Students crave structure, a habit that can be traced to their experiences of being overly scheduled and constantly supervised. However, relying on structured environments does not create independent thinkers and creative minds. Read about the #SO246 experience in learning to think for themselves, and how to become outdoor cats.
Read MoreIf you ask people who have seen the movie “Goodfellas” (and who hasn’t seen Goodfellas) what their favorite scene is, you are likely to hear the Joe Pesci scene where Ray Liotta’s character tells him that he is funny. One of the key lines in that exchange is when Joe Pesci says “I’m funny how? Funny like a clown? I amuse you? I make you laugh? I’m here to (bleeping) amuse you?” I have to admit that this thought has gone through my mind on more than one occasion while being in front of the classroom. Is that what is required of teaching now? Are we instructors, entertainers, or both? And what do these increased demands mean for the rest of our work and faculty experience?
Read MoreYou would think by the sixth week I would know better. You would think that I would have learned by now that my old approaches would lead to old results. But some lessons are hard to learn, especially the old patterns are so firmly entrenched in your habits. Why I thought I could just go back to the Powerpoints is beyond me. Maybe it was the feelings of urgency around covering content (oh those slides of mine) versus creating a learning experience. Maybe it was the schema of what a course should be, and what learning should involve. Or maybe I’m just a slow learner. Whatever the case, here I was in the same place as before: clicking away and pointing to a screen, with the students mildly interested. Enter Aaron Hernandez, and how I was able to use a documentary about him to salvage the topic.
Read MoreThe scene often plays out as follows. I am in front of a class, talking about a topic that I feel deeply passionate about, which is why I am teaching it in the first place. I have spent a sizeable portion of my life to be in this position, to transmit what I consider important information to a class of young adults who I hope will take the baton and carry the information in their lives. And when that time to present comes, when I am in front of the class, and the students are showing zero interest whatsoever in the content, you really start to question your life decisions. The other question is, how to fix it?
Read MorePowerPoint, and other kinds of slides, can get a bad rap. Any kind of course instructional technology is just a tool to be used by the instructor to craft the transmission of course content. The problem becomes that the instructor can become a slave to the structure, missing dynamic opportunities to engage in topics that emerge more fluidly. The challenge becomes designing a content technology that provides for a more dynamic engagement of the slides with the topics as they arise.
Read MoreGiving students choices and the opportunity to co-design a course sounds like a great idea in theory. But what happens when you give them too much choice, and they are not in the position of make informed decisions? How do we avoid stress and anxiety around choosing when they don’t know why they are choosing one thing over another? Read about how we tackled the ‘paradox of choice’ in designing assignments and coming up with a final syllabus at the end of Week 3.
Read MoreIn Week 2, we try to build on the recommendations that the students made regarding favored topics and sources for information. The goal is to show them that there are opportunities to engage in the course content everywhere. Through our Extraction Exercise, we can learn how to link larger systemic topics to any stories related to the course that they see.
Read MoreBuilding momentum in the course co-design was going to be essential to our success. To continue our progress, we had to shift focus to what we were actually going to cover during the semester (topics), what we were going to do to engage those topics (assignments/activities), and what sources we could use to best facilitate student learning (materials).
Read MoreGetting buy-in is essential to any innovation and implementation. The question was, “How to get students who may not care about a topic to take part in the course’s construction?” In this post, we discuss the framing that was used to create buy-in, the techniques used to generate student learning goals, and how we created a shared sense of expectations to create a great course experience.
Read MoreThe beginning of the semester can bring a sense of excitement; syllabus day can bring a sense of dread. What if you came in the first day without a syllabus and turned the job over to the students? Read about how I took a sense of impending dread over the semester and turned it into an opportunity for student engagement, and (participatory) course co-design.
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