Teaching with Technology: Active Learning in International Studies

The adoption of new technologies in instruction will change the nature of instruction itself. There are four broad categories of the potential benefits of technology in higher education: off-loading; enhanced resources; enriched conventional class lecture/discussion; and outreach through distance education. Other college and university administrators have seen technology as either a money-saving or money-making tool for their institutions. The technologies most commonly associated with pedagogy include desktop software, internet-mediated communications, World Wide Web pages, distance education courseware, internet access to statistical databases, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), cellphone and personal digital assistant applications, and classroom response systems (CRS). There has been a modest and somewhat sporadic literature on teaching with technology in international studies, much of which follows the development of new technologies, such as personal computers, the World Wide Web, and courseware development. The three major themes in the scholarship on technology in teaching and learning in international studies include technology-based enthusiasm/experimentation, comparative studies, and skepticism. However, some of the challenges to scholarship in teaching and learning with technology: the use of technology has become so pervasive, accepted, and easy that few teacher-scholars bother to write in scholarly journals about the act; weak structure of incentives for studying the use of technology in teaching and learning; and technological instability and discontinuity. Nevertheless, there are some technologies and trends that may appear in the future international relations course. These include podcasting, Real Simple Syndication (RSS) Feeds, Twittering, and Wikipeda and Google Books.