My chemistry colleague, Lisa Ott, echoed these ideas this spring, as we were facing online teaching: “…you certainly can’t be a chemist without pouring some shit in a beaker and seeing what happens. Tools, even white boards, do not serve the same purpose across disciplines. Even if I had had a whiteboard in my office, as an English professor, it would more likely be used for to-do lists. They could not believe I didn’t have a whiteboard since doing science and talking about science without being able to draw from images is, well, sort of unheard of. Leslie (physics) and Irene (biology) had come to my office deep in conversation they looked around, searching for a white board in my space to hash out the disagreement. In an early encounter with two science colleagues, as we prepared to research writing in science classes together, I watched as they argued about a question related to light that had emerged in their class. Once we come to understand that our disciplinary identities shape who we are and how we work, you notice these differences often. To underscore the difference, consider that it is one thing to be able to give a definition of cultural relativism (perhaps the most bold-faced of bold-faced terms in anthropology which means “cultural norms and values derive their meaning within a specific social context”) or even to apply it to some specific phenomenon, but it is quite another to fully incorporate that understanding and recognize yourself as a culturally and temporally bounded entity mired in cultural biases and taken-for-granted assumptions that you can only attempt to transcend. It is not just a way of looking at the world. Mike Wesch, a cultural anthropologist at Kansas State University, offered a model for thinking about the “why” by starting with our disciplinary identities:Īs I contemplated the “real why” of my course further, I soon recognized that anthropology was not a bunch of content and bold faced terms that can be highlighted in a text book, but was instead a way of looking at the world. When we designed the first sessions, we began by asking educators to consider the “why” of their courses. We created Connected Courses, which you can access for resources–readings, example activities, webinars– here.
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#PREP XL ONCOURSE LEARNING PROFESSIONAL#
One way to begin: a brainstorming session focused on your disciplineĪ few years ago, I was fortunate enough to join a small group of international educators to think about professional development support for faculty who wanted to rethink digital pedagogy. I offer an approach to course design that moves away from “how do I take attendance” and toward “how do I support a newcomer to my community?” The suggestions are also guided by the most frequently asked questions I receive from faculty. We need to stop the outcomes, rubric, template, surveillance, plug in, packaged courses, frenzy. At stake are our students (and teachers) and the ways their bodies are being controlled in the name of learning.
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Lots of companies are ready to sell us solutions for problems we didn’t know we had. More concerning, we’re allowing EdTech to rule our choices.
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My fear: we’re worrying so much about solving problems of schooling that we’re forgetting to solve problems in our disciplines and in the world.
#PREP XL ONCOURSE LEARNING SERIES#
My own intention with this piece (the first in a series this semester) is to share course design practices and resources that might serve as alternatives to the primarily tool based, Edtech, approach. Universities and school districts are scrambling to support faculty and students as well, all with the best intentions. Every educator I know is trying to get this moment right, to do our best to support learners.
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Like many of my colleagues who think about digital pedagogy, I’ve been fielding lots of questions from fellow educators as we shift to online teaching.