A guiding belief of both “Reclaiming Innovation” and “Engines of Inquiry“ insists that education is an ongoing process of creative integration. As Bass states, education “ . . . is often about indirection, ambiguity, complexity, and multiplicity.” I very much agree, and am hopeful that this idea will be, as these two texts propose, more realizable in a hybrid environment, and in particular, in three distinct areas of my Great Works in Literature course: personal authorship; collaboration (not only with one’s classmates and instructor, but with a much wider audience); and a variety of innovative sources.
The idea of ownership is nicely discussed by Groom and Lamb, as they propose creating a “domain of one’s own,” a central archive that will help the student to make connections between various personal, academic and professional environments. Education is, hopefully, an arena where the student is encouraged to strengthen his own unique way of thinking about and, ultimately, working in the world. A digital archive is not only potentially a permanent and public record, but a global one. As Bass says, “Nowhere else but in school will students ever produce work for no audience,” or indeed, for such a private audience as the traditional classroom provides. It’s important that students work through the connections between literature, their own lives, and the larger community, and this is especially true now, as courses in literature are being downsized (critics alleging, unfairly, I believe, low relevance to life after graduation). I see the blog format as a viable tool in this exploration, as it is a format easily learned, encourages open expression, and allows students to move at their own pace. As well, with each post, students publicly author a piece of text, and this authorship helps students to take ownership for their words and ideas.
Of course, taking authority is not the same as isolating one’s voice. If education is a process, then one’s voice is part of a continuous dialogue that is open to integration, revision, and reflection. Traditionally, literature has been taught in a lecture format filtered through the instructor. This practice leaves little room for a student’s original interpretation, questioning, and, ultimately, true involvement with the text. True involvement is, in Great Works, an adventure into another world, culture, and time. Baruch’s student body is itself diverse, and so allows for a richness of involvement with the both the text and others’ responses to that text.
The texts comprise, finally, as Bass reminds us, the architecture of the course, and these texts need to be supported with a variety of sources. As Great Works is a general education course, scholarly works are useful, but only to a point. To truly engage my students, I want to motivate them with diverse verbal and non-verbal texts, including the untraditional, even possibly the unorthodox. My hope is that the hybrid environment will help me to be as innovative as I am trying to guide my students to be.
I like how you break down three goals in moving a GW course partially online: personal authorship, collaboration, and online source use. I think the first two can be mobilized together, so if students are writing to a blog, as you suggest, the challenge should be for them to respond to one another and maybe even develop blog posts together (as they write back and forth to one another, perhaps). Getting students to write (in meaningful ways) to one another on a blog is always a challenge for me and I’d be very interested in developing ways to frame blogging prompts/assignments that would encourage students to do more collaborative writing to and with one another.
I think the online source use and development of an archive of diverse resources related to class readings is another great idea. Again, I’d love to see us develop the assignment that would guide students in this process. Nicole also wrote about this archive idea in her post, so it’s something several of us are interested in. I’d also like to think about ways to tie the student-developed archives of sources to the in-class sessions (without letting the tie-in take over class time). Perhaps students could present on their archives, or one component of their archives? Could be good (again, as long as these presentations don’t take over all the F2F class time).
Great conversation. I’m excited by the notion of assignments that work across the confines of the single class section or the single semester, that allow students to write collaboratively both in and and across moments, that allow a set of resources to build and evolve over time with many hands and voices guiding them. There’s the possibility here to push against the ephemeral nature of our students’ presence and impact on our courses. And in this case, the value of the hybridity is in that it’s buying you time to require of your students to do this work online; it’s going to require very careful engineering and tweaking along they way to make sure that time is spent productively.
I also use a blog in my course, asking students to post to it before the assigned day on which they lead discussion for about 15 minutes. The last semester was the first in which I did this, and I found that, while the in-class discussions were fantastic, the blog discussion was (at many points) not really a discussion. I’ve wondered whether the blog did actually contribute to the level of discussion that took place in the class, however. The students were very responsive to one another and supportive (more so than I’ve experienced in other courses I’ve taught in which I did not include a blog), and I wonder whether the blog facilitated this (even if blog discussions weren’t at the same level). I’m wondering how to push this further, and how to make the blog more dynamic! So I guess I’m actually asking how F2F class time might enrich the blog so that students have a more useful archive/database to which to refer. I have a feeling they were not checking it regularly..
I think the question of how to bring the archive project into the classroom is a good one. Perhaps through a presentation, or archives formed in groups. Students could even be responsible not only for leading a portion of class discussion, but also for designing that day’s “syllabus” on which their discussion will be based. They could direct their peers to the materials they’ve archived before their discussion and then ask questions about these materials. This would require a lot of planning and work done (by the students) in advance, but it’s a thought!
I often hear faculty discuss their student’s blogging as giving an opportunity to them to clear their throats and warm up a bit before coming to class to discuss a text. They not only have the artifact that they engaged to consider, but the mediated experience of their shared attempt to make sense of that artifact. It both personalizes and communalizes the experience of discussing a text in a way that can add energy to the F2F experience, even if the energy on the blog isn’t always profound.
But the question of how you do the reverse– use class time to energize the blog– is really interesting. Some faculty members make it a point to have the blog be a presence in their class (projecting posts for discussion, referencing specific passages as a way to draw in participants, having votes on strongest blog post, etc).
(I also think the GW cohort is on to something with the archive discussion)
So much of this conversation is exciting–I hardly know where to begin. The idea of an archive that students create sounds rich–and the internet offers unprecedented opportunities for finding and storing archives. I also like to use blogs and wikis as spaces where students can practice writing–for others. The idea of audience that Bass brings up and Jeanne echoes is important, and blogs can really help solidify audience, even in class discussions. I, too, constantly struggle with maintaining engagement on the blog. It’s almost like another classmate that can never be left out–it needs to be referred to in class discussions, blog posts projected on the Smartboard to spur debate, posts mined for source material for essays…
“My hope is that the hybrid environment will help me to be as innovative as I am trying to guide my students to be.” Yes. Agreed.