Failure, Part of the Creative Process: Anya Kamenetz Twinterview
March 18, 2013 | Filed in: Open Education
by Pete Rorabaugh
On Friday, March 8, I interviewed Anya Kamenetz, author of DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Change in Higher Education (2010). Kamenetz's writing investigates systemic problems associated with funding, institutional inflexibility, and explores homegrown alternatives. DIY U was one of the first books published in the U.S. to discuss the incipient cMOOC community and also touches on the work of Jim Groom at the University of Mary Washington. In the wake of a year's worth of media-MOOC-craziness, I asked about Kamenetz's reflections since the publication of DIY U, specifically related to innovations within and alternatives to the structure of higher education.
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On Friday, March 8, I interviewed Anya Kamenetz, author of DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Change in Higher Education (2010). Kamenetz's writing investigates systemic problems associated with funding, institutional inflexibility, and explores homegrown alternatives. DIY U was one of the first books published in the U.S. to discuss the incipient cMOOC community and also touches on the work of Jim Groom at the University of Mary Washington. In the wake of a year's worth of media-MOOC-craziness, I asked about Kamenetz's reflections since the publication of DIY U, specifically related to innovations within and alternatives to the structure of higher education.
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Pushing Back on Contingency in #HigherEd: Josh Boldt Twinterview
February 13, 2013 | Filed in: Profession
by Pete Rorabaugh
On Tuesday, February 5, 2013, Josh Boldt joined me on Twitter for an hour-long discussion of his work. Boldt, a lecturer in English at the University of Georgia and founder of the Adjunct Project, has made quite a name for himself in the last year. From attending the New Faculty Majority Summit in January 2012 to being an invited speaker at MLA's Presidential Forum "Avenues of Access: Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Members and American Higher Education" in Boston last month, Boldt spent 2012 at the nexus of a central problem in higher education -- reliance on and conditions for adjunct faculty.
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On Tuesday, February 5, 2013, Josh Boldt joined me on Twitter for an hour-long discussion of his work. Boldt, a lecturer in English at the University of Georgia and founder of the Adjunct Project, has made quite a name for himself in the last year. From attending the New Faculty Majority Summit in January 2012 to being an invited speaker at MLA's Presidential Forum "Avenues of Access: Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Members and American Higher Education" in Boston last month, Boldt spent 2012 at the nexus of a central problem in higher education -- reliance on and conditions for adjunct faculty.
Read More...Somewhere Between a Course and a Community: Alec Couros Twinterview
January 17, 2013 | Filed in: Open Education
by Pete Rorabaugh
Last Friday, January 11, 2013, I asked Alec Couros to join me for an hour-long Twinterview. It was the weekend before the launch of #ETMOOC, his brainchild, and I wanted to get some context and history for his digital work before he began another connectivist adventure. Our conversation roamed from his first experiences in the cMOOC (even pre-MOOC) community, academic influences on his "open thinking" philosophy, reflections on publication and tenure, and his motivation to organize #ETMOOC.
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Last Friday, January 11, 2013, I asked Alec Couros to join me for an hour-long Twinterview. It was the weekend before the launch of #ETMOOC, his brainchild, and I wanted to get some context and history for his digital work before he began another connectivist adventure. Our conversation roamed from his first experiences in the cMOOC (even pre-MOOC) community, academic influences on his "open thinking" philosophy, reflections on publication and tenure, and his motivation to organize #ETMOOC.
Read More...The Hybrid Scholar
January 04, 2013 | Filed in: Profession
by Pete RorabaughOn my campus, and on many others, there are two entirely different units -- the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Education -- suggesting, somehow, that the activities of one are wholly separate from the other. “Learning how to teach” happens in one while “analysis” (or something like it) happens in the other. The problem is that all of those Arts and Sciences grad students have to do something else in addition to the scholarship they are being trained to compose. They have to teach, and, considering the current job market and the landscape of traditional academic publishing, they are probably going to rely much more on their teaching at the start of their career than on their research. Do these carefully groomed grad students ever set foot in the teaching college a block down the street during their four years (or six or eight) years as doctoral students? On my campus, they do not. Read More...
