Innovate, Invest

I appreciated Randy Bass’s focus in “Engines of Inquiry: Teaching, Technology, and Learner-Centered Approaches to Culture and History” first on thinking through what we want to achieve in the classroom, and only then looking at the techniques and online/digital tools that can potentially achieve those goals. It seems important in the process of hybridization that learning goals not get overlooked, but rather that technology facilitates students understanding, grappling with, and meeting these objectives.

In COM 1010, the course I teach, I see challenges in distributive learning and reflective, critical thinking. It’s very easy to tell students in a top-down manner what makes a good persuasive speech, for example, and have them practice those techniques. It is harder to help them engage meaningfully with the methods of critiquing a presentation and to articulate for themselves (and the class) what makes an effective argument. Likewise, substantive reflection on their own work and on the messages they encounter from real-life speakers can often get lost in students’ overwhelming desire to perform well, to “not be nervous” and be entertaining. I think that hybrid technologies could potentially intervene in these areas, as well as providing a dialogic space for peer discussion that could help students prepare for larger discussion and “performance” in the classroom space.

Groom and Lamb’s essay, which was innovative in its format, brought up passionate questions for me at the institutional level. The “Costs” section of their article hit home forcefully. As they write: “The myriad costs associated with supporting LMSs crowd out budget and staff time that might be directed toward homegrown, open-source, and user-driven innovation.” Adjunct instructors who care deeply about the quality of the learning experience that they provide for their students are also deeply aware of the economic cost to themselves of supporting innovation in their classrooms. How many have the time, energy, and support, to achieve the kind of “grassroots, generative” innovation they aspire to? Learning management systems are clunky, nonintuitive, and, as Groom and Lamb point out, only provide students the skills in navigating that particular system which has no real-world equivalent. However, LMSs are also often the most supported, the most familiar to students, and they allow overworked adjuncts (now the majority of the instructional staff at many [most?] universities) to quickly set up course materials online, effectively “coping”– to borrow a concept from Bass’s article– with the demands of their role in the academic system. Clearly, systemic change in how we support student innovation online is linked to change in how we support instructors, particularly adjuncts, for the work they do.

6 thoughts on “Innovate, Invest”

  1. A lot of what you’ve written her resonates with me. I agree that the online space is a particularly rich opportunity to create a dialogic space for students to talk to one another and work through their shared challenges. I have tried many ways to create this kind of space in my class blogs, with varying success. I find students can be very superficial and reticent in their comments to one another on blog posts, for instance, and I wish they’d more spontaneously (without being required) talk back to their peers who comment on their posts (sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t). I’m always thinking through new ways to encourage more meaningful collaborative work in online blogs,w here students are really working out problems together. I’d love to hear how other people manage this.

    I also feel your comment about lack of time and resources and support to invest in the work of revising and refining our teaching. I wrote about this, too, though less specifically from an adjunct perspective. What would part-time faculty need to feel supported and be able to undertake this work? I’d be interested to hear an ideal wish list, which could be a starting point for someone like me who has some (maybe) capacity to build better support structures for part-time faculty. Are there models of good support structures that create space for part-time faculty to do the innovative work Groom and Lamb promote?

  2. Debra, your post really spoke to me—brought me back down to earth from the utopic heights of my post, which was light on practicalities. After the heady rush of all the potential, possibility, creativity, and usefulness (and honestly, considering my audience I can mention the fun, too) of incorporating technology to help do what we love—teach students (in my case share with them the love and importance of literature in this enterprise of being human), I fumble with the question of “How?” How can revitalize my own course, which is a rather luddite friendly f2f based environment where we sit in a circle that prioritizes discussion over lecture, when the means to do—time, money (oh, those practical matters, again!) when I am an adjunct struggling to finish my dissertation.

    My feeling is that to enact the kind of reinvigorating change would take more than just time (which is dear) but also support. The process of the seminar is a start, but your post really made me think about how I can learn about these technologies, experiment with their implementation, and share ideas, techniques, and the like with others? I guess, I need to discover my own coping mechanism (and btw, Cheryl, I loved what you said about that in your post) for this process that does not stall innovation—maybe a “hoping” mechanism?

