As I read the comments by Michael, Marshall, and Imelda, I realize that my juggling acts are also happening everywhere in this course: in Michael’s wondering about goals and aliens in the yard; in Marshall’s channeling the steep learning curve to teaching abnormal psychology; and in Imelda’s incorporating VT to her teaching pharm. I send this message in a bottle to all of us learning here, to say that maybe the traditional medium of the present bodies in the classroom cannot be commuted, that perhaps we need to continue to teach like that until we die. At once, as I learn in this M2 week, to also say that there is a virtual community forming, and that even if we are experiencing the juggling, steeping, incorporating, and wondering apart, we’re beginning to establish certain ties that bind us in various ways. Threading right ahead.
Hi Maria,
I hear you loud and clear on your juggling act…and hopefully after today’s session you can maybe just relax and be the learner for a few instead of feeling like you need to make decisions for your course … let’s be sure to have fun, it is summer after all! I don’t think that there will ever be a replacement for f2f traditional learning and in fact, there is research that suggests that the “blend” of traditional and online learning is the most effective…here’s a resource (also in our diigo group) that shares all the definitions of e-learning: http://onlinelearningconsortium.org/updated-e-learning-definitions-2/
Leah, thanks for the comment. I wish I could relax. I need to do this, for I understand that it is a necessary stage for me to bring my teaching up to date and ready it for the last 10-15 years of my career as a professor. I firmly believe in getting out while you are ahead, and my seminars are quite the blockbusters. However, I can smell the old, rancid perfume of out-of-date styles (must be all that training in architecture), and I am seeking venues to have students to better engage with my questions, comments, and challenges. I am feeling intense love for ScholarBlogs, VT, and our weekly Adobe connection, but to be very frank, both diigo and Tweeter are out of range at this point. I’ll try to engage with diigo tomorrow before we connect, and see if I can get some further work there.
Yes! I consider myself a good teacher but recently I have been reflecting on how isolating teaching can be. This year for the first time in a long while I co-taught with a reflective colleague and it was a great experience. I am wondering how to make that kind of experience possible in online format. I have also relied heavily in the past on TA’s for some of the nitty gritty work, and wondering how to incorporate their efforts as well.
Don, for some reason I feel that I have already responded to your comment here, but perhaps I only did that in my mind, ’cause I don’t see any reply from me. I remember writing about silos, and how they could be wonderful for research and teaching when deep, focused thought is necessary; at once, they can be quite the obstacle when we, as instructors, try to foster collaboration between students. Ergo, co-teaching and working with TAs is wonderful; unfortunately, departmental teaching scheduling has made the first one impossible for me to try, and the zero-TA, zero-RA policy in Spanish has made my working with a research or teaching assistant a foreign tongue. I, too, wonder, even more urgently because of this, how online formatting may make this collaborative experience possible. We’ll stay tuned.
Don, I hear you, too. Silos can be wonderful for deep thinking in both research and teaching, but they can also generate shortcircuiting in classroom communications that end up thwarting some of the objectives of teaching and learning. I, too, hope that this jump to online teaching and learning will help me shake some of the isolation teaching blues. I’ve never been able to enjoy co-teaching or TAs due to departmental needs, bit perhaps one day…
Leah, thanks for the comment. Hope to be inspired to chill and feel the summer. Not easy, when I’ve worked through summers my whole life…