The Threat of Scholarly Openness: Twitter and Its Discontents
October 03, 2012 | Filed in: Profession
by Pete Rorabaugh
I was roused from my teaching this week by the cacophony of tweets and blog posts on the merits and pitfalls of tweeting another scholar’s ideas (the most cited ones authored or collected by Roopika Risam, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Kathleen Fitzpatrick and Adeline Koh), culminating in “The Academic Twitterazzi” on Inside Higher Ed. The conversation is rushing through multiple channels, expressed with frustration in Mark Sample’s response to being quoted, also by Inside Higher Ed., when he was actually citing Risam’s original blog post. “Imagine the chilling effect upon graduate students,” Sample writes in the comments, “when their first forays into academic blogging are also their first experiences with having their ideas stolen from them.” The discussion convinced me that it’s time to contextualize a personal story of mine within the larger debate of digital ethics, transparency, and inter-institutional academic collaboration.
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I was roused from my teaching this week by the cacophony of tweets and blog posts on the merits and pitfalls of tweeting another scholar’s ideas (the most cited ones authored or collected by Roopika Risam, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Kathleen Fitzpatrick and Adeline Koh), culminating in “The Academic Twitterazzi” on Inside Higher Ed. The conversation is rushing through multiple channels, expressed with frustration in Mark Sample’s response to being quoted, also by Inside Higher Ed., when he was actually citing Risam’s original blog post. “Imagine the chilling effect upon graduate students,” Sample writes in the comments, “when their first forays into academic blogging are also their first experiences with having their ideas stolen from them.” The discussion convinced me that it’s time to contextualize a personal story of mine within the larger debate of digital ethics, transparency, and inter-institutional academic collaboration.
Read More...Audrey Watters Wrestles with MOOCs
August 11, 2012 | Filed in: Open Education
by Pete Rorabaugh
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), as they are situated both inside and outside of traditional higher education institutions, naturally raise questions about those institutions. My recent article, "Occupy the Digital: Critical Pedagogy and New Media," began to uncover some of those questions. In that article, I assert "that academic work must be useful beyond its tower and that digital culture offers new opportunities to achieve that goal." Perhaps MOOCs are a way to take academic work beyond its traditional boundaries. Or perhaps MOOCs are so extra-institutional that they will work no real changes on higher education. I recently invited Audrey Watters to an interview over Twitter to discuss what road MOOCs might be paving for us all. Both of us will also be participating in MOOC MOOC, an experimental, investigative one-week course hosted by Hybrid Pedagogy. This interview is an invitation behind the critical lens of MOOC MOOC.
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Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), as they are situated both inside and outside of traditional higher education institutions, naturally raise questions about those institutions. My recent article, "Occupy the Digital: Critical Pedagogy and New Media," began to uncover some of those questions. In that article, I assert "that academic work must be useful beyond its tower and that digital culture offers new opportunities to achieve that goal." Perhaps MOOCs are a way to take academic work beyond its traditional boundaries. Or perhaps MOOCs are so extra-institutional that they will work no real changes on higher education. I recently invited Audrey Watters to an interview over Twitter to discuss what road MOOCs might be paving for us all. Both of us will also be participating in MOOC MOOC, an experimental, investigative one-week course hosted by Hybrid Pedagogy. This interview is an invitation behind the critical lens of MOOC MOOC.
Read More...Occupy the Digital: Critical Pedagogy and New Media
August 06, 2012 | Filed in: Critical Pedagogy
by Pete Rorabaugh
Teaching is a moral act. Our choice of course content is a moral decision, but so is the relationship we cultivate with students. Both physical and digital learning spaces require us to practice a politics of teaching, whether we’re conscious of it or not. However, traditional relationships between students and teachers come freighted with a model of interaction that often impedes learning. They are hierarchical. Progressive teaching, informed by a critical attention to pedagogy, resets the variables and insists on the classroom as a site of moral agency.
