Teaching and Research Goals

Posted on October 21, 2014 by | Leave a comment

As an instructor in Emory’s English Department, I enjoy having students perform, rather than merely present, in my courses. I signify on presentations as performances because these exhibitions have the unerring quality of either enhancing or detracting from rich dialogue in the classroom. Aspiring towards the former, I’ve assigned students to work together in groups to perform skits. In another course, students gave speeches as capstone projects to exhibit their cogent and succinct writing while demonstrating their budding mastery of rhetoric. However, despite my small steps to encourage creativity, I’d like to use technology to enrich my students’ capacity to–in the words of Edwidge Danticat–“create dangerously.” Specifically, in my upcoming “Autobiography in the African Diaspora” course I’d like students to create short films in which they digitally animate their personal essays. In another course which I’ll co-teach next semester–Emory’s “Men Stopping Violence” class–I’d like students to use digital storytelling to interrogate some pertinent issue relating to male intimate partner violence through their investigation of materials from Emory’s archives. I look forward to learning innovative technological tools, in our upcoming sessions, so my students can fashion projects on the cutting edge.

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Posted in Active Learning

Teaching and Research Goals

Posted on October 21, 2014 by | Leave a comment

When teaching a course a few years back, I assigned a group project that asked students to use Google Earth to explore processes of development and change on Atlanta’s two most historic corridors, Auburn Avenue and Peachtree Street.  Notwithstanding minor difficulties, the assignment went well, but I did suspect that it might be worthwhile to consider using other tools when teaching the course in the future.  Since then, I’ve attended a handful of workshops offered by ECDS, but wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to consider digital pedagogy in a systematic way.  In particular, I’m interested in developing interactive syllabi, and becoming better acquainted with tools that allow students to tell stories using mixed media and tools that explore spatial relationships in urban environments.

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Posted in Active Learning, Pedagogy

Teaching and Research Goals

Posted on October 20, 2014 by | Leave a comment

As an undergraduate student, I was most taken with professors who exuded poise and energy during lectures, and who kept student discussions interesting while maintaining control over them.  I wanted to teach college students because I liked being charismatic in front of a captive audience.  Of course, this has never been all pedagogy is, and the increasing popularity of online and blended courses suggests it will become less and less so.  Last fall, I got good marks from my students on the use of audio visual material, but this never went beyond the use of historic YouTube clips, which for a course on the 1960s was pretty much essential.  I’m hoping to learn some practical interactive uses of digital technology for the classroom, besides Blackboard, which I used even in my college years.

Around the same time I was teaching, I got access to hundreds of recorded speeches on reel-to-reel tapes.  Most of these speeches are by conservative activists connected with the John Birch Society, a major focus of my dissertation on anti-Communist conspiracy theory.   I digitized the tapes for MARBL and took notes on them.  I figured there was a great digital project to be done with them, too, but I didn’t have the background to propose one.  So I’m hoping to get some ideas for how I could make these tapes into a more useful, interactive archive for people who study the right wing of U.S. politics. Knowing how to create a scholarblog page seems like a good first step. I’ve also heard about audio recognition technology for use in transcription.

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Posted in Colin Reynolds, Pedagogy, Research

Teaching Naked (a non-techie’s learning goals)

Posted on October 17, 2014 by | Leave a comment

Two things to know about me: I really like face-to-face, embodied conversations—my teaching has always prioritized discussion—and I am not into gadgets. In the world of technology, I travel way behind the curve and tend to operate on a need-to-know basis.

However, a couple years ago I read José Antonio Bowen’s Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology Out of Your College Classroom Will Improve Student Learning. The book’s provocative title may sound like an anti-tech manifesto, but in fact Bowen argues that effective pedagogy should use technology… outside the classroom to, say, deliver content or give students chances to practice skills. This, he insists, frees up face-to-face class time for active, participatory learning.

Reading the book convinced me I need to learn more about digital pedagogy—and specifically, to become more comfortably familiar with a wider array of tech tools—if I really want to foster engaged learning. (Not to mention if I want to get a job someday in higher ed!) So this is my overarching goal in participating in the TCP+R program: to get acquainted with some useful tools, yes, but more, to be able to articulate how these can enhance learning. How they can fruitfully supplement the discussions and conversations that are (currently) the cornerstone of my teaching practice. 

