Still planning for spring. Online classes are set up as usual, because I need more than a winter break to plan for changes. Except for the England class — gotta get back to that.
But the class that’s throwing me, the one causing me the most post-CCK08 angst, is my on-site class at San Elijo. Last semester I did new things with lots of energy: history skill sets, portfolios, recording my lectures then adding the audio to the slides I used and posting it all on Slideshare.
Fall Results
But the students didn’t do that well. They weren’t bored, they enjoyed the class and my teaching, and even got into some very good discussions about history. But they obviously did very little work outside of class and did poorly on tests. It was clear they didn’t study, view the slideshows or review their notes. Only a few participated in the online discussions. They seemed highly resistant to using the computer for anything, even after a free-flowing, fun session together in the lab. Many, as I wrote before, turned work in quite late. I did count it, but they still did poorly overall, much more poorly than my online students.
In other words, lots of learning seemed to be happening, but real knowledge didn’t occur. This despite the fact that I developed test questions around what we discussed in class, not on some pre-set conception of what they should learn. I literally based questions on the issues they brought forward. I tried hard to evaluate learning, not just content. In short, it failed. And the extra credit blog I introduced failed too, because the students posted but refused to revise. Kind of a similar problem.
The Problem No One Wants to Discuss
Maybe I’m hitting a big issue: they don’t want to use the technology to learn. Maybe this is the Problem No One Wants to Discuss. Especially to the highly privileged students who grew up with the internet, the opportunity to create a slideshow is just another assignment. They’ve seen lousy PowerPoints for so long they are not only unimpressed, they are tempted to snooze like we used to do when a teacher got out the filmstrip machine. They actively resisted the online forum because it meant thinking about history on the “weekend” (which here is anything after noon on Wednesday). Perhaps I should leave the interactive web stuff for my online classes instead.
In our classrooms it seems to be the vivid lecturer, the riveting showman, who captures the audience. This is what students say they want (and I’ve asked them). I’ve been that person. Won a teaching award for it more years ago than I care to mention. Right after, I stopped lecturing all together for a few years, to see if I could do everything with groups and inquiry. Retention (how many students stay in the class) and scores stayed exactly the same. I’ve tried many different techniques over the years, but the numbers rarely budge (except for one totally open inquiry experiment, which had a 70% drop rate so I never did it again, even though several students who were successful still remember the class as important in their lives — it’s amazing what you can do with a handful of students instead of 200). But really, my lectures last semester were good, and we had plenty of discussion and groupwork and inquiry besides lecture. I just don’t think they learned beyond the moments in class.
The Open or Closed Decision
So I’m loathe to spend a lot of time revamping the other half of the class for spring. I didn’t like the closed nature of the website, and am considering revising it. But they didn’t use it much anyway, except (some) to check their grades, so I’m considering going backward. Not quite to quill and parchment, as I said in Twitter, but close: handouts with blanks to fill in, actual objects, pieces of paper that need to be put together in a portfolio. This desire fights with the obvious: put it online! have them blog! track their progress through journalling! open things up!
Dave Cormier and George Siemens are currently teaching an online class in emerging technologies. I was hoping I could sit in (like I did on Alec Couros’ now legendary EC&I 381 class), but it’s a closed class. I wondered why, but Dave’s blog post explained that some students might need a closed environment within which to share ideas that were not ready for fully public view. I understand that completely. So that puts the course back inside a CMS if I want them doing things online, perhaps. Or in closed blogs. Or something.
When Technology Works
Technologically, the best thing that ever happened was serendipitous: last year when they ignored me and used Moodle Messages to secretly talk (and work) among themselves. A student set that up; they never used my system. You can give a party, a good party, but it’s nothing if people don’t show up (and, hopefully, take over, serve drinks, do dishes).
The use of technology is not, as I’ve been reminded by Twitter pals Blanche Maynard and Ed Webb, the point. It’s about rendering technology transparent, putting the focus on the people and the learning. I teach that in our POT workshops all the time. Pedagogy first! The constructivists would say that the problem is that I gave them things, I lectured (even if only half the class time), I didn’t let them decide what they want to study, I didn’t cater to the Net Generation. Well, I think it’s obvious that it’s not technology that plays the catering role, and their learning is most important.
