CTI (Computers in Teaching Initiative)
The CTI, set up in 1989, offers a UK-wide service to academic staff in higher
education institutions through its network of 24 subject-based centres.Joyce Martin, Acting Head
of the CTI Support Service, describes this HEFCE funded initiative.
The mission of the CTI is
"to maintain and enhance the quality of learning and increase the
effectiveness of teaching through the application of appropriate learning
technologies."
The CTI is funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the
Scottish Higher Education Funding Council, the Higher Education Funding Council
for Wales, and the Department of Education for Northern Ireland. The CTI has
provisional funding to run until 1999 renewable on an annual basis.
Why use information technology?
The CTI is challenging all academic staff to rethink their approach to teaching
and learning. The past 5 years have seen dramatic changes in UK higher
education:
- increased student numbers and class sizes;
- reductions in unit costs;
- students arriving at university with more diverse academic backgrounds;
- Teaching Quality Audit (TQA).
The CTI believe that information technology has a role to play in addressing
many of the issues raised by these changes. Our view is that computers should
empower good teachers, not de-skill. Computers offer the opportunity to depart
from the traditional constraints of the curriculum, allowing teachers and
learners to schedule the place, time and pace of learning. Their capabilities
can facilitate experiences that would be too expensive, dangerous or
time-consuming to generate in conventional terms. Visualisation techniques will
enable teachers to illustrate their teaching in more dynamic fashion than the
current norm.
New generations of authoring tools will broaden the base of courseware
authorship and students themselves will increasingly act as authors in their
coursework. IT will support important teaching strategies such as collaborative
learning as well as assessment.
The role of the CTI
By promoting the effective and appropriate use of learning technologies the CTI
works to meet the needs of the future and enable change in higher education.
The main strength of the CTI comes from its discipline focus. Each of the
Centres is responsible for a different subject area covering the sciences,
humanities, social sciences, arts and the professions. CTI Centres are seen as
part of the discipline communities they serve. As such they play a key role in
advising departments on how uses of technology can enhance teaching quality.
With higher education institutions finding it ever harder to sustain
conventional approaches to teaching and learning the CTI is demonstrating the
growing viability of technology-based alternatives.
The CTI Centres
The Centres are all directed by an experienced university academic and staffed
by subject specialists with expertise in learning technology.
Each centre provides:
- answers to individual queries
- online information via electronic mailing lists and on the World Wide Web
at http://www.cti.ac.uk
- regular newsletters and journals
- subject specific resource guides and software reviews
- workshops, visits, open days, software demonstrations
The CTI has a major presence on the World Wide Web. Not only have Centres mounted their own material
on
their Web servers (information about events and activities, online newsletters
and resource guides) but they also evaluate other sources of information,
building links from their pages to servers which meet their criteria for
quality and relevance. Full contact details for all Centres and a link to each
Web site is available at
http://www.cti.ac.uk/centres/index.html
The CTI Support Service
The CTI Support Service, based at the University of Oxford, coordinates the 24
Centres and acts as a focal point for activities relating to the use of
computers in university teaching in the UK.
The Support Service maintains the central CTI Web server and has a busy
publishing programme (CTISS Publications
). Its publications include a journal
(Active Learning) published twice a year, an annual report, other special
reports and conference proceedings.
Active Learning is the major refereed journal of the CTI and
is essential reading for all those interested in learning technologies in
higher education, emphasising the learning outcomes rather than the
technologies. Each issue includes in-depth articles, case studies, critical
reports and opinion pieces by specialists in the field.
Recent theme issues include:
- Computer assisted assessment (I)
- Using the Internet for teaching (II)
- Teaching with multimedia (III)
- TLTP: what has been achieved? (IV)
Issue V, to be published in December 1996, will feature Learning Technology
Success Stories.
The subscription is FREE to academic staff members of UK HE institutions;
attractive rates available to others. You can subscribe by emailing the CTI
Support Service: CTISS@oucs.ox.ac.uk or by using the subscription form at
http://www.cti.ac.uk/publ/actlea/subscribe.html
Collaboration with others
The structure of the CTI, with its discipline based Centres, lends itself
easily to the forging of links between Centres and others working in the same
fields of study. Overseas links are growing in size and strength but the bulk
of the collaborative work undertaken is with academic colleagues and
professional bodies which are based in the UK.
The strongest links are with TLTP (the Teaching and Learning Technology
Programme). Staff involvement includes belonging TLTP consortia and managing
software development; advising TLTP projects and evaluating their software;
demonstrating TLTP software at workshops and conferences; running TLTP software
training workshops; supplying up-to-date information on developments in TLTP
newsletters, online, and in resource guides and information packs.
The CTI also liaises closely with the Scottish Learning Technology
Dissemination Initiative (LTDI) - an initiative that exists to promote good
practice and disseminate materials from TLTP and CTI. Links have begun to
develop with the Further Education sector partly by way of the National Council
of Educational Technology (NCET).
The greatest concentration of international links remains in Europe and
Australia with several of the countries copying the CTI pattern of
subject-based dissemination centres. The CTI Support Service operates an
overseas subscription scheme which allows overseas university departments to
benefit from CTI Centres in the same way as those in the UK.
Further information
If you would like any further information about the CTI please contact
Joyce Martin.
Email: CTISS@oucs.ox.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)1865 237273
Fax: +44 (0)1865 237275
Material on this page is copyright Ariadne/original
authors. This page last updated on September 11th 1996