So concretely, what are my objectives?

1. Early next semester, in Candler School of Theology, I’ll teach a short course (14 contact hours) on conflict transformation skills. From my learnings in TCP+R, I want to choose a couple of tools to integrate into that course. As part of this, I need to be able to articulate how they contribute to course objective(s) and/or assessment. So I’ll start with the learning goals for the class and work backwards from there. (I’m considering creating an interactive syllabus—but if I go there, I need to be convinced it’ll be genuinely useful, not just a cool-looking creation.)

2. With each tool we learn, I’d like to do some brainstorming of ways to use the technology in the classroom, with particular attention to what the tool offers to enhance learning and/or assessment. Ideally, if time allowed, I’d create some kind of running document to record these ideas. (And if others are likewise interested and want to do something collaboratively, maybe we could keep it on our website…?) On the other hand, if time is short, then I’ll focus on objective #1, and this list will just be (for now) a collection of scribbled notes.

 

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Posted in Active Learning, sarah macdonald

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Syllabus

Posted on October 15, 2014 by | Leave a comment

Session 1 (10/16)

Introduction

  • Welcome

  • Introductions (ECDS team + participants)

  • Icebreaker

    • deserted island – one or two things and why?

  • 10 min break

  • TPC+R Overview & Expectations

    • Use of Scholarblogs

      • Login (scholarblogs.emory.edu)

    • Project/Portfolio

    • Goals of the program

    • Your goals/mission

  • Today’s Meet and Polleverywhere

    • Introduction

    • Discussion

Tools/Tech: Today’s Meet & Polleverywhere

Session 2 (10/21)

Copyright, Fair Use, and Open Access: What You Need to Know with Melanie Kowalski

Tools/Tech:

Session 3 (10/23)

Web Publishing with WordPress with Anandi Salinas and Anne Donlon

Tools/Tech: WordPress

Session 4 (10/28)

Finding, Managing, and Working with Data with Rob O’Reilly, Jennifer Doty

    • finding data sources
    • working with data
    • getting help with your data
    • creating a strategy for your data
    • Data Cleanup and Transformation
    • Tools/Tech: OpenRefine, Excel

Session 5 (10/30)

Using Video for Teaching and Research with Steve Bransford, Alan Pike

    • Video in the classroom
    • Digital storytelling
    • Videographic Essays

Tools/Tech: iMovie, Final Cut Pro

Session 6 (11/4)

Best practices for tech assignments with Brian Croxall, Anne Donlon

    • avoiding tech fatigue
    • defining goals

Wikipedia Writing as Assignment with Allison Adams, Yanna Yannakakis

Session 7 (11/6)

Educational Interactions in a Digital Space with Leah Chuchran, Chase Lovellette, Anandi Salinas, Alan Pike

    • Student to Teacher interactions
    • Student to Student interactions
    • Student to Content interactions

Tools/Tech: Voicethread, Soundcloud, Explain Everything, Screencast-O-Matic, Zaption, Popcorn Maker

Session 8 (11/11)

Creating Effective Presentations, Infographics for Teaching and Learning with Wayne Morse, Alan Pike

Tools/Tech: Power Point, Prezi, Piktochart

Session 9 (11/13)

Building your digital identity, Best Practices for Digital Projects with Brian Croxall

    • maintaining a digital academic footprint
    • using Twitter and social media in academia
    • how project work differs from regular seminar work

Tools/Tech:

Session 10 (11/18)

Textual Analysis and Data Visualization with Sara Palmer, Megan Slemons

    • Tableau Public – data visualization
    • Gephi – network analysis
    • Voyant – textual analysis

Session 11 (11/20)

Blackboard with Dana Bryant

    • Grade Center
    • Rubrics
    • Course Design & Organization
    • Assignments
    • Blogs, wikis, discussion boards
    • Digital Publishing with Kelly Gannon, Meredith Doster

Tools/Tech: Blackboard, WordPress, Drupal

Session 12 (11/25)

Mapping  with Michael Page and/or Megan Slemons

  • Web Mapping Tools
  • Google Earth
  • ArcGIS

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Posted in Active Learning