Maggie Sokolik, Assistant Director for Language Proficiency and Instructional Technology of the UC Berkeley Graduate Student Instructor Teaching & Resource Center, has conducted some of this research, finding that students "have grown to expect that computer technology will be part of a system of learning." Meanwhile, she has found that faculty are often reluctant to use technology for teaching because they think of it as something extra to do instead of as providing a new way of doing things that they already do.

"The gap between students and faculty is widening," says Sokolik. "However, as current graduate students, who understand the technology and have been around it more, move into teaching positions, this gap should start to shrink."

Graduate students tend not only to be young, and thus more familiar with the technological tastes of undergraduates, but are also more open to trying new ways of teaching because their careers are just beginning. Many of the TA training centers on UC campuses are bringing instructor use of technology more in line with student expectations by showing graduate students how to use digital tools and encouraging them to think about how those tools can be used to enhance student learning.

Pedagogical Training Increasingly Including Technology

The UC campuses offer teaching assistants training on the practical as well as pedagogical elements of teaching university courses. Over the past decade, instructional technology has played an ever growing part of this training and has been integrated with the pedagogy in various ways.

In 1997 UCLA received a FIPSE grant to start a technology-related TA training program called Technology TA Consultants. A Technology TA Consultant is trained centrally by the Office of Instructional Development (OID) and then goes back to his or her department to train other TAs in how to use technology in the classroom. This program originally was separate from the standard TA Training Consultant program but, over the years, the two programs have merged.

"It was originally viewed as intermediate pedagogical training for advanced TAs separate from basic training for new TAs," says Kumiko Haas, Associate Director for Instructional Improvement at UCLA. "What has happened since is that technology has evolved and permeated into everyday life and the technology is now important for every TA - not just the Technology TAs - to know about."

UC Berkeley has also been integrating technology training into its training program for TAs, who are referred to on that campus as graduate student instructors (GSI). The GSI Teaching & Resource Center offers occasional workshops, such as how to use technology for increasing student participation, and the pros and cons of PowerPoint. GSIs are required to take an online course on professional ethics and standards in teaching, not only to learn this material, but also to get a firsthand experience taking an online course, since many of them may be expected to teach online courses when they become faculty.

UC Santa Barbara has taken a somewhat different approach. In addition to providing TA training, for the past five years the campus has offered a Certificate in College and University Teaching (CCUT) program to graduate students. It was designed to appeal to those "who aspire to be faculty and who want to demonstrate their desire and ability to teach," says Shirley Ronkowski, co-chair of the CCUT Faculty Advisory Board.

One of the four requirements of the program is that certificate candidates think about how they can effectively use technology for instruction. According to the program's brochure, they must demonstrate "the ability to appropriately use instructional technology through an instructional design aimed to meet a specific learning goal, or to challenge the efficacy of instructional technology for a specific learning goal within an academic discipline."

To satisfy this requirement, says Ronkowski, CCUT candidates have used technologies such as Listservs, blogs, and online bulletin boards to facilitate class communication; they've also used tools such as PowerPoint and web sites to promote student collaboration.

Abe Rutchick, a graduate student in Psychology at UCSB, satisfied the technology requirement in a course he taught last summer by using email as a means of guiding his lectures and facilitating student participation. He assigned readings after every class and asked students to send him questions or comments based on the reading before the next class. He would decide how to focus the following lecture based on the student feedback.

"I feel like a lot of lectures either reiterate the reading or elaborate on the reading and don't seem to make good use of class time," says Rutchick. "I like to make my courses personal and interactive for my students. My role is not to talk the whole time but to guide students and facilitate their learning."

He also said email was an effective way to encourage shy students, who otherwise would not speak up in class, to participate in, and contribute to, the class discussion.

Another recipient of the UCSB teaching certificate is Jason Kelly, who is now an Assistant Professor of History at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. He fulfilled his CCUT technology requirement by having students contribute to a web-based timeline of historical events that could then be added to, and edited by, future students.

Now as a professor, Kelly digitizes many aspects of his History courses, from texts that students read, to lectures and films, to online discussions. He says that the CCUT program encouraged him to take a comprehensive approach to integrating technology into instruction, which makes him somewhat unique in a field where most use technology in more limited ways.