  3. Hi Debra, your post really resonated with me, too. I agree with you absolutely that any class, hybrid, f2f, or fully online, needs to address learning goals first and then figure out ways to meet them. And I agree it’s especially important in hybrid or online classes because they’re new territory and we need to do a lot of planning around what we want and how to get it.

    And that leads to the other part of your post that really resonated with me, about the amount of time and effort that kind of backward design requires and the toll this takes on adjuncts in particular. This goes to Cheryl’s comments and post, too — my teaching is one of the most important things I do, and yet my research is what “counts.”

    Cheryl, you ask in your comment here for specific suggestions on how this tension could be alleviated. My first thought is: it can’t unless you want to write my dissertation for me. But seriously, things like this seminar, for which I am paid, help carve out a space for me to innovate and work with other innovators. Being at a campus like Baruch helps, where I feel insulated from LMS stuff and inspired by the things other people (*cough* Luke & co.) are doing (Groom’s comment that he feels lucky where he is resonated with me). I’m inspired to try to think of more concrete ways to answer your question, Cheryl, and maybe that’s something that can come out of this seminar.

  4. Agreed. Technology is only useful in its capability to facilitate teaching and learning, to engage the student. When cost and technology is exploited to become the end all, time is wasted and scholarship suffers. It would be as if the whiteboard or pen and paper is education itself. When I met with one surgeon to discuss my prospects, I was told to “look it up on the web.” I chose another who answered my questions, explaining in detail and who showed me how to use appropriate sites. He also gave me his cell number and email address to support me.
    We need techs to help by listening to our ideas, what we want to achieve for student engagement and application, and help us plan how to structure and implement them. Then we have to show our students how to use them and explain what we expect the results for them will be.
    I also teach 1010. I want tools that provide students with opportunities to enhance their critical thinking, how to avoid fallacies, how to find their own voice, how to research and organize, how to speak ethically to their audience. For example, I think a tech tools that allows them to upload their speech as many times as necessary and work with peers and outside (global?) audiences with checklists to assess, analyze and fix problem areas. Of course, if and how to assess the group is another issue. How much extra time is needed to set this up, to coach and guide and assess the group effort. Techs can help guide us to set up or find and explain sites. Another concern is who owns the idea? We may need to foster a true academic community from admins, techs, departments, teachers and students and the voters to give us the time and budget.
    Carol Gray

    1. I’ve been thinking about all of these questions in relation to adjunct teaching as well, and this post (and its replies) led me further in that direction. In my work as a Writing Across the Curriculum Fellow we tackled a question similar to the one asked here (and in your post, Cheryl)– we asked how we might encourage professors to change and possibly improve their pedagogy through the incorporation of writing. We focused specifically on the role of adjuncts, asking what unique issues might prevent adjunct faculty from incorporating different forms of pedagogy in their classes. Another fellow in our group conducted a survey to address this question, and the results were in many ways not surprising — adjuncts were very enthusiastic about rethinking pedagogical methods but found lack of time and financial circumstances to be prohibitive. I wonder if a similar issue would arise with technology and the new pedagogical tools it offers? To address your question, Cheryl, about what could be put in place to tackle this issue — we found in our WAC research that many adjuncts feel that supported faculty development is (maybe not surprisingly) a very effective means of encouraging new pedagogical methods. It’s fantastic that we already have this kind of support at Baruch — and speaking personally, I attended the Schwartz institute event on the use of Tiki Toki timelines specifically because I was looking for a new kind of (tech based) pedagogical tool. It was a great workshop – very informative and hands on, and I plan to use that platform in some capacity in the upcoming semester. This type of event, that deals very specifically with a new kind of digital assignment, could be helpful in exposing more adjunct faculty to the specific techniques for creating a hybrid/digital classroom.

  5. I’d like to second everybody’s comments, Debra, on your post–very relevant and resonant. I’m no fan of Blackboard for all the reasons many of you mention, and that Groom and Lamb discuss about LMSs, but used it this semester only because I was so busy that I didn’t have time to innovate. I mean, I customized it and tried to use it smartly, but… yeah. Guilty. I enjoyed Nicole’s solutions and applaud Cheryl’s interest in supporting adjuncts and p/t faculty.
    Just because some of you mentioned Backward Design in your comments, here’s a link to a post we have on the CTL about it: http://ctl.baruch.cuny.edu/course-design-to-get-to-the-beginning-start-at-the-end/

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