Monthly Archive for March, 2006

Hosting Another Faculty Conversation

Published on March 29, 2006 in Blogging as a Teaching and Research Tool, First Year Seminar and Wikis forTeaching/Learning. 0 Comments

About a month ago I mentioned that I was participating in our school’s new first year seminar program next year. In that post I asked for help designing a digital environment to support my seminar.

We took the first step towards that seminar program tonight with a meeting of the faculty who have signed up to teach. One of the issues raised was how we might coordinate our efforts to develop these courses.

A couple of weeks ago in a totally different context (really!) I posted a query asking how digital tools might support a group of faculty engaged in an extended asynchronous conversation. It occurs to me that the answer to that question could be relevant to our efforts to develop first year seminars.

In our meeting tonight, the group agreed to set up a wiki for this purpose. Okay, what actually happened was one of my colleagues suggested using a wiki, another said, isn’t that Steve’s line, and I admitted I could set one up.

But I wonder if this is the best solution. Might there not be another set-up that would be more effective for sharing ideas?

Fascinating Discussion on Why People Blog or Not

Published on March 29, 2006 in Blogging as a Teaching and Research Tool and Teaching and Learning. 0 Comments

I’ve been following a fascinating discussion on why people blog and why other’s have difficulty doing so. The place to start is Will Richardson’s initial post, but I also highly recommend Chris Sessums’ post as well as the comments there. Will adds a conclusion here.

I know some people I’d love to have read this discussion. You know who you are, right?

Academic Podcasting at GCSU

Published on March 23, 2006 in Podcast Reviews, Teaching and Learning and University 2.0. 0 Comments

The New York Times recently published a very thoughtful article on academic uses of podcasting at Georgia College & State University, the liberal arts institution in the Georgia state system of higher education.

This is a registration-required site, but the article is sufficiently good that it’s worth going out of your way to get it.

Maryellen Weimer on Teaching that Promotes Learning

Published on March 23, 2006 in Teaching and Learning and University 2.0. 2 Comments

Maryellen Weimer gave a presentation at UMW today based on her book, Learning-Centered Teaching.

Her thesis: In order for teaching to more effectively promote learning, instructional practice needs to change in five areas:

1. The Role of the Teacher.

Instruction should focus on student learning, rather than teacher action. Student-Centered learning makes the classroom messy–a lot more like the practice of our disciplines.

2. The Balance of Power.

At present, faculty make virtually all the key learning decisions for students. â€œIn ethically responsible ways, share decision-making about learning with students.â€ Ethical means vet the content but also assess the developmental level of students to know what freedom they can handle.

3. The Function of Content.

Content is necessary to build a knowledge base, but skills matter too. The question isnâ€™t content vs skills, but rather how to integrate the content with the skills. E.g. Teach students how to summarize content. Students learn the content while learning the skills. The research shows that itâ€™s not effective to teach skills divorced from content.

4. The Responsibility for Learning.

Faculty currently “force” learning on reluctant participants. We need to shift responsibility for learning to students. The primary goal of a teacher is to create a â€œclimate for learning.â€
Donâ€™t underestimate the power of a faculty member to model the passion for learning.

5. The Processes and Purposes of Evaluation.

More regular assessment and more emphasis on formative assessment. Teach self-and peer assessment skills.

Weimer gave a very thoughtful talk. In the interests of getting this post done, I’ve summarized in snippets, but anything that strikes you as jargon should be a criticism of my summary, rather than her arguments. I highly recommend her.

Her views seem very consistent with my vision of U2.0 . I’m going to add the book to my reading list.

Martha Burtis on Education as Process

Published on March 22, 2006 in Blogging as a Teaching and Research Tool, Teaching and Learning, University 2.0 and What is Education?. 0 Comments

One of the key questions that keeping coming up in my exploration of University 2.0 is what is education, or more precisely, what is higher education? I know we’ve all considered that question, but from time to time there’s there’s a need to re-consider it. For me, this is one of those times.

In an earlier posting, Greg provided an answer to this question. Today, Martha provided another answer [See her comment].

