Digital Pedagogy
Decoding Digital Pedagogy, pt. 2: (Un)Mapping the Terrain
March 05, 2013 |
by Jesse Stommel
Digital pedagogy is not a dancing monkey. It won’t do tricks on command. It won’t come obediently when called. Nobody can show us how to do it or make it happen like magic on our computer screens. There isn’t a 90-minute how-to webinar, and we can’t outsource it. We become experts in digital pedagogy in the same way we become American literature scholars, medievalists, or doctors of sociology. We become digital pedagogues by spending many years devoting our life to researching, practicing, writing about, presenting on, and teaching digital pedagogies. In other words, we live, work, and build networks within the field. But digital pedagogy is less a field and more an active present participle, a way of engaging the world, not a world to itself, a way of approaching the not-at-all-discrete acts of teaching and learning. To become an expert in digital pedagogy, then, we need both experience and openness to each new learning activity, technology, or collaboration. Digital pedagogy is a discipline, but only in the most porous, dynamic, and playful senses of the word.
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Digital pedagogy is not a dancing monkey. It won’t do tricks on command. It won’t come obediently when called. Nobody can show us how to do it or make it happen like magic on our computer screens. There isn’t a 90-minute how-to webinar, and we can’t outsource it. We become experts in digital pedagogy in the same way we become American literature scholars, medievalists, or doctors of sociology. We become digital pedagogues by spending many years devoting our life to researching, practicing, writing about, presenting on, and teaching digital pedagogies. In other words, we live, work, and build networks within the field. But digital pedagogy is less a field and more an active present participle, a way of engaging the world, not a world to itself, a way of approaching the not-at-all-discrete acts of teaching and learning. To become an expert in digital pedagogy, then, we need both experience and openness to each new learning activity, technology, or collaboration. Digital pedagogy is a discipline, but only in the most porous, dynamic, and playful senses of the word.
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Decoding Digital Pedagogy, pt. 1: Beyond the LMS
March 05, 2013 |
by Sean Michael Morris
We are not ready to teach online. In a recent conversation with a friend, I found myself puzzled, and a bit troubled, when he expressed confusion about digital pedagogy. He said something to the extent of, "What's the difference between digital pedagogy and teaching online? Aren't all online teachers digital pedagogues?" Being a contemplative guy, I didn't just tip over his drink and walk away. Instead, I pondered the source of his question. Digital pedagogy is largely misunderstood in higher education. The advent of online learning and instructional design brought the classroom onto the web, and with it all manner of teaching: good and bad, coherent and incoherent, networked and disconnected. Whatever pedagogy any given teacher employed in his classroom became digitized. If I teach history by reading from my twenty-year-old notes, or if I lead workshops in creative writing, or if I teach literature through movies, I bring that online and -- boom! -- I'm a digital pedagogue. Right?
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We are not ready to teach online. In a recent conversation with a friend, I found myself puzzled, and a bit troubled, when he expressed confusion about digital pedagogy. He said something to the extent of, "What's the difference between digital pedagogy and teaching online? Aren't all online teachers digital pedagogues?" Being a contemplative guy, I didn't just tip over his drink and walk away. Instead, I pondered the source of his question. Digital pedagogy is largely misunderstood in higher education. The advent of online learning and instructional design brought the classroom onto the web, and with it all manner of teaching: good and bad, coherent and incoherent, networked and disconnected. Whatever pedagogy any given teacher employed in his classroom became digitized. If I teach history by reading from my twenty-year-old notes, or if I lead workshops in creative writing, or if I teach literature through movies, I bring that online and -- boom! -- I'm a digital pedagogue. Right?
Read More...Digital Humanities Made Me a Better Pedagogue: a Crowdsourced Article
July 10, 2012 |
by Leeann Hunter, Pete Rorabaugh, Jesse Stommel, Robin Wharton, & Roger Whitson
Pedagogy is inherently collaborative. Our work as teachers doesn’t (or shouldn’t) happen in a vacuum. In “Hybridity, pt. 3: What Does Hybrid Pedagogy Do?,” Pete and Jesse write, “Teaching is a practice. Good teaching is an engaged, reflective, and generous practice. Pedagogy is not just talking and thinking about teaching. Pedagogy is the place where philosophy and practice meet (aka “praxis”). It’s vibrant and embodied, meditative and productive.” There is an important distinction here between teaching and pedagogy, between work that is productive and work that is productive and also reflective.
