A number of bloggers have begun making their end-of-year ed tech lists already, including Audrey Watters, Eric Stoller, and the ProfHacker team.

There are some odd commonalities on these lists, and it’s unclear whether or not that’s due to my own self-selected reading patterns, or broader trends in higher ed that extend beyond any one individual. Nevertheless, I see a renewed emphasis on active learning, and on critical interventions in digital learning–that it isn’t enough to press a “Go” button (it never was), but that it’s a faculty member’s right and responsibility to shape digital content–to actively choose both the content and the mode of delivery.

Think about it–the LMS should not be your sole option, right? Is that the best means of delivering intellectual content? Often, the answer is yes–but sometimes there are additional digital methodologies to consider, or new tools to experiment with in productive ways. Some people will tell you to go where the students are–to put it all on Twitter (or Snapchat, or whatever the kids are using these days), but I resist that as well. There’s value in making an informed choice about how to distribute your content, rather than living (happily or un-) with the default or by ineffectively pandering to the incoming first-year class.

If there is one piece of advice I could give faculty for 2015, it’s this: choose. Choose wisely and well, of course–but take the opportunity to make an informed choice about how you will interact with educational technologies. At the University of Oregon, I’d say that means choose to learn more about our upcoming LMS migration. Think about how you might effectively use our shiny new learning management system to deploy some of your intellectual content in ways that will be of benefit to your student population. Or new tools you’d like to integrate into your classroom. Or choose not to use any new technologies, that’s fine too–as long as that choice comes from informed decision-making.

InTRO, CMET, TEP and many other groups on campus are here to help you make informed decisions. We would love to talk to you about ways to bring together our technological possibilities and your pedagogical goals.

Happy 2015!