Abstract
The 24th annual Conference on Instruction & Technology (CIT) was held May 26–29, 2015 on the beautiful campus of SUNY Geneseo in the finger lakes region of upstate New York. CIT is SUNY's largest and most prominent event on instructional technology in education, providing a forum for faculty, instructional support professionals, and policymakers to present, discuss, and explore innovative avenues for integrating technology into the teaching and learning environment. This special issue of the Journal of Educational Technology captures a unique cross section from this years exciting conference which focused on “Rising to Meet our Challenges: Preparing for Global Success.”
From big data to language instruction and virtual reality, this series of papers represents the full scope of educational technology today. We begin with a more traditional application and assessment of freeware in fostering writing skills and research by Khost. This is a critical need across many disciplines and the fact that it is built on freely accessible tools is in a definite plus. Consistent with this theme of freeware, the article by O’Connor focuses on Open Source software that can be used for virtual reality discussions and classrooms. Another important contribution in the writing arena is the use of simulations and games to address issues of student plagiarism by Bradley.
Often digital learners struggle with support that would typically be available in face to face environments. This issue is explored in the context of using on-line support to build student confident by Chipley and Smith. A nice extension to that study was presented by Speed, Bradley and Vince Garland in the context of adult learners that use simulation to reinforce concepts. While traditionally, text centric classes have been the centerpiece of digital learning. Professor Chen provides some new insights into the construction of language courses. In this case, the study was focused on new hybrid courses for Korean and Japanese to pilot some new software in their curriculum.
To pull this issue together, we close with a nice exploration of the role of Big Data in the world today by a founding member of the CIT community, Professor Harry Pence. He explores issues of privacy, shared information, and the future of publishing.
Through these reports and the many more studies presented at CIT, we see a continued focus on examining the role of technology in the learning environment. Not simply early adopters, but true professionals examining the impact of new technologies in the classroom. We look forward to the next CIT conference scheduled for May 31-June 3, 2016 on the beautiful campus of SUNY Potsdam in upstate New York. The theme of the next conference will be Students at the Center: Creating and Sharing Learning Experiences.