The following notes and letters offer external support for my application for promotion to full professor. The first two letters offer the perspective of colleagues who have worked with me over many years within my department and across the university.
I’m also including comments from other voices who have a first-hand experience of my work in the Learning Studio. The spaces and services in the Learning Studio are the product of many people: our professional staff, student media specialists, and faculty partners. However, I’ve overseen each stage in the development of the Learning Studio, including its programs and workshops, so I include additional comments about our work as a reflection of broader leadership beyond my department and beyond the campus.
Dr. Debbie Williams, Associate Professor of Language and Literature, Director of Composition
Dear Committee Members,
I am pleased to submit this letter of support for the promotion of Dr. Kyle Dickson.
Under Kyle’s leadership, the Learning Studio has been more than a technology resource on campus–more than a place to simply use and get help using technology. As a participant in one of the faculty digital story sessions and as a professor who teaches multi-modal text creation, I’ve experienced the value of the Learning Studio’s outreach to faculty.
Kyle’s training in English has equipped him to focus the Studio’s efforts on the thoughtful generation and consumption of digital texts. Thus, rather than feeling intimidated due to a lack of experience with the soft- or hardware, professors are more willing to risk, working with new media to improve their teaching as well as their scholarship endeavors.
This past summer, ACU supported my attending the Digital Media and Composition (DMAC) annual two week workshop at Ohio State University. This program (also offered for graduate credit) focuses solely on equipping composition teachers to create and then to teach various forms of multi-modal texts. The program focuses on theory behind the importance of teaching and writing in these non-discursive textual forms. Participating in the DMAC program after having participated in a workshop by the Learning Studio has convinced me of the value of having a resource such as the Learning Studio headed by someone with Kyle’s training in the humanities and experience as a professor.
Kyle has shaped the Studio’s offerings to benefit the entire university instead of simply addressing needs of one department. His experience as a professor, along with his knowledge of issues of plagiarism, text evaluation, and the processes of text generation from his training in English has helped him be able to be an invaluable resource, able to offer advice in the arrangement of “smart” classrooms and able to help faculty consider their goals in using digital elements and texts in their courses.
Currently, the freshman composition program is moving to having a digital essay assignment in 111 and 106—which has the potential to be a logistical nightmare. Kyle is working with me as I re-shape the program to help teachers feel supported in their efforts. To be frank, if ACU’s director were only experienced in technology, I doubt I would have the nuanced help that Kyle is equipped to give.
I am grateful for Kyle’s leadership and his desire to help professors help students.
Sincerely,
Dr. Debbie J. Williams
Dr. James Langford, past Director of Educational Technology
In 27 years at ACU, I worked on dozens of projects in roles in the Adams Center, Web Integration and Programming, Information Technology and Educational Technology. In my initial years, I also served as a faculty member. This document is in support of Kyle Dickson’s application for promotion to full professor. The ideal educational technology creation cycle should begin with a clear problem to solve, articulation to technologists of the potential solution, creation of a prototype and gathering of feedback from earlyadopter faculty, development of a core solution with ongoing feedback and refinements, and promotion and support to the faculty at large. If successful locally, reporting to colleagues in larger venues brings additional refinements and gauges applicability beyond the local setting.
This ideal cycle requires significant cooperation between technologists and faculty. For many years, Kyle Dickson has played the role of tireless advocate and spokesman for faculty as well as a partner to technologists, in effect interpreting the needs of one group in the language of the other. He has played this role in numerous projects. The following are representative but not exhaustive. I will give more detail on the first in order to illustrate the breadth of the typical project.
Mobile Learning Team
Both Kyle and I served on the mobile learning team during critical years of its development. There were countless discussions of technical and financial issues, but just as often of impact on teaching and learning. Questions of priority, process and pedagogy were more balanced because Kyle and other faculty were so integral to the team. While to the outsider it may have seemed like a technology or even public relations initiative, it was academic at its core. Kyle and others in the Adams Center led the initiative and faculty participation and buy in was tremendous.
WordPress Blogging System
Kyle approached my group in IT several years ago to request a local installation of a blogging system. We had a course management system in place at the time, Blackboard, but there was a need for a lighterweight, more agile system for fostering easy posting of course content and comments by students and faculty. The solution needed to be flexible enough to use from both a computer and mobile device but easy enough to learn that it could be used by a majority of faculty. I need to note that we had access to a blogging system through our portal software, and on a strictly technical basis we would have likely chosen it. Kyle’s leadership in gathering requirements and feedback from faculty through a pilot project that included a half dozen faculty from as many disciplines and departments led to the selection of WordPress, a much more usable and familiar choice for faculty and students.
Once selected, Kyle served as faculty voice for the many priority decisions and tradeoffs that are part of any project. Representing teaching and learning needs while acknowledging technical requirements is a hard balancing act but one that he performed very well.
While the software system was being installed and configured, Kyle also created training and support materials, organized and conducted faculty interest meetings, and eventually served as the primary support person for WordPress.
