Another issue I encountered was how to deal with the fact that the college offers both online and on-site courses. Of course online instructors and students utilize technology daily as a necessity but on-site instructors use technology in limited ways and with varying consistency. Scoring some of the categories, especially those dealing with the curricular filter, took a bit of balancing and weighing. One last difficulty was that in the are of Innovation under both new technologies and comprehensive technologies, behavioral and resource/infrastructure descriptors seemed to be reversed, very similar, or at the very least overlapping.  

Here are the links to my evaluation survey and summary:

Maturity Benchmarks Survey

Evaluation Summary