Dec 2012
Bring Your Own Disruption: Rhizomatic Learning in the Composition Class
December 30, 2012 | Filed in: Literacies
by Tanya Sasser
Too often, rather than inviting First-Year Composition (FYC) students into the disruptive experience of being a writer, we try to shield them inside the safety of the walled garden of neatly ordered paths that is the traditional, instructor-driven composition classroom. Even while some of us have refocused on the process, rather than products, of writing, we continue to hamstring students with scaffolded compositional tasks and writing “prompts,” assuming that by allowing students to choose between various (artificially-created, instructor-mapped) paths, we are endowing them with an autonomy so empowering that they will arrive at the end of their journey through our garden as self-identified writers.
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Too often, rather than inviting First-Year Composition (FYC) students into the disruptive experience of being a writer, we try to shield them inside the safety of the walled garden of neatly ordered paths that is the traditional, instructor-driven composition classroom. Even while some of us have refocused on the process, rather than products, of writing, we continue to hamstring students with scaffolded compositional tasks and writing “prompts,” assuming that by allowing students to choose between various (artificially-created, instructor-mapped) paths, we are endowing them with an autonomy so empowering that they will arrive at the end of their journey through our garden as self-identified writers.
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#digped Storify: The State of Higher Education and Its Future
December 10, 2012 | Filed in: #digped
by Jesse Stommel
The announcement for this #digped suggested that “there is a deeper discussion underlying our anxieties (and excitement) about MOOCs -- a discussion about the efficacy of open education, online learning, and digital pedagogies. A discussion about the future of education.” On December 7, we focused our #digped discussion on issues large and small, loud and quiet, the questions we keep circling around and also the harder ones, the ones that unnerve us. Even before the discussion began, an important issue was brought up by Lee Skallerup Bessette in the comments on the original #digped announcement: "I don't think we can talk about what higher educations 'values' until we face how they treat the people who 'deliver' their 'product.'" The Storify of this discussion includes frank observations about the state of higher education and practical tips for how we can work to help it more ethically and productively evolve.
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The announcement for this #digped suggested that “there is a deeper discussion underlying our anxieties (and excitement) about MOOCs -- a discussion about the efficacy of open education, online learning, and digital pedagogies. A discussion about the future of education.” On December 7, we focused our #digped discussion on issues large and small, loud and quiet, the questions we keep circling around and also the harder ones, the ones that unnerve us. Even before the discussion began, an important issue was brought up by Lee Skallerup Bessette in the comments on the original #digped announcement: "I don't think we can talk about what higher educations 'values' until we face how they treat the people who 'deliver' their 'product.'" The Storify of this discussion includes frank observations about the state of higher education and practical tips for how we can work to help it more ethically and productively evolve.
Read More...The Future of Higher Education: a #digped Discussion
December 05, 2012 | Filed in: #digped
by Sean Michael Morris, Valerie Robin, Pete Rorabaugh, and Jesse Stommel
Over the last twelve months, Hybrid Pedagogy has published 74 articles by 16 authors. It’s no surprise for us to report that the articles we’ve published about MOOCs have been some of our most-read articles of the year. The MOOC is not a bandwagon, though, but something needing careful interrogation with “discernment but not judgment.” Jesse argues in “Online Learning: a Manifesto,” that “to get lost entirely in the stories being told about MOOCs is to miss the forest for the trees, so to speak.” There is a deeper discussion underlying our anxieties (and excitement) about MOOCs -- a discussion about the efficacy of open education, online learning, and digital pedagogies. A discussion about the future of education.
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Over the last twelve months, Hybrid Pedagogy has published 74 articles by 16 authors. It’s no surprise for us to report that the articles we’ve published about MOOCs have been some of our most-read articles of the year. The MOOC is not a bandwagon, though, but something needing careful interrogation with “discernment but not judgment.” Jesse argues in “Online Learning: a Manifesto,” that “to get lost entirely in the stories being told about MOOCs is to miss the forest for the trees, so to speak.” There is a deeper discussion underlying our anxieties (and excitement) about MOOCs -- a discussion about the efficacy of open education, online learning, and digital pedagogies. A discussion about the future of education.
Read More...Online Learning: a Manifesto
December 03, 2012 | Filed in: Online Learning
by Jesse Stommel
Since I started teaching in 1999, I've frequently encountered an anti-pedagogical bent amongst fellow teachers and faculty, a resistance to thinking critically about our teaching practices and philosophies, especially regarding online learning. What we need is to ignore the hype and misrepresentations (on both sides of the debate) and gather together more people willing to carefully reflect on how, where, and why we learn online. There is no productive place in this conversation for exclusivity or anti-intellectualism. Those of us talking about digital pedagogy and digital humanities need to be engaging thoughtfully in discussions about online learning and open education. Those of us in higher ed. need to be engaging thoughtfully with K-12 teachers and administrators. And it’s especially important that we open our discussions of the future of education to students, who should both participate in and help to build their own learning spaces. Pedagogy needs to be at the center of all these discussions.
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Since I started teaching in 1999, I've frequently encountered an anti-pedagogical bent amongst fellow teachers and faculty, a resistance to thinking critically about our teaching practices and philosophies, especially regarding online learning. What we need is to ignore the hype and misrepresentations (on both sides of the debate) and gather together more people willing to carefully reflect on how, where, and why we learn online. There is no productive place in this conversation for exclusivity or anti-intellectualism. Those of us talking about digital pedagogy and digital humanities need to be engaging thoughtfully in discussions about online learning and open education. Those of us in higher ed. need to be engaging thoughtfully with K-12 teachers and administrators. And it’s especially important that we open our discussions of the future of education to students, who should both participate in and help to build their own learning spaces. Pedagogy needs to be at the center of all these discussions.
Read More...