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Teaching is a moral act. Our choice of course content is a moral decision, but so is the relationship we cultivate with students. Both physical and digital learning spaces require us to practice a politics of teaching, whether we’re conscious of it or not. However, traditional relationships between students and teachers come freighted with a model of interaction that often impedes learning. They are hierarchical. Progressive teaching, informed by a critical attention to pedagogy, resets the variables and insists on the classroom as a site of moral agency.
Read More...Digital Humanities Made Me a Better Pedagogue: a Crowdsourced Article
July 10, 2012 | Filed in: Digital Pedagogy
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...Organic Writing and Digital Media: Seeds and Organs
June 20, 2012 | Filed in: Literacies
by Pete Rorabaugh
The act of writing is organic and generative. Ironically, this biological approach to writing is strengthened by digital environments that allow students and teachers to cultivate better compositions. Composing is a demonstration of thinking, and in any hybrid classroom, students should be able to a) see this thinking modeled and b) practice it themselves. Digital environments maximize the potential for organic writing in three distinct ways: they rebuild “audience,” expose the organic layers of a composition, and invite outside participation in key stages along the way.
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The act of writing is organic and generative. Ironically, this biological approach to writing is strengthened by digital environments that allow students and teachers to cultivate better compositions. Composing is a demonstration of thinking, and in any hybrid classroom, students should be able to a) see this thinking modeled and b) practice it themselves. Digital environments maximize the potential for organic writing in three distinct ways: they rebuild “audience,” expose the organic layers of a composition, and invite outside participation in key stages along the way.
Read More...Hybridity, pt. 3: What Does Hybrid Pedagogy Do?
June 12, 2012 | Filed in: Critical Pedagogy
by Pete Rorabaugh and Jesse Stommel
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. Good pedagogy takes both teaching and learning as its subjects.
Read More...
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. Good pedagogy takes both teaching and learning as its subjects.
Read More...Flipping Faculty Development: Teacher Training and Open Education
May 10, 2012 | Filed in: Profession
by Pete Rorabaugh
A thread in the Chronicle of Higher Ed tagged “Adjunct Life”, MLA President Michael Berube’s recent open letter, and New Faculty Majority’s National Summit illuminate higher ed's slide into contingency. It should be worrisome to all of us that the price of a degree has gone up even as institutions are relying on more and more contingent (and thus cheaper) faculty. According to the AAUP, more than 50% of higher ed faculty in the US are part-time and 68% are non-tenure-track. But whether permanent or contingent, how is the higher ed instructor pool trained to do its job? Universities are inconsistent in their answers to this question. While a few institutions do pedagogically prepare their teachers to varying extents, others offer little in the way of new faculty training, privileging content-area expertise over expertise in the practice of teaching. Yesterday I had a Twitter conversation with some peers about the preparation and development they remember from their first days as an instructor. One of my colleagues, Diane Jakacki replied, "Zero. [I was] Lucky enough to TA for someone who taught by example and trained me."
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A thread in the Chronicle of Higher Ed tagged “Adjunct Life”, MLA President Michael Berube’s recent open letter, and New Faculty Majority’s National Summit illuminate higher ed's slide into contingency. It should be worrisome to all of us that the price of a degree has gone up even as institutions are relying on more and more contingent (and thus cheaper) faculty. According to the AAUP, more than 50% of higher ed faculty in the US are part-time and 68% are non-tenure-track. But whether permanent or contingent, how is the higher ed instructor pool trained to do its job? Universities are inconsistent in their answers to this question. While a few institutions do pedagogically prepare their teachers to varying extents, others offer little in the way of new faculty training, privileging content-area expertise over expertise in the practice of teaching. Yesterday I had a Twitter conversation with some peers about the preparation and development they remember from their first days as an instructor. One of my colleagues, Diane Jakacki replied, "Zero. [I was] Lucky enough to TA for someone who taught by example and trained me."