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Pedagogy is inherently collaborative. Our work as teachers doesn’t (or shouldn’t) happen in a vacuum. In “Hybridity, pt. 3: What Does Hybrid Pedagogy Do?,” Pete and Jesse write, “Teaching is a practice. Good teaching is an engaged, reflective, and generous practice. Pedagogy is not just talking and thinking about teaching. Pedagogy is the place where philosophy and practice meet (aka “praxis”). It’s vibrant and embodied, meditative and productive.” There is an important distinction here between teaching and pedagogy, between work that is productive and work that is productive and also reflective.
Read More...It’s About Class: Interrogating the Digital Divide
July 02, 2012 |
by Lee Skallerup Bessette
I live and work in one of America’s poorest regions, Appalachia -- specifically eastern Kentucky. Businesses and municipalities don’t have a strong web presence (if any at all), Google Maps is essentially useless for getting anywhere, and the social network is still, largely, the local Churches and quilting bees. Howard Rheingold, in his book Net Smart, writes about how it is possible now to ask a question and get an answer on your phone anywhere. I hasten to add, as long as it’s not here, where even cell phone coverage is spotty at best.
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I live and work in one of America’s poorest regions, Appalachia -- specifically eastern Kentucky. Businesses and municipalities don’t have a strong web presence (if any at all), Google Maps is essentially useless for getting anywhere, and the social network is still, largely, the local Churches and quilting bees. Howard Rheingold, in his book Net Smart, writes about how it is possible now to ask a question and get an answer on your phone anywhere. I hasten to add, as long as it’s not here, where even cell phone coverage is spotty at best.
Read More...Teaching in the Digital Tornado
June 06, 2012 |
by Sean Michael Morris
In preparing for the Teaching Naked #digped Twitter discussion on Friday, June 8, I reviewed what felt like a massive number of possible topics, discussable literature, and the broad face of educational technology. Out there on the Internet, something is happening that feels a lot like evolution, but which can also feel like survival of the fittest. One idea gives rise unto uncounted more ideas; one tool for organizing spawns a dozen new ways to communicate, and simultaneously a need for new organizational tools. It’s positively autocatalytic.
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In preparing for the Teaching Naked #digped Twitter discussion on Friday, June 8, I reviewed what felt like a massive number of possible topics, discussable literature, and the broad face of educational technology. Out there on the Internet, something is happening that feels a lot like evolution, but which can also feel like survival of the fittest. One idea gives rise unto uncounted more ideas; one tool for organizing spawns a dozen new ways to communicate, and simultaneously a need for new organizational tools. It’s positively autocatalytic.
Read More...The Dark Knight Vs. The Ivory Tower
April 17, 2012 |
by Kat Lecky
An all-too standard lament these days is that teachers have been slow to adapt to students’ new modes of learning. This disjunction persists because so many of us have been trained in traditional pedagogical systems that privilege narrow foci and a top-down model of disseminating knowledge. We stand in front of a classroom and lecture, while they assimilate information by immersing themselves in a dynamic, constantly changing technological space. We ground our pedagogy in textbooks and preset lesson plans; they fly freely through the living, hybrid textual space engendered by texts, blogs, open-source databases, tweets, and hashtags. We are static; they are mobile. We are the past of education; they are its future. As teachers, we must broaden our pedagogical horizons to accommodate our student 2.0’s open-ended ways of collecting and processing information.
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An all-too standard lament these days is that teachers have been slow to adapt to students’ new modes of learning. This disjunction persists because so many of us have been trained in traditional pedagogical systems that privilege narrow foci and a top-down model of disseminating knowledge. We stand in front of a classroom and lecture, while they assimilate information by immersing themselves in a dynamic, constantly changing technological space. We ground our pedagogy in textbooks and preset lesson plans; they fly freely through the living, hybrid textual space engendered by texts, blogs, open-source databases, tweets, and hashtags. We are static; they are mobile. We are the past of education; they are its future. As teachers, we must broaden our pedagogical horizons to accommodate our student 2.0’s open-ended ways of collecting and processing information.
Read More...We Are All Made of Web Sites
April 09, 2012 |
by Sean Michael Morris
To be certain, I feel no discomfort at the notion that “Encouraging learning is an act of subtle manipulation.” Rather, I admire the honesty of that. Being a teacher has always reminded me of the character Columbo, the bumbling -- yet genius -- private investigator of TV legend. In front of the classroom, one appears the way one appears in order to evoke a specific response from students, whether that be awe, wonder, fear, self-authority, curiosity, &c. When I write a lesson plan, it is like writing a drama: here are the characters, here is the plot, here is how we shall use the setting to illuminate the drama, and this -- this part here -- is the climax. I believe it’s important to bring a sense of theatre to the classroom. “The play’s the thing”, after all.