One of the markers of success of this project was the broad adoption by faculty. Not only that, it became a second web publishing and content management system for the campus at large and is used in such diverse areas as ACU Today, the Library and faculty Tenure and Promotion portfolios. Kyle’s ongoing attention to selecting plugins and templates to support need as they arise have made WordPress one of the most successful technology implementations ACU had over my years there.
HeadsUp
HeadsUp is a mobile web app created at ACU to enhance classroom discussions. We worked with faculty to capture best practices in group discussions as well as to discover limitations of ad hoc group selection, manual preparation and distribution of materials, and informal feedback mechanisms. Kyle was a partner at all phases over several years. He helped us gather faculty input, organized interest and feedback sessions, personally tested the software on an ongoing basis, and initiated several efforts to expand the reach of HeadsUp outside ACU.
Maker Lab
After I moved from IT to educational technology in the Adams Center, John Weaver asked his leadership group to explore the creation of a Maker Lab. Kyle took the clear leadership role in researching existing labs and related areas, contacting national leaders in the maker movement, and envisioning and creating the film, “We Are Makers.” Once the film was created, he initiated sessions with various faculty groups to determine potential impact of the maker movement on various disciplines as well as how it might impact pedagogy across the disciplines. Kyle led the creation of the Maker Lab blog, gave extensive input on the design of the space based on his experience designing the Learning Studio, and contributed in countless ways to the startup of the lab.
Other Projects
I have mentioned representative large projects, but there are many other projects that allowed me to see Kyle’s contribution to how technology can impact teaching and learning and faculty growth. I had the privilege of participating in a session on digital storytelling and later helped facilitate a workshop. Another time I was able to join the photography workshop in Gruene.
Educational technology assisted Kyle in the technical implementation of the One Button Studio.In these and in many, many others, I experienced first hand the importance of having not just a faculty advocate for IT projects but a real conversation partner invested in finding the appropriate junction of technology and teaching and learning.
ACU has many innovative faculty willing to experiment with new technology and it was a pleasure to work in such an environment for so many years. However, there will always be a divide between those whose primary concern is technology and those whose task is educating students. I believe that the role of bridging that divide is an absolutely essential one if we are to apply digital innovations in a thoughtful, responsible manner. Whether I was asking Kyle for his help in a project, or more often, responding to projects he initiated and led, I found him to be the ideal faculty partner and a valued colleague. Both the technology side and faculty and students are richer because of his impact.
James Langford, Ph.D
Dr. Jeff Childers, Graduate School of Theology, email 9/24/12
Kyle and Nil,
Thanks again for your work pulling off a wonderful workshop in Gruene over the weekend. Your investment in this project and your sacrifices in making it happen are not unappreciated! I realize you did not ask me to write a lengthy email response to the weekend, but I’d like to do so anyway, copying my remarks to pertinent colleagues.
The two of you make a great instructional team for this project. Despite having done this over and over, Kyle brings seemingly fresh enthusiasm to the challenge of teaching faculty how to author digital content, helping learners of different skill levels feel comfortable to experiment with photography and even with post-production editing. From sign-up to ramp-up, and throughout every aspect of the workshop, he creates a hospitable environment for the participants. Along with highly creative expertise, Nil brings great energy and his own special charm to the entire experience. He seems genuinely excited to be helping his colleagues see the world in different and delightful ways. His enthusiasm is infectious and his coaching highly affirming but instructive and corrective.
I learned a lot, about technical aspects of photography and creating digital content. But one of the most valuable take-aways for me was the reminder to see the world with fresh eyes, and the opportunity to practice that in a disciplined way, to be as attentive as possible to the details around me. That was a spiritual benefit for me, and it was obvious that others felt similarly.
So, I am a big fan of what you guys and your staff are doing in this retreat. I am eager to see others get the same opportunities and even further opportunities as you develop other expressions of this in the future.
Peace,
Andrew Harrison, co-author, Design for the Changing Educational Landscape, email 9/15/13
The AT&T Learning Studio embodies many of the characteristics that contribute toward making an effective and inspirational learning environment. It is a shared community space for both faculty and students, it embraces and celebrates both physical and digital learning processes and artifacts and includes a range of settings, formal and informal, that allows the learner to chart their own learning journey.
Karla Burkholder, President, Texas Computer Education Association, email 4/22/13
Kyle,
The visit was very informative and inspirational! It has definitely sparked conversation in my district especially about the one-button studio. We have been adding collaboration spaces to our campuses, so it was great to see how you are designing and utilizing them.
ACU is setting the standard for learning innovation in not only higher education, but K-12 as well. From the design of the physical space to designing the learning experience, the Learning Studio embraces the core of twenty-first century skills—collaboration, creativity, communication, critical thinking—preparing students for success in the global workplace.
Fraser Speirs, EdTech from Scotland, blog post 3/12/11
Another part of the conference was a tour of ACU’s just-opened Learning Studio. The Learning Studio is a new high-tech space built in part of the ACU library that focuses on providing space for students to focus on three aspects of digital creativity:
Create
Collaborate
Explore
Although the Learning Studio is a $1.8m facility, I was inspired by it because what was so clear to me was that the entire project had been very carefully thought through from start to finish. Anyone can spend a couple million dollars on equipment but the work on designing the space to support learning was so obviously there.