Read More...The Four Noble Virtues of Digital Media Citation
April 24, 2012 | Filed in: Literacies
by Pete Rorabaugh and Jesse Stommel
In digital space, everything we do is networked. Real thinking doesn’t (and can’t) happen in a vacuum. Our ideas about pedagogy, teaching practices, and scholarship don’t just burst forth miraculously from our skulls. The digital academic community is driven by citation, generosity, connection, and collaboration. The work we do as hybrid and critical pedagogues, digital humanists, and alternative academic publishers depends on our sharing ideas as part of a much larger project or conversation.
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In digital space, everything we do is networked. Real thinking doesn’t (and can’t) happen in a vacuum. Our ideas about pedagogy, teaching practices, and scholarship don’t just burst forth miraculously from our skulls. The digital academic community is driven by citation, generosity, connection, and collaboration. The work we do as hybrid and critical pedagogues, digital humanists, and alternative academic publishers depends on our sharing ideas as part of a much larger project or conversation.
Read More...How to Storify. Why to Storify.
April 14, 2012 | Filed in: Tools
by Pete Rorabaugh and Jesse Stommel
Storify describes itself: “Storify lets you curate social networks to build social stories, bringing together media scattered across the Web into a coherent narrative. We are building the story layer above social networks, to amplify the voices that matter and create a new media format that is interactive, dynamic and social.” It’s a beautiful description and yet we’re not sure we buy it. For us, Storify feels more like the layer beneath social networks. The layer where the archiving (not the “amplifying”) happens. Story doesn’t “drive” or “build” thinking. Story organizes and maps thinking. The power of Storify, then, is in its ability to cohere and preserve, to create a blueprint for a much wilder and more disparate conversation happening on the web.
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Storify describes itself: “Storify lets you curate social networks to build social stories, bringing together media scattered across the Web into a coherent narrative. We are building the story layer above social networks, to amplify the voices that matter and create a new media format that is interactive, dynamic and social.” It’s a beautiful description and yet we’re not sure we buy it. For us, Storify feels more like the layer beneath social networks. The layer where the archiving (not the “amplifying”) happens. Story doesn’t “drive” or “build” thinking. Story organizes and maps thinking. The power of Storify, then, is in its ability to cohere and preserve, to create a blueprint for a much wilder and more disparate conversation happening on the web.
Read More...On Pedagogical Manipulation
April 09, 2012 | Filed in: Critical Pedagogy
by Pete Rorabaugh and Jesse Stommel
Encouraging learning is an act of subtle manipulation. When we enter a classroom, we’re stepping onto a stage. This is true no matter how student-centered our classroom is, because our students are also stepping onto a stage (or into an audience). Even in the most open learning environments, we all play roles: the teacher, the student, the devil’s advocate, the reporter, the questioner, the dictator, the grader, the teacher’s pet. It’s in the careful modulation of these roles that we can actively control a learning environment. [Jesse writes this last sentence fully aware that his co-author and much of his audience will balk at the word “control.”] This issue of control is a delicate one, because the work we do in classrooms (as both teachers and students) depends on a very deliberate attention to how we manage the space and how we express ourselves within it. The work we do in classrooms depends on us finding a careful balance between asserting control and ceding it.
Read More...
Encouraging learning is an act of subtle manipulation. When we enter a classroom, we’re stepping onto a stage. This is true no matter how student-centered our classroom is, because our students are also stepping onto a stage (or into an audience). Even in the most open learning environments, we all play roles: the teacher, the student, the devil’s advocate, the reporter, the questioner, the dictator, the grader, the teacher’s pet. It’s in the careful modulation of these roles that we can actively control a learning environment. [Jesse writes this last sentence fully aware that his co-author and much of his audience will balk at the word “control.”] This issue of control is a delicate one, because the work we do in classrooms (as both teachers and students) depends on a very deliberate attention to how we manage the space and how we express ourselves within it. The work we do in classrooms depends on us finding a careful balance between asserting control and ceding it.
