You 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 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.
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