Often we approach education with a vague notion that we need to ‘learn’ more about a topic. What it means to learn may begin as just a commitment to memorizing information and repeating it when someone asks us. We may think of that learning process as simply a to-do list, each week affording us the opportunity to check another item off of it.

But, for me, in order to be a truly successful learner, I must at some point make a deeper commitment. I must commit to finding a way to digest the topic at hand–quite literally by taking it into myself and making it a part of who I am–my own anatomy. At that point, I’m not trying to memorize and regurgitate facts; I’m not checking off tasks from a list in order to get a the best grade. Rather, I’m finding a way to integrate knowledge into the framework of ME. I’m trying to find a way to make that knowledge relevant to who I am and what I already know. And as I move forward, I’m constantly trying to revisit that knowledge and re-integrate it into the ever-changing framework (or anatomy) of myself.

… This may sound funny, but in a very real way, I believe blogging is meant to reinforce this. Blogging is an opportunity for me to step outside myself and record the process of integrating knowledge into my anatomy. Doing that often helps me to understand exactly what the integration has involved — which may mean I have a better understanding of what I’ve learned after I’ve blogged about it. And once I’ve blogged, I can then revisit each moment of integration again and again, each time re-negotiating how that moment fits into my current anatomy.

How would you answer the question? What is your definition of education? What is this enterprise that we academics are about?

At the Risk of Possibly Over-Analyzing

Published on March 22, 2006 in The Experiment. 0 Comments

Today I had two miserable sections of my experimental principles course, the worst I can remember this semester. The majority of students didn’t seem to remember anything from last week. They looked at me dumbly for most of the class. I asked what I thought were easy questions to start some kind of discussion and got nothing in return.

Yes, I know it’s the third quarter of the semester when everyone gets tired, but why yesterday? The fact that both sections were poor suggests a common cause.

This material, which we began last Wednesday, is on the theory of the firm. Here’s where it get’s complicated. I’m using Paul Heyne’s approach, rather than the traditional approach which is spelled out in the text we’re using. I told students this over several days in the last week and provided multiple copies of Heyne for any student who wished to read it. Last Wednesday and Friday the material seemed to go fine. Then yesterday happened.

Is this the problem of teaching at variance with the text, or could it be something as mundane as Saint Patrick’s Day falling last weekend?

How to host a faculty conversation?

Published on March 17, 2006 in Teaching and Learning. 0 Comments

Here’s a question that may have an easy answer, but I’ve only thought about it for about two days, and I figured someone may have already done this.

Suppose a group of faculty wished to participate in an extended “conversation” of an academic nature. Suppose these faculty are not located near each other, and that the conversation is asynchronous, taking place irregularly over an extended period of time like a semester or a year or more. Suppose they wanted to maintain a record of the conversation more or less indefinitely. And suppose they wanted to add possibly many other participants.

What sort of electronic environment could they use which would be easy to learn/use, accessible from anywhere on the internet, and which would notify participants of any new posts, so that they wouldn’t need to keep “checking,”which would be problematic given that the conversation could include extended pauses.

Let’s Ban Instructional Technology

Published on March 10, 2006 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

I knew it! I knew there was something suspicious about faculty who use IT to teach instead of lecturing like the prof in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Thanks to Phil at Market Power for the expose.

Belated Reponse to Gardner

Published on March 9, 2006 in Teaching and Learning. 1 Comment

The previous posting, on fear of risktaking by teachers, reminded me that I had meant to get back to Gardner’s response to my post. (Are you confused yet?)

Gardner wrote:

[W]hat if the problem is not that people arenâ€™t thinking well about their teaching? What if the problem is that people arenâ€™t thinking well about their professional work… [that as academics we fail to make clear] that the work we … are doing is part of something much larger?

I agree that that’s a discussion we need to have, and indeed, I’d be happy to contribute to it. I can see why the lack of that discussion keeps teaching “such a walled garden even inside the university.” But I don’t see how that lack makes teachers averse to change. Am I missing something?