Page 319 - Crisis in Higher Education

Creating High-Technology Learning Materials • 289

and could be presented with a similar problem that has new data.
This could happen over and over at the student’s request. This mech-
anism, which can be thought of as part of a study guide, would do
more than provide the correct answer and responses to frequently
asked questions. This tool would take the student to the place in the
e-book that describes how to work the problem, show the steps in the
solution, and have a link to an online video that shows how to solve
the problem, including common errors.
3. Sample tests: Using the mechanisms from items 1 and 2 in this list,
timed tests can be generated that students could take to assess their
overall knowledge.
4. PowerPoint slide deck: These are usually available with traditional
textbooks, but the new versions would be heavily noted so students
seeking better explanations could find them as part of the PowerPoint
slides. In addition, there would be links from the PowerPoint slides
to the e-book that would provide more insights and explanations.
5. Mechanisms for reading to students: Students must be able to listen
to e-books on a variety of mobile devices. This can be organized by
topic so students can pick topics in any order or in the recommended
sequence.

13.4 CREATING HIGH-TECH LECTURES
Like creating high-tech reading materials, changing how knowledge is
transferred from faculty to students must be done so it costs less and,
more importantly, so students learn more. Overall cost declines because
the upfront investment to digitized lectures is far less than continuing
savings from higher faculty productivity. In the process, less expensive
instructional faculty and graduate teaching assistants are used to staff
general education and disciplinary core courses that do not require the
skill, knowledge, and experience of tenured and professional faculty.
The notion of using less expensive faculty is part of the current system,
but universities often rely too heavily on these substitutes and/or use them
inappropriately by assigning them to teach upper-level undergraduate and
graduate courses.
The essence of efforts to use tenured and professional faculty more pro-
ductively is centered on the creation of downloadable, electronic lectures