How NOT to Teach Online: A Story in Two Parts
April 11, 2013 |
by Bonnie Stewart
Here’s a little secret: when I started teaching people how to teach online, I had no clue what I was doing. It was 1998. I was a graduate student, without extensive computer skills or even teaching experience. I’d been a high school English teacher for a few years, and I’d taught GED classes, but my online facilitation background was limited to helping students figure out how to search song lyrics on Altavista. Then I took a part-time job for my university coordinating a fledgling online M.Ed program. This was new stuff, then, with few best practices available to build on. The college had bought a bright and shiny “online learning platform” and it was my role to facilitate seminars teaching faculty how to use it. Just as soon as I figured it out myself.
Read More...
Here’s a little secret: when I started teaching people how to teach online, I had no clue what I was doing. It was 1998. I was a graduate student, without extensive computer skills or even teaching experience. I’d been a high school English teacher for a few years, and I’d taught GED classes, but my online facilitation background was limited to helping students figure out how to search song lyrics on Altavista. Then I took a part-time job for my university coordinating a fledgling online M.Ed program. This was new stuff, then, with few best practices available to build on. The college had bought a bright and shiny “online learning platform” and it was my role to facilitate seminars teaching faculty how to use it. Just as soon as I figured it out myself.
Read More...Comments
The Early Days of Videotaped Lectures
April 10, 2013 |
by Audrey Watters
“It’s early days for online education,” declared a recent article in the technology blog Techcrunch, with its typical giddiness about the changes that technology is poised to bring to schooling. But the narrative that education and technology have only recently intersected ignores decades of products and practices. It ignores decades of experiences and expertise. And while some things ed-tech might seem quite shiny, it’s worth asking -- with a nod to the past and a good deal of skepticism about the promises for the future -- “what’s new?”
Read More...
“It’s early days for online education,” declared a recent article in the technology blog Techcrunch, with its typical giddiness about the changes that technology is poised to bring to schooling. But the narrative that education and technology have only recently intersected ignores decades of products and practices. It ignores decades of experiences and expertise. And while some things ed-tech might seem quite shiny, it’s worth asking -- with a nod to the past and a good deal of skepticism about the promises for the future -- “what’s new?”
Read More...The Failure of an Online Program
April 09, 2013 |
by Sean Michael Morris
It's evening. An Irish pub in Louisville, Colorado. Fish and chips. Beer. A game of soccer on the TV. I'm sitting down with one of my faculty to revisit the department's Developmental English course (ENG 090). My goal: bring the course fully online, eliminate the text book, and make it a deeper learning and community building experience for all who enroll. The trick is, almost no one enrolls in ENG 090 because they want to. They enroll because they failed a test. How do you take a student from "You failed. Take this class." to "Writing is fun!" And how do you do that online?
Read More...
It's evening. An Irish pub in Louisville, Colorado. Fish and chips. Beer. A game of soccer on the TV. I'm sitting down with one of my faculty to revisit the department's Developmental English course (ENG 090). My goal: bring the course fully online, eliminate the text book, and make it a deeper learning and community building experience for all who enroll. The trick is, almost no one enrolls in ENG 090 because they want to. They enroll because they failed a test. How do you take a student from "You failed. Take this class." to "Writing is fun!" And how do you do that online?
Read More...Why Online Programs Fail, and 5 Things We Can Do About It
April 08, 2013 |
by Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel
The failure of online education programs is not logistical, nor political, nor economic: it’s cultural, rooted in our perspectives and biases about how learning happens and how the internet works (these things too often seen in opposition). For learning to change drastically -- a trajectory suggested but not yet realized by the rise of MOOCs -- teaching must change drastically. And in order for that to happen, we must conceive of the activity of teaching, as an occupation and preoccupation, in entirely new and unexpected ways. We must unseat ourselves, unnerve ourselves. Online learning is uncomfortable, and so educators must become uncomfortable in their positions as teachers and pedagogues. And the administration of online programs must follow suit.
Read More...
The failure of online education programs is not logistical, nor political, nor economic: it’s cultural, rooted in our perspectives and biases about how learning happens and how the internet works (these things too often seen in opposition). For learning to change drastically -- a trajectory suggested but not yet realized by the rise of MOOCs -- teaching must change drastically. And in order for that to happen, we must conceive of the activity of teaching, as an occupation and preoccupation, in entirely new and unexpected ways. We must unseat ourselves, unnerve ourselves. Online learning is uncomfortable, and so educators must become uncomfortable in their positions as teachers and pedagogues. And the administration of online programs must follow suit.
