CRLT's latest Occasional Paper, "Teaching in the Cloud: Leveraging Online Collaboration Tools to Enhance Student Engagement," has just been released. A collaborative effort by CRLT Assistant Director Chad Hershock and U-M Political Science and Philosophy Professor Mika LaVaque-Manty, the paper describes how a wide range of instructors at Michigan use online collaboration tools to enhance student engagement and course management. 

Here's how the authors explain the research behind this new publication:

"In 2011, the University of Michigan selected Google as the primary provider of OCTs [online collaboration tools] for all faculty, staff, and students on the Ann Arbor campus. To explore potential applications of these and other OCTs for teaching and course management, CRLT partnered with U-M’s office of Information and Technology Services to sponsor a faculty learning community. We recruited 23 faculty instructors from 14 schools and colleges, representing a wide array of disciplines, teaching contexts, and levels of OCT experience ranging from novices to “power users.” The learning community met monthly for seven months. Sessions featured hands-on exploratory activities, demonstrations by early adopters, brainstorming sessions, and dialogues to design and debrief pilot projects enacted by learning community participants. Seventeen faculty pursued pilot projects in their courses or clinical teaching, and CRLT conducted interviews with them to document their approaches. Below [ . . . ] we describe applications of OCTs for teaching developed by learning community members and other U-M instructors interviewed by CRLT. These examples are not intended to be exhaustive. However, they illustrate a variety of innovative solutions to common pedagogical challenges that are transferable or adaptable across disciplines and teaching contexts."

The printed paper will arrive in faculty mailboxes soon. Anyone who wants a sneak preview can find the pdf here. A full list of CRLT's Occasional Papers can be found here.