{"id":111,"date":"2008-10-10T02:56:10","date_gmt":"2008-10-10T02:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/?p=111"},"modified":"2025-08-18T13:08:28","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T20:08:28","slug":"trying-something-less-controlling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/2008\/10\/trying-something-less-controlling\/","title":{"rendered":"Trying Something Less Controlling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just tonight, frantic that I hadn’t gone in yet to do all the discussion summaries I began doing over a year ago<\/a>, it occurred to me that the students should do them.<\/p>\n

I have been modeling and demonstrating (which is my job, I learned from Stephen Downes’ paper of 2006<\/a> in the crazy class<\/a> I’m taking) for six weeks. Every week I’ve summarized the discussion, citing the students’ posts, noting their contributions, and suggesting leading analytical questions based on what they discussed (and didn’t discuss).\n<\/p>\n

So tonight in the two classes which have the most active, intellectual, creative forum posts, I wrote instead:<\/p>\n

We have several excellent threads, or topics, going here.<\/p>\n

For the last several weeks, I have come in and summarized at this point, then presented some further leading questions.\n<\/p>\n

This week, I’d like to have you do that.\n<\/p>\n

Choose one topic\/thread, and summarize that thread only (if the thread you want has been taken already, reply to that person’s post to add your input — please don’t repeat information). Use quotations and cite each other’s posts, as well as your sources from the class as needed. See whether we can develop a thesis (a statement with a point of view) for each topic area.\n<\/p>\n

This is a really good class and I think you can do it! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Something feels really right about this, though of course I can’t predict whether it will work. I have been seeking places in these classes where I can turn more control over to the students. I have not had the opportunity to provide as many different options for earning points as I would like, and this technique would make it necessary for students to read the work of their colleagues and comment, rather like a blog, instead of just responding to my prompt. We’ll see how it goes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just tonight, frantic that I hadn’t gone in yet to do all the discussion summaries I began doing over a year ago, it occurred to me that the students should do them. I have been modeling and demonstrating (which is my job, I learned from Stephen Downes’ paper of 2006 in the crazy class I’m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[33,10,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discussion","category-online-teaching","category-pedagogy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10062,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions\/10062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}