Read More...Twitter Theory and the Public Scholar
March 23, 2012 | Filed in: Profession
by Pete Rorabaugh
The most important benefit of Twitter is its open compatibility with the best web sharing practices. The ability to drop a link (especially shortened ones) into tweets means that Twitter’s 140-character limit is actually a fallacy. I can write a 2,448 page manifesto and direct people to it with one 10 character link built on bit.ly. We can attach an image to tweets that do not impact the character limit. (For example, my students sometimes take pictures of our notes on the board that can be tweeted to other class members.) Twitter users can quickly review the metadata of other users following or replying to them, and make decisions about whether to encourage or refuse interaction.
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The most important benefit of Twitter is its open compatibility with the best web sharing practices. The ability to drop a link (especially shortened ones) into tweets means that Twitter’s 140-character limit is actually a fallacy. I can write a 2,448 page manifesto and direct people to it with one 10 character link built on bit.ly. We can attach an image to tweets that do not impact the character limit. (For example, my students sometimes take pictures of our notes on the board that can be tweeted to other class members.) Twitter users can quickly review the metadata of other users following or replying to them, and make decisions about whether to encourage or refuse interaction.
Read More...Who Are We? Scholarly Identity Under Interrogation
March 03, 2012 | Filed in: Profession
by Pete Rorabaugh
On my first day as a student-teacher in a public high school (1999), my mentor teacher left me in the room at 8:20 a.m. to take a call in the front office. As students began filing into school for the day and eventually into her room, the minutes dragged on. It was 8:30. The bell rang. More minutes. Eventually, at 8:35, one of the students in the Senior Literature class said: “Are you our sub?” I was wearing a tie, but I was not the sub. I hadn’t taught a day in my life.
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On my first day as a student-teacher in a public high school (1999), my mentor teacher left me in the room at 8:20 a.m. to take a call in the front office. As students began filing into school for the day and eventually into her room, the minutes dragged on. It was 8:30. The bell rang. More minutes. Eventually, at 8:35, one of the students in the Senior Literature class said: “Are you our sub?” I was wearing a tie, but I was not the sub. I hadn’t taught a day in my life.
Read More...Experiments in Mass Collaboration
February 15, 2012 | Filed in: Critical Pedagogy
by Pete Rorabaugh and Jesse Stommel
We see the banking model of education in classrooms where desks are arranged in tidy rows and in every labyrinthine online class portal. Mass collaboration disrupts organizational structures imposed from the outside and encourages students to build new channels of communication and new habits of analysis. Mass collaboration pushes students out of the classroom or online class portal and into the world, where their work has more immediate relevance and a much larger audience. Finally, mass collaboration redraws the role of the instructor, shifting power dynamics and forcing students to take ownership of their own learning.
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We see the banking model of education in classrooms where desks are arranged in tidy rows and in every labyrinthine online class portal. Mass collaboration disrupts organizational structures imposed from the outside and encourages students to build new channels of communication and new habits of analysis. Mass collaboration pushes students out of the classroom or online class portal and into the world, where their work has more immediate relevance and a much larger audience. Finally, mass collaboration redraws the role of the instructor, shifting power dynamics and forcing students to take ownership of their own learning.
Read More...Document Sharing and Markup
February 13, 2012 | Filed in: Tools
by Pete Rorabaugh
Text becomes our voice in digital space. In the land-based classroom, we speak. In the online classroom, we compose. What we write, the way that we write, and our interactions with the writing of others determines who we are in the online or hybrid classroom. Critical pedagogy, the tradition of progressive, socially and politically conscious teaching, asserts that our voice is an expression of our power. As such, the way we write establishes an authority about which we should be conscious.