Read More...A Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age
January 22, 2013 |
On December 14, 2012, a group of 12 assembled in Palo Alto for a raucous discussion of online education. Hybrid Pedagogy contributors Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel gathered together with folks from a diverse array of disciplines and backgrounds, representing STEM fields, the humanities, schools of education, corporations, non-profits, ivies, community colleges, and small liberal arts colleges. Among us were adjuncts, CEOs, a graduate student, several digital humanists, and two outspoken educational technology journalists. As a group, we’d chaired online programs, designed MOOCs, dropped out of MOOCs, and the term "MOOC" was even coined in one of our living rooms. The goal of the summit was to open a broader conversation about online learning and the future of higher education. This co-authored document, which calls for hacking and open discussion, was the result. Read More...Online Learning: A User’s Guide to Forking Education
January 08, 2013 |
by Jesse Stommel
At exactly this moment, online education is poised (and threatening) to replicate the conditions, courses, structures, and hierarchical relations of brick-and-mortar industrial-era education. Cathy N. Davidson argued exactly this at her presentation, “Access Demands a Paradigm Shift,” at the 2013 Modern Language Association conference. The mistake being made, I think, is a simple and even understandable one, but damning and destructive nonetheless. Those of us responsible for education (both its formation and care) are hugging too tightly to what we've helped build, its pillars, policies, economies, and institutions. None of these, though, map promisingly into digital space. If we continue to tread our current path, we'll be left with a Frankenstein's monster of what we now know of education. This is the imminent destruction of our educational system of which so many speak: taking an institution inspired by the efficiency of post-industrial machines and redrawing it inside the machines of the digital age. Education rendered into a dull 2-dimensional carbon copy, scanned, faxed, encoded and then made human-readable, an utter lack of intellectual bravery.
Read More...
At exactly this moment, online education is poised (and threatening) to replicate the conditions, courses, structures, and hierarchical relations of brick-and-mortar industrial-era education. Cathy N. Davidson argued exactly this at her presentation, “Access Demands a Paradigm Shift,” at the 2013 Modern Language Association conference. The mistake being made, I think, is a simple and even understandable one, but damning and destructive nonetheless. Those of us responsible for education (both its formation and care) are hugging too tightly to what we've helped build, its pillars, policies, economies, and institutions. None of these, though, map promisingly into digital space. If we continue to tread our current path, we'll be left with a Frankenstein's monster of what we now know of education. This is the imminent destruction of our educational system of which so many speak: taking an institution inspired by the efficiency of post-industrial machines and redrawing it inside the machines of the digital age. Education rendered into a dull 2-dimensional carbon copy, scanned, faxed, encoded and then made human-readable, an utter lack of intellectual bravery.
Read More...Online Learning: a Manifesto
December 03, 2012 |
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.
Read More...
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...Udacity and Online Pedagogy: Players, Learners, Objects
August 27, 2012 |
by Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel
This sentence is a learning object. Wayne Hodgins, the “father of learning objects,” first came up with the idea for them while watching his son play with LEGOs. The basic notion is that we can create units of learning so fundamentally simple and reusable that they can be applied in different ways to different objectives and lessons, no matter the context. Hodgins’s dream was of “a world where all ‘content’ exists at just the right and lowest possible size.” Like a single sentence. Like a single question on an exam. Like a photograph, a moment in a video, a discussion prompt. As online learning has grown, learning objects have become something of the Holy Grail of instructional design... Or the windmills at which it tilts.
Read More...
This sentence is a learning object. Wayne Hodgins, the “father of learning objects,” first came up with the idea for them while watching his son play with LEGOs. The basic notion is that we can create units of learning so fundamentally simple and reusable that they can be applied in different ways to different objectives and lessons, no matter the context. Hodgins’s dream was of “a world where all ‘content’ exists at just the right and lowest possible size.” Like a single sentence. Like a single question on an exam. Like a photograph, a moment in a video, a discussion prompt. As online learning has grown, learning objects have become something of the Holy Grail of instructional design... Or the windmills at which it tilts.
Read More...Rules of Engagement; or, How to Build Better Online Discussion
January 05, 2012 |
by Pete Rorabaugh
All participation is not equal. Digital media prompt us for comments, but in an academic setting we should harness this cultural habit to teach the difference between expressing opinion and authentic engagement. Professors often feel unfulfilled by poorly designed peer review exercises with their students. They complain: “The students don’t offer anything helpful. They just write things like ‘I like this part,’ or ‘this doesn’t make any sense,’ or ‘good paper!’” In peer review and in online interaction, we should teach and model for students the best methods of intellectual engagement.
Read More...
All participation is not equal. Digital media prompt us for comments, but in an academic setting we should harness this cultural habit to teach the difference between expressing opinion and authentic engagement. Professors often feel unfulfilled by poorly designed peer review exercises with their students. They complain: “The students don’t offer anything helpful. They just write things like ‘I like this part,’ or ‘this doesn’t make any sense,’ or ‘good paper!’” In peer review and in online interaction, we should teach and model for students the best methods of intellectual engagement.
Read More...Trading Classroom Authority for Online Community
January 05, 2012 |
by Pete Rorabaugh
Early web commenters referred to the Internet as a primitive, lawless place like the "Wild West." Plenty still needs to change to make certain parts of the web more civil and useful, but some aspect of the "Wild West" spirit is applicable to a discussion of student-directed learning. Too much civilization and society makes us compartmentalized and complacent. The West was a challenging place for European immigrants because it required an expansive sense of responsibility. You could no longer be just an apothecary or a cobbler. You had to provide for your own food and shelter from the resources around you; you had to decide just "what to do" with all this freedom.
Read More...
Early web commenters referred to the Internet as a primitive, lawless place like the "Wild West." Plenty still needs to change to make certain parts of the web more civil and useful, but some aspect of the "Wild West" spirit is applicable to a discussion of student-directed learning. Too much civilization and society makes us compartmentalized and complacent. The West was a challenging place for European immigrants because it required an expansive sense of responsibility. You could no longer be just an apothecary or a cobbler. You had to provide for your own food and shelter from the resources around you; you had to decide just "what to do" with all this freedom.
Read More...