Academic Discipline and Other Factors

The extent to which instructors use technology for teaching is often dependent on the academic discipline, with some more obviously amenable to technological intervention than others.

"In some fields, such as foreign languages, where instructional technology has been present for a long time, graduate students and faculty are pretty attentive to technology," says Linda von Hoene, the Director of UC Berkeley's GSI Teaching & Resource Center. While all fields are making some use of instructional technology, its full-fledged incorporation across the university is still sporadic and often dependent on the innovations of one or two faculty members within a department.

For graduate students in their role as teaching assistants, the discipline is not the only factor in determining whether they will use technology; they also are dependent on the faculty with whom they work.

"The extent to which teaching assistants use technology is often contingent upon the way in which the course is designed by the faculty member," says von Hoene.

Thus, even if a graduate student is interested in using technology for instruction, if the faculty member doesn't use or encourage it, chances are the graduate student won't use it at all or will only use it in a very limited way.

At the same time, when a faculty member does integrate technology in a substantial way into the design of a course, GSIs may not always consider the investment of time it takes to learn and implement the technology worth the effort if he or she is only teaching in the course once, says von Hoene.

A Healthy Skepticism

Many graduate students have a healthy skepticism about technology when it is not used strategically for enhancing student learning.

"Both at UCSB and here I find that students have come to expect PowerPoint in the classroom, but the problem is that many professors are not using it strategically," says Kelly of Indiana University. "I get a number of student complaints each semester that I'm not putting enough text on my slides. However, the idea is to make my lectures an active experience for students. That is why I only put a few key terms on the slides, so that they will have to think through why those terms were included. The slides are a guide to the lecture, not the lecture itself. If we serve students everything it makes them more passive and more resistant to thinking about how to take notes because they think 'if it's not on the PowerPoint slides, it must not be important.'"

Kelly may be pleased to know that faculty and graduate students at his alma mater are now studying instructional uses of technology, such as PowerPoint, and how they can be used to affect student learning. The campus's Center for Information Technology and Society (CITS) is sponsoring research on a range of educational technologies in a variety of academic disciplines.

Julie Campbell, a graduate student working toward her PhD in cognitive psychology, is conducting research through CITS, funded by the Andrew M. Mellon Foundation, on an increasingly popular instructional technology called personal (or audience) response systems . She is well versed in instructional technology issues as her faculty advisor is Richard Mayer, an author and expert on learning and multimedia instruction.

"There are many promising tools to aid in student learning but I think we need to look at them empirically," says Campbell. "It's not as simple as stating that technology is beneficial for learning -- it's what type of technology and for whom. You have to make sure it's implemented in a way that's best for the learner. It has to be learner-centered."

The Job Market

UC plays a significant role in preparing California's university teachers. According to UC statistics, roughly 22% of current UC faculty received their PhD at a UC campus, as did approximately 22% of California State University faculty. Also, it's expected that a large number of current faculty will retire within the next decade or so, while the college age population is expected to dramatically rise, creating a demand for many new instructors in the state.

UC campuses are well aware of these looming demands and are training graduate students for their future careers as faculty. The UCSB certificate program is one such example as is the Summer Institute for Preparing Future Faculty instituted at UC Berkeley three years ago. Both programs take into consideration the expectation of the job market that new faculty have experience with instructional technology.

When Jason Kelly was searching for a faculty position after receiving his PhD from UCSB, he found that it helped him that he had experience using technology for teaching and learning. "A school that was very concerned with teaching, like Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, liked the fact that not only was I familiar with tools such as PowerPoint, but that I had thought through the pedagogical reasons for using it."

Kelly's experience reflects what UC Berkeley's Maggie Sokolik has found in the academic job market. "A large number of job listings say 'experience with education technology desired or required,'" says Sokolik. "Employers want someone who is knowledgeable about the pedagogical issues around instructional technology and are not just looking for expertise with specific tools."

Trends indicate that having experience with instructional technology, and an understanding of why and when to use it, will soon be an expectation, not simply a bonus, for newly minted PhDs.

"Five years ago graduate students were considered outstanding if they showed technology competency," says Larry Loeher, Director of UCLA's Office of Instructional Development. "Now it's just expected. It doesn't make them unique."