IMT 563: Technology Administration and Management
Instructor: Dr. Barbara Michels
Phone: 417-836-5353
E-mail: BarbaraMichels@missouristate.edu

Hello, and welcome to IMT 563: Technology Administration & Management online. My name is Dr. Barbara Michels and I will be your instructor for the eight weeks of summer school.

By way of a small personal introduction, let me say that I have both a Master and a Ph.D. in the field of Instructional Technology. I have been teaching in higher education for 10 years. A few of those years I have worked in management. At the University of Wyoming, I managed their Instructional Media Center there. And for two years I was at Chadron State College, I was the director or their media production, their print shop, their TV station, radio. Everything that they have they was called the Media Center. So I have a lot of experience in this field. There are a lot of things to know this type of work but we'll just hit the most important areas in this course. Those of you who take IMT 663 will get into this content a little deeper.

This course is designed to provide technology specialists with a working knowledge of the administrative processes and concerns of operating a media/technology support program. This is specifically designed for people who are considered the technology experts in their building-sometimes it's a classroom teacher, sometimes it's someone hired for that purpose. We keep that in mind and designed for whoever it might be. The content of this course is primarily structured for educational institutions but could be utilized for instructional and training systems in industrial, religious, medical and corporate organizations that have teaching and training in their program. Those organization also has training and technology as part of their organization, so they require instructional technologist to help with their programming.

The class covers a broad spectrum of duties that should be a part of the technology specialists knowledge base for coordinating an instructional media technology program at a building level while including administrative and management issues along with planning strategies and other kinds of duties that will be required at the building level. This course is suggested as an elective for building level technology specialists. Those of you who might be interested, may or may not know that there is an SMSU certificate for instructional technology building level specialist. It is a university certification and not a state certification program. This course is one of the electives in that program if you're interested in it.

The course is organized in three main tracks-there is management, technical aspects, and curriculum and training. Therefore, you'll have assignments from each one of those areas. One major project will concern management. That'll be the biggest one that you do over the summer. The other two areas, the technical aspects and curricular and training areas are just a couple of smaller assignments that won't take up as much time.

This course has been specifically and carefully designed to meet the needs of you students out there. I know you have various backgrounds, various interests, different age levels and different levels of expertise. Therefore, we have taken that into account when we designed the course. We've also looked at the professional standards that are required for this course for accreditation for the university. We included those consideration in the designing of this course as well. So this is a very well thought-of program.

You have three texts required for the course. I don't know if you have them by now. If you have them, I encourage you to get a good look at them before we get into them. Each text goes with a specific strain of the course. They are very extensive texts and I chose them particularly because I think they will have a great longevity to them, and will be very valuable resources in your job. Even you don't use them on this course, I'm sure you'll use all parts of it or many parts of it as you go through your daily responsibilities on your job. I hope you find these valuable resources.

I encourage you to contact me at anytime during the course. It takes a little bit for us to get up and running. First week is just a getting acquainted kind of thing. However, after that, because of summer school, we'll be pretty intense. For any reasons that you're feeling you're getting a little behind or you feel a little overwhelmed or pressured, please call me, e-mail, write, stop by, whatever. I can always work with you but I need to know what's going on in your life, if I can help in anyway. So it's better to just keep talking. Don't ever feel you're bothering me because there's no such thing. You can call me and contact me even if it's not office hours. In an online class, I surely encourage that especially in the summer when we have very short time. So it's important to keep close touch with me all the time.

In closing, let me say that my phone number and information should be available to you through the other materials that are provided for this course. If you're ever on campus, I just like having company. So please feel free to come by even unannounced. Just drop in, say "Hello," we'll sit down over the Union and have a cup of coffee and something. I really love to meet you in person and I'm going to work that out this summer as well so that we can all see each other's faces. Until we see each other online. Have a good one.