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Text becomes our voice in digital space. In the land-based classroom, we speak. In the online classroom, we compose. What we write, the way that we write, and our interactions with the writing of others determines who we are in the online or hybrid classroom. Critical pedagogy, the tradition of progressive, socially and politically conscious teaching, asserts that our voice is an expression of our power. As such, the way we write establishes an authority about which we should be conscious.
Read More...Hybridity, pt. 1: Virtuality and Empiricism
February 07, 2012 | Filed in: Critical Pedagogy
by Pete Rorabaugh
A critical mind usually avoids binaries. We know that more than two political parties can exist, that gender is constructed, and that emphatic absolutes kill conversation. We live in a world of negotiated hybridity on a variety of levels. Everything about the word calls up a vision of science and the future: hybrid cars, hybrid humans, hybrid flower seeds. Rarely do we consider the implications of a term that floats around us and permeates our daily experiences. Hybridity, as this journal proclaims as one of its foundational principles. What does this kind of hybridity imply?
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A critical mind usually avoids binaries. We know that more than two political parties can exist, that gender is constructed, and that emphatic absolutes kill conversation. We live in a world of negotiated hybridity on a variety of levels. Everything about the word calls up a vision of science and the future: hybrid cars, hybrid humans, hybrid flower seeds. Rarely do we consider the implications of a term that floats around us and permeates our daily experiences. Hybridity, as this journal proclaims as one of its foundational principles. What does this kind of hybridity imply?
Read More...
In Search of the "Peer" in Peer Review
January 23, 2012 | Filed in: Profession
by Pete Rorabaugh and Jesse Stommel
The word “peer” suggests a person of similar age, education, ability, etc. The word also means “to look closely” (to peer inside something), suggesting that peers are those people close enough to us (in whatever way) that they directly observe and have a vested interest in what we do, think, or say. In an academic sense, who are our peers? Are they the small set of individuals who have similar expertise? Are they our localized, departmental colleagues? Our students? Here’s a pedagogical litmus test: have you ever brought an in-progress paper into class for your students to observe, discuss, critique? If no, then why not?
Read More...
The word “peer” suggests a person of similar age, education, ability, etc. The word also means “to look closely” (to peer inside something), suggesting that peers are those people close enough to us (in whatever way) that they directly observe and have a vested interest in what we do, think, or say. In an academic sense, who are our peers? Are they the small set of individuals who have similar expertise? Are they our localized, departmental colleagues? Our students? Here’s a pedagogical litmus test: have you ever brought an in-progress paper into class for your students to observe, discuss, critique? If no, then why not?
Read More...Hack the LMS: Getting Progressive
January 05, 2012 | Filed in: Tools
by Pete Rorabaugh
On the simplest level, a learning management system is any organizational pattern that assists teaching and learning. A grade book can also serve this function; so can a journal or a 3-ring-binder. The LMS (or CMS, for course management system) exists as a method for delivering content to students in a given class. What the classroom is to the traditional course, the LMS is to the online or hybrid course. The point of an LMS is to create learning opportunities for students outside the traditional classroom and on a different schedule. It enables synchronous (at the same time) and asynchronous (not at the same time) interaction between members of a class. It overcomes obstacles that traditional college campuses have: proximity to student populations, limited classroom space, and limited scheduling capabilities. In short, the LMS and the online class solve logistical problems for institutions and for students.
Read More...
On the simplest level, a learning management system is any organizational pattern that assists teaching and learning. A grade book can also serve this function; so can a journal or a 3-ring-binder. The LMS (or CMS, for course management system) exists as a method for delivering content to students in a given class. What the classroom is to the traditional course, the LMS is to the online or hybrid course. The point of an LMS is to create learning opportunities for students outside the traditional classroom and on a different schedule. It enables synchronous (at the same time) and asynchronous (not at the same time) interaction between members of a class. It overcomes obstacles that traditional college campuses have: proximity to student populations, limited classroom space, and limited scheduling capabilities. In short, the LMS and the online class solve logistical problems for institutions and for students.
