This list represents areas of skill development relevant to teaching with technology. While all of these skills are indeed relevant outside of teaching with technology, they are especially important when seeking to develop our students' capacity for the judgment and decision-making unique to human abilities.
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking involves analyzing and evaluating thinking with a view to improve it (Paul & Elder, 2020). Critical thinking is useful in all domains of learning. Critical thought enables students to ask vital questions, formulate problems, assess relevant information, interpret abstract ideas, identify assumptions, draw conclusions, and create solutions. Self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking are all aspects of critical thought that can be nurtured in the learning environment and can be used to guide students as they responsibly employ emergent technologies.
Data & Information Literacy
Data & information literacy involves the ability to know when and what data are needed, how to obtain data, how to evaluate and use data, and how to derive and communicate insights from data responsibly. With emergent technologies in view, data literacy is realized not only through healthy skepticism about what information these technologies produce but also the information that is used to create these technologies.
Ethical Discernment
Ethical reasoning involves making assessments between acts that benefit or enhance the livelihood of others and those that diminish the livelihood of others. Applied, ethical reasoning requires that students be able to identify ethical issues in various situations, understand their own ethical values, and be aware of multiple ethical perspectives. As students practice ethical decision making, their personal identification as an ethical decision maker develops. Examples of elements of ethical reasoning that can be developed through a course or program’s curriculum include: ethical self-awareness, ethical issue recognition, and applied ethics implications and consequences. The advent of new technologies or the application of existing technologies to new contexts and use cases provides learners with urgent questions about how these technologies are developed, how they are deployed, and the outcomes that they produce.
Creativity & Innovation
Strategically appropriate innovation and creativity can be fostered in students. Instructors can take an active role in helping students reframe their views of creativity, specifically as it pertains to what are creative skills and just who can be creative in any given discipline. This section highlights models and methods that can be used to foster creativity and innovation among students as they engage in a wide variety of instructional activities and experiences (e.g., daily assignments, independent projects, collaborative and group work).
- Intuitive Techniques
- Linear Techniques
- Reframing Questions - Reframing Questions is an instructional strategy used to find new or alternate viewpoints in understanding a problem. This strategy involves asking overarching, detailed, and discriminant questions such as the ones below to break from typical patterns of thought in solving a problem.
What is the broadest frame of reference for this problem? What are the “givens”, here-the “obvious” realities of our situation-and how can each be challenged?
What is the ideal state of affairs we are looking for? - Force Field Analysis
- SCAMPER
- Attribute Listing
- AAC&U VALUE Rubric for Creative Thinking
Teamwork & Collaboration
Our world is not flat. People are interconnected in a variety of ways, including ideas. As such, current and future global citizens should have know how to interact positively and productively with others. We posit that powerful learning occurs when people are connected with others (situated learning). Ideas and learning can spread through the connections we make. Recognizing those rich experiences constitute one of the most vital aspects of higher education, we therefore encourage the design of learning experiences that promote connections while applying collaboration/teamwork skill application is important. AI tools can help to manage groupwork and to make it more productive. And those with generative capabilities can even act as a near peer - one in the zone of proximal development - for learners. With clear guidance and rational boundary setting, emergent technologies can considerably enhance collaborative efforts and even act as a member of the team.