Recently in Outreach Category

Have you heard about EGC Works? It's a new offering from the EGC. Every several weeks, our "Mr. Podcaster" Jamie Oberdick interviews a PSU faculty member that has worked or is working with the EGC. These 10 minute interludes are a great way to catch up with the EGC during a walk, the drive home, or time at the gym. Check them out!

I just finished watching the trailers for the upcoming Star Trek movie and it started me thinking about how you sell a vision. ST is all about the promise of the human race, along with all it's pitfalls and challenges. The original series was considered a flop of sorts. It was not until the next decade, when other viewing options opened up - an animated series, reruns of the original series, and movies - that the Trek phenomena truly began.

I sometimes feel were still at that early "people just don't get it" stage when it come to education technologies. We need to sell many visions, and do it over a long enough period of time that the visions sink it, take root, and sprout new ways of doing things.

Fortunately, we now have the tools to do that. We have  multi-channel ways to reach our audience, and we are taking advantage of some of them. Yet to cut through the noise of information that bombards us, I wonder if that's enough. We easily reach the innovators and early adopters because they are looking for us.

What about the rest? How do we reach the early majority, the people who probably will try new things with a little convincing? PR campaigns, sponsoring innovative faculty to present to other faculty, etc. are all good, but seem to have limited effectiveness.

What are we missing here? How do we better reach faculty, share a vision, and encourage them to use education technologies to improve teaching and learning? Hollywood has fancy movie trailers and lots of people to sell their vision and reach their audience affectively; higher ed. doesn't, but we are not without some resources and clever people. What are we missing utilizing out of our bag of magic?