So after a decade, I’m back to debating with myself the intersection of pedagogy and technology, the development of different techniques, and the definition of a successful class. Trying to find causes and effects that may not be linked in actuality. And telling myself it’s really not the time to do that when class starts in less than two weeks.
We should never assume students want to try something new, want to embrace the possibilities offered by new technologies, want to take more active charge of their learning. Because, unless they have been extraordinarily fortunate, by the time we in higher education get to interact with them, they have been socialized and conditioned into all sorts of unproductive attitudes and behavior. For all too many, “education” is something to be borne, survived, something that inconveniently interrupts the lives they really want to be leading. Not all, but too many.
Why does the vivid lecturer work? Because she entertains, she conveys information in a way that is not too demanding for the ‘audience.’ Most students have been conditioned to accept education passively.
But she also conveys her own passion and excitement. I think that is where those of us who think the new digital media offer intriguing possibilities for better learning have to really make a commitment. We have to model using the tools. But we also have to model having fun with them. Learning is fun (point one of the as-yet-unpublished EduFunk Manifesto). Better learning is more fun. We will not get students out of their rut of minimum-effort information download without jolting them out of it, by exciting them, by showing them how much fun they are missing out on. (I am not suggesting you didn’t do this in that course. I’m just saying it is a key challenge for us all, and one we won’t easily overcome, particularly not without both practice and sharing our successes and failures via our PLNs)
We know what the new media can do. We know why it can make for better learning. But THEY don’t. Yet.
EC&I 831 was just closed for the evening (last night). I wanted to make sure that the idea of the open course was explained well to them as I am quite sure, all they have ever known previously to this was the closed setting. Now that they are aware of the type of course they are in, they can make an informed decision of how to participate (or not).
Please do join us next week if you like. Dr. Schwier is our guest, and he’ll be doing some neat things.
OH, sorry, misread that. Bad Dave and George, bad!
My students like storytelling. Real-life, experiential narrative. They report it to be engaging, interesting, easily aborbed and retained. They incorporate the relayed experiences into their own experiences, making choices as a result, and, for the visual learners, viewing a ‘video playback’ in their consciousness of the story previously told.
The stories ‘put content into context’, as the students report.
Stories can be relayed in the classroom, or at a distance via video access. Combined with Q & A, ‘handouts’ and summary of the key points, storytelling is liked by my students.
Perhaps similar to the ‘vivid lecture’, described above?
Ulop, what do you teach? I can see storytelling, but for ancient history how one would do ‘real-life, experiential narrative’ is a bit beyond me. I do try to use primary documents and tell shories and analyze them — did that with Miracles of St Foy last semester. They did enjoy it. But they didn’t learn what the story meant, only the story itself.
I teach History, of course! (haha)
Here are some thoughts/questions/riddles which maybe you can help me answer/debate/understand:
1. History is fundamentally a matter of time
2. Story is embedded in History
3. real-life, experiential narrative is about historical events, though not always of the ‘Hi-” typology
4. The word entered the English language in 1390 with the meaning of “relation of incidents, story”. In Middle English, the meaning was “story” in general. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History
5. History is interpretive
I also think that historical figures (Locke, Rousseau) are still alive, through their recorded writings, adherents, and mimics. So accessing their real-life experiences is easy.
Agreed, agreed, agreed! I thought you mean the students’ stories. I have know history folks who want to have students’ own narratives be a foundation, but see this as hopelessly problematic. Now, primary sources, absolutely! And you know, I certainly agree they’re still “alive”.
Their real-life experiences, however, often contradict the more lasting expressions of their genius. For example, Rousseau, for all his marvelous education theory and support of breastfeeding children instead of farming them out to wet-nurses, abandoned his own child. So then we’d have to get into all that, about the philosophy being more important than the philosopher.