Read More...The Tangle of Assessment
January 05, 2012 | Filed in: Critical Pedagogy
by Pete Rorabaugh and Jesse Stommel
Grading and assessment are curious beasts, activities many instructors love to hate but ones that nonetheless undergird the institutions where we work. Peter Elbow begins his essay “Ranking, Evaluating, and Liking: Sorting Out Three Forms of Judgment” with the mission to “attempt to sort out different acts we call assessment” (187). It’s interesting to note his specific phrasing here. He doesn’t say that he intends to “sort out assessment” but rather that he intends to “sort out different acts we call assessment.” From the first sentence of his essay, Elbow makes clear that assessment is a complicated and potentially fractious subject, one that he treads lightly. He continues, “I have been working on this tangle not just because it is interesting and important in itself but because assessment tends so much to drive and control teaching. Much of what we do in the classroom is determined by the assessment structures we work under” (187). The choices we make about assessment, often at the outset of a course (in the syllabus), guide much of what happens within the course. Assessment is a “tangle” for Elbow, both because it is difficult to navigate with any true objectivity and because ideas about assessment influence so much of what happens at institutions and in classrooms.
Read More...
Grading and assessment are curious beasts, activities many instructors love to hate but ones that nonetheless undergird the institutions where we work. Peter Elbow begins his essay “Ranking, Evaluating, and Liking: Sorting Out Three Forms of Judgment” with the mission to “attempt to sort out different acts we call assessment” (187). It’s interesting to note his specific phrasing here. He doesn’t say that he intends to “sort out assessment” but rather that he intends to “sort out different acts we call assessment.” From the first sentence of his essay, Elbow makes clear that assessment is a complicated and potentially fractious subject, one that he treads lightly. He continues, “I have been working on this tangle not just because it is interesting and important in itself but because assessment tends so much to drive and control teaching. Much of what we do in the classroom is determined by the assessment structures we work under” (187). The choices we make about assessment, often at the outset of a course (in the syllabus), guide much of what happens within the course. Assessment is a “tangle” for Elbow, both because it is difficult to navigate with any true objectivity and because ideas about assessment influence so much of what happens at institutions and in classrooms.
Read More...Rules of Engagement; or, How to Build Better Online Discussion
January 05, 2012 | Filed in: Online Learning
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.
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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 | Filed in: Online Learning
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...Digital Culture and Shifting Epistemology
January 05, 2012 | Filed in: Critical Pedagogy
by Pete Rorabaugh
In his article "A Seismic Shift in Epistemology" (2008), Chris Dede draws a distinction between classical perceptions of knowledge and the approach to knowledge underpinning Web 2.0 activity. Our culture is shifting, Dede argues, not just from valuing the opinions of experts to the participatory culture of YouTube or Facebook, but from understanding knowledge as fixed and linear to a concentration on how knowledge is socially constructed. Dede writes that "the contrasts between Classical knowledge and Web 2.0 knowledge are continua rather than dichotomies . . . Still, an emerging shift to new types and ways of 'knowing' is apparent and has important implications for learning and education."
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In his article "A Seismic Shift in Epistemology" (2008), Chris Dede draws a distinction between classical perceptions of knowledge and the approach to knowledge underpinning Web 2.0 activity. Our culture is shifting, Dede argues, not just from valuing the opinions of experts to the participatory culture of YouTube or Facebook, but from understanding knowledge as fixed and linear to a concentration on how knowledge is socially constructed. Dede writes that "the contrasts between Classical knowledge and Web 2.0 knowledge are continua rather than dichotomies . . . Still, an emerging shift to new types and ways of 'knowing' is apparent and has important implications for learning and education."
Read More...