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To be certain, I feel no discomfort at the notion that “Encouraging learning is an act of subtle manipulation.” Rather, I admire the honesty of that. Being a teacher has always reminded me of the character Columbo, the bumbling -- yet genius -- private investigator of TV legend. In front of the classroom, one appears the way one appears in order to evoke a specific response from students, whether that be awe, wonder, fear, self-authority, curiosity, &c. When I write a lesson plan, it is like writing a drama: here are the characters, here is the plot, here is how we shall use the setting to illuminate the drama, and this -- this part here -- is the climax. I believe it’s important to bring a sense of theatre to the classroom. “The play’s the thing”, after all.
Read More...Crowdsourcing a Curriculum, pt. 3: Degree Requirements
March 13, 2012 |
by Jesse Stommel
Now, I’d like to turn this crowdsourcing project toward the degree requirements for the major. The intention for this program is to have its content (literary studies) and its medium (the internet) be thoughtfully connected. This is not just a simple English degree delivered online. In addition to more traditional study of literature, we will also consider the evolution of our various technologies of text, thinking critically about what happens to literary texts when they are made digital and when we engage them via digital interfaces.
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Now, I’d like to turn this crowdsourcing project toward the degree requirements for the major. The intention for this program is to have its content (literary studies) and its medium (the internet) be thoughtfully connected. This is not just a simple English degree delivered online. In addition to more traditional study of literature, we will also consider the evolution of our various technologies of text, thinking critically about what happens to literary texts when they are made digital and when we engage them via digital interfaces.
Read More...Crowdsourcing a Curriculum, pt. 2: Design Principles
February 23, 2012 |
by Jesse Stommel
I’ve been thinking about my audience for this series of posts. Initially, I had thought to bring digital humanities, literary studies, and educational technology experts into conversation, allowing my ideas for the program to be considered and influenced by a much larger network. I’m realizing, though, that there’s another group of experts from whom I particularly want feedback and suggestions: students. Ideally, this would include input from prospective students for the program, but since the program is only just barely beginning to germinate, what I’d like to do here is ask both students and teachers in existing programs to think about how literary studies is being transformed by digital technologies and about how online learning can be re-imagined through the use of new (and increasingly social) media.
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I’ve been thinking about my audience for this series of posts. Initially, I had thought to bring digital humanities, literary studies, and educational technology experts into conversation, allowing my ideas for the program to be considered and influenced by a much larger network. I’m realizing, though, that there’s another group of experts from whom I particularly want feedback and suggestions: students. Ideally, this would include input from prospective students for the program, but since the program is only just barely beginning to germinate, what I’d like to do here is ask both students and teachers in existing programs to think about how literary studies is being transformed by digital technologies and about how online learning can be re-imagined through the use of new (and increasingly social) media.
Read More...Crowdsourcing a Curriculum, pt. 1: Program Name
February 20, 2012 |
by Jesse Stommel
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be working to get feedback on the program I’m directing and helping to develop at Marylhurst University in Portland, OR. Marylhurst is a small liberal arts university focused on non-traditional students and adult learners. I teach (both in the classroom and online) for the English Literature & Writing department, which currently has concentrations in Literature, Creative Writing, and Text:Image. The new online degree program, which opens January 2013, integrates literary studies and the digital humanities with a focus on service and experiential learning. My goal in crowdsourcing the curriculum for this program is not only to get feedback on its design but to open a larger discussion about what happens (or should happen) to English programs as digital pedagogy continues to evolve.
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Over the next few weeks, I’ll be working to get feedback on the program I’m directing and helping to develop at Marylhurst University in Portland, OR. Marylhurst is a small liberal arts university focused on non-traditional students and adult learners. I teach (both in the classroom and online) for the English Literature & Writing department, which currently has concentrations in Literature, Creative Writing, and Text:Image. The new online degree program, which opens January 2013, integrates literary studies and the digital humanities with a focus on service and experiential learning. My goal in crowdsourcing the curriculum for this program is not only to get feedback on its design but to open a larger discussion about what happens (or should happen) to English programs as digital pedagogy continues to evolve.
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