Glenn Reich, former Director of User Services at Harper College, believed in a humanistic, collaborative approach to instructional technology. He encouraged faculty and staff to invest their energy in the technology that he knew would dramatically affect our world and believed every academic discipline should expose students to technology and assist them to become more comfortable with it. The Glenn A. Reich Memorial Faculty Award for Instructional Technology is devoted to realizing and carrying forward that vision.

There are two $1,000 awards available this year. To be considered for the award, applicants must submit: a description of the instructional technology or technologies they have used or are using, an explanation of how it has enhanced the teaching and learning process, and a description of how they envision its future use.

View and download the application. The application deadline is Friday, November 4.

 

I was awarded the Glenn Reich Award in 2013-2014 for my work using technology to record and broadcast my classes online. I use the annotation features of the lectern computers, along with PDF Annotator and Google Hangouts software, to broadcast my classes live over YouTube, which also results in an archived set of videos and digital notes, distributed through Blackboard and Dropbox. To date, there are 362 videos with over 7200 total views. I’ve always gotten very positive feedback on this from my students, who are grateful for the extra study resources and the ability to stay home when necessary (illness, child care, etc.) without missing out on material. The award was very validating to my work, demonstrating that the institution was behind what I was doing. It also pushed me to work to spread these techniques throughout the college. You can see the results here.

Joe Wachter

Associate Professor, Chemistry

I was awarded the Glenn Reich Award in 2009-2010. My project involved creating a private social networking site, “Jennifer’s ESL Cafe”, using a now retired platform called Ning. The website became a hub of conversation, blogs, videos, and information for my low-level, English literacy students at one of Harper’s off campus locations, Partners for Our Community (POC). The Cafe provided the students, many of whom had limited access to the internet, an incentive to learn the technological skills they needed for both academic, employment, and community purposes. I also provided training for adjunct faculty in my department to help create their own websites as well as integrate digital literacy into their classrooms to help bridge the digital divide.

Winning the Glenn Reich award helped solidify for me the importance of bridging the digital divide for low-level literacy and non-native speakers of English, many of whom still lack access to digital and computer literacy. Although the Ning company no longer exists anymore, I continue to use social media and free platforms to teach computer, digital, and information literacy to my students. Furthermore, I participate in departmental professional development trainings to help share my technology skills to adjunct professors who want to integrate more technology into their classrooms.

Jennifer Bell

Associate Professor, Adult Educational Development