The first step to any CITE initiative is to build awareness among faculty. The following activities contain tools, insights, and recommendations that help you build awareness about CITE in ways that are relevant to your program’s context.
Activities in Stage 1
Introduce faculty to the what, why, and how of computing and digital literacies integration
The following activities might be helpful if limited faculty awareness of computing and digital literacies makes it feel impossible to begin a process around articulating program-level CITE learning goals.
🎲 Play the CITE Values Card Game to consider possible rationales for pursuing CITE and identify the one(s) that resonate for your school community
Access the CITE Values Card Game and supporting materials
- Print the CITE Values Card Deck here or use the spreadsheet version of the deck
- Use this Vision setting slide deck to guide the activity
- Copy this Google Doc Worksheet to collect and document participants’ perspectives and collective deliberation
🎥 Ask faculty to come together to review and discuss a CITE video or reading
Examples of CITE videos and readings
- Faculty spotlights
- Vogel et al., 2024 – A journal article by the CITE team offering entry points for faculty teaching through our EnCITE framework.
- The shorter version of the CITE framework on CITE’s website
- Teacher Candidate videos or Teacher Candidate perspectives “zine”
🏫 Review discipline-specific resources to inspire faculty in particular settings or content areas
Computing and Digital Literacies (CDL) integration across settings
Peruse resources below to learn more about the ways CDLs can enhance and are transforming practice across a variety of teacher education and disciplinary specializations.
🧰 Build awareness of CITE by hosting a tinkering session
Hear about the value of a tinkering session from a colleague
Below, a faculty member at a college whose CITE efforts focus on the value of play and experimentation shares about how their Makerspace has acted as a informal space where students and other faculty could play and tinker with new technologies and tools:
“[T]he biggest thing has been the installation of our Makerspace in our department…[it] has been a huge push as part of CITE and a huge push as part of teacher education for us to really be able to say, ‘We have a focus on technology, and we’re integrating it in with our teacher candidates!’ And so you know, [my CITE teammate] has been working really hard with our Makerspace Scholars…some of them are from teacher education, some of them are from computer science and from other areas in the college. So that’s being known throughout the college. They’ve had activities for the students. Not just Teacher Education students. They had a space using the Cricuts where the students could come during lunchtime club hours from the whole college, and they could make designs and names and stuff like that on cups, on T-shirts, on pencil cases. And it was so much fun…a lot of students came down. And you know, it really was a great way to make our Makerspace known to the college…the Makerspace is actually part of the college tour now!…[T]hat shows that it’s actually like making an impact on the college…[and] we’ve had classes from the community come in and do activities. We’ve had classes from classrooms in the surrounding schools come in and do activities.” (CITE Planning Team Member)
🍎 Facilitate a brown bag presentation to share CITE activities created by faculty in your program, and/or in other programs and colleges
📖 Sign up for an account on CITE’s asynchronous Brightspace course to orient faculty to the what and why of computing and digital literacies integration
Learn more about the online course
CUNY Central’s online course is a great way to orient faculty who are new to CITE.
- Hosted on CUNY’s user-friendly learning management system, Brightspace, so all faculty and staff are able to participate with just their CUNY Login
- About 20 hours of asynchronous content with three 1 hour synchronous virtual sessions (dates TBD)
- Each asynchronous module asks faculty to explore content, typically interactive, and to reflect in writing or through a video platform
Contact Anthony Wheeler, CITE Research Associate, to add your CUNY Login Account to our Brightspace course ([email protected]), and to learn more about any upcoming opportunities to complete the course in a guided way with a cohort of others.
Invite Diverse and Representative Participation
The following activities might be helpful if a few enthusiastic faculty members are participating in CITE work, but key faculty and decision-makers in the program aren’t involved.
💬 Reach out to potentially interested faculty members through emails and/or 1:1 conversations to invite participation, sharing either internal overviews of CITE work, and/or CITE Overview for New Faculty
👩🏻💻 Identify faculty members and decision-makers in the program whose participation now could support continued progress later
Read more about inviting diverse participation
In developing learning goals for CITE initiatives, it’s important to reach out beyond the usual suspects and include the perspectives of stakeholders who can bring unique viewpoints, are important decision-makers, or will be expected to shift their instruction down the line. Doing so, however, often requires intentionality to ensure stakeholders can contribute in a viable way.
For example, adjunct faculty often have depth of expertise about what students and teachers experience on a daily basis in K12 schools, on top of their rich content and pedagogical knowledge. We also know that they have packed schedules and face more precarity. Finding ways to invite them into CITE work through regular meetings (at times they are available), asynchronous input, and respectful remuneration for their effort can greatly strengthen your college’s work. As one team lead shared:
“I think what was so influential was having the ability to work with our adjuncts…that was really energizing because I think you know we have a small department, and we have a lot of layers of responsibility. So bringing in adjuncts to kind of round out and energize us was also really important.”
– Laura Ascenzi-Moreno (Brooklyn College)
To more effectively involve adjuncts in the work, York College held a monthly Friday night meeting when adjunct faculty were available to do collaborative thinking and learning goal refinement together. Full-time and adjunct faculty who taught similar courses were paired up to collaboratively review CITE artifacts and course syllabi. One adjunct faculty member was part of the CITE strategic planning committee. Adjuncts presented on CITE-related research at conferences with full-time faculty. York paid for adjuncts’ time and school substitutes so that they could join retreats and key meetings during the school day.
Identify a CITE Program Planning Team Lead
The following activities might be helpful if there is latent interest in CITE but no clear faculty leader to coordinate the program’s efforts.
💼 Set up a conversation with the CITE Director for clarity and ongoing support on what it means to be a CITE program planning team lead at each stage of the process
👉 You may be ready to proceed to Stage 2 when…
…there is sufficient awareness and interest among faculty, and a committed program-level leader, to begin the work of formalizing a CITE program planning team.
