For someone who's not much of a techno-pro, and not currently teaching a class, I'll admit I was having a hard time connecting with the teaching-potential of the horizon technologies we talked about in class last week. With the exception of MOOCs!
My current "intended" career path is to teach at a 4-year college someday, and I have to say, this leaves me feeling a bit conflicted about the pro's and cons of this technology. I'm really 100% excited about everyone everywhere (with a computer and internet connection) being able to access top-notch lectures and courses in a huge variety of fields - it might help even the playing field for accessing a "good" education, as well as encourage more life-long learning - very exciting!! I guess the other side that I'm interested in knowing about is how (whether?) traditional colleges plan to stay in business if people can access high quality teaching for free and maybe even get some certificates to demonstrate mastery of courses? I'm on the fence about whether the merits of a traditional college learning environment outweigh the cost (financial and opportunity cost)... More chewing this over later...
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Monday, February 25, 2013
Synchronous teaching
Last week's tech talks (nice work Star Techies and Team Not Afraid!) introduced some material that I have not had any direct experience with. In particular, I don't think I've ever used a synchronous teaching technology of any kind in class - but it seems like there are lots of possibilities! I especially love the idea of Skyping in an "expert" to give a mini-guest lecture or do a Q and A section about a particular topic. There are so many case studies that are used in ecology classes to illustrate particular concepts or to test particular theories - I can imagine students getting really engaged if, for example, a case study/illustrative example we worked through in class was followed-up by a Skype/hangout/facetime conversation with one of the lead authors of the work. I think that introducing students to particular scientists whose work has helped form the concepts and ideas we discuss in class would really help them make connections between the "textbook" knowledge and the source (the scientists!) who have generated parts of that knowledge. Very promising new use of technology that I hope to implement someday!
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Reflection on Flipping - Instructor's point of view
Note to self: blogging is a terrible in-class activity! If I were to actually use this technique in my classroom, I would want to use the time for interactive engagement - which I guess we accomplished for part of the time... - but I think the real power here is for experiential learning where activities and active learning that are unlikely to happen independently can be carried out. For example, guided lab activities, field trips, and discussions or Q and A sessions about specific content that is learned at home could really expand students' understanding of and engagement in the activity. Blogging? Probably not so much.
Ok, Ok, I wrote the above during class when I was really feeling anxious about just milling around (or turning to my own blog) while the rest of the class was working independently on their blog entries for ~8 minutes of class. As an instructor/facilitator, it's hard to balance the desire to leave everyone alone so they can independently accomplish a task, with the desire to interact with students to make sure they are getting the most out of an activity. I think the exercise we did in the TTT about Flipping the Classroom was a nice way to demonstrate the potential format (and therefore some possible strengths/weaknesses) of the Flipping technique, and probably gave folks a chance to reflect on the experience a little. But it definitely marginalized us as the presenters!
One thing that came up for me is that since we didn't actually "transmit" a lot of the information that we had gathered in preparation for this class session, it was a lot harder to get the discussion going the same way it usually does when you've just presented something. If you discuss something right after the lecture, it's usually right there at the forefront of everyone's brain and easy to have a common "jumping off point". Since we really didn't check in with folks about their present level of understanding of the concept (or whether they had watched our brief powerpoint, or the TED talk, or even had prior experience implementing this technique themselves!), it was hard to know if the discussion and other in-class activities were effective or useful. I think that this aspect of my experience "instructing" a flipped classroom was probably exacerbated because we were also instructing as a team, which inherently makes it harder (I think) for instructor(s) and students to be totally on the same page.
Even in light of these potential drawbacks, I can definitely see some promising possibilities for using this technique in the Ecology classroom. There are so many times when it seems like a subject in ecology could really "come alive" for the students much more effectively if they were doing something hands-on (be it via computer simulations or experiments) - and to a large extent, this obvious need for experiential learning is met by lab exercises. But at the end of the day, the majority of time is often spent in lecture, with labs only comprising a small amount of engagement with the material. I think partly this is due to the challenges of developing, funding, and implementing hands-on exercises, especially ones that can be completed and provide meaningful insights in a 50 or 75 minute period. Still, for some particular topics, this seems like a worthy endeavor, and I plan to take the Protist Biology Flipped syllabus as a springboard for my future efforts at incorporating this method into my teaching!
Ok, Ok, I wrote the above during class when I was really feeling anxious about just milling around (or turning to my own blog) while the rest of the class was working independently on their blog entries for ~8 minutes of class. As an instructor/facilitator, it's hard to balance the desire to leave everyone alone so they can independently accomplish a task, with the desire to interact with students to make sure they are getting the most out of an activity. I think the exercise we did in the TTT about Flipping the Classroom was a nice way to demonstrate the potential format (and therefore some possible strengths/weaknesses) of the Flipping technique, and probably gave folks a chance to reflect on the experience a little. But it definitely marginalized us as the presenters!
One thing that came up for me is that since we didn't actually "transmit" a lot of the information that we had gathered in preparation for this class session, it was a lot harder to get the discussion going the same way it usually does when you've just presented something. If you discuss something right after the lecture, it's usually right there at the forefront of everyone's brain and easy to have a common "jumping off point". Since we really didn't check in with folks about their present level of understanding of the concept (or whether they had watched our brief powerpoint, or the TED talk, or even had prior experience implementing this technique themselves!), it was hard to know if the discussion and other in-class activities were effective or useful. I think that this aspect of my experience "instructing" a flipped classroom was probably exacerbated because we were also instructing as a team, which inherently makes it harder (I think) for instructor(s) and students to be totally on the same page.
Even in light of these potential drawbacks, I can definitely see some promising possibilities for using this technique in the Ecology classroom. There are so many times when it seems like a subject in ecology could really "come alive" for the students much more effectively if they were doing something hands-on (be it via computer simulations or experiments) - and to a large extent, this obvious need for experiential learning is met by lab exercises. But at the end of the day, the majority of time is often spent in lecture, with labs only comprising a small amount of engagement with the material. I think partly this is due to the challenges of developing, funding, and implementing hands-on exercises, especially ones that can be completed and provide meaningful insights in a 50 or 75 minute period. Still, for some particular topics, this seems like a worthy endeavor, and I plan to take the Protist Biology Flipped syllabus as a springboard for my future efforts at incorporating this method into my teaching!
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Tablets vs textbooks
A couple of items jumped out at me while reading the ProCon.org article about whether the conversion from textook-based education materials to tablet/e-reader based versions is helpful or harmful for K-12 education. First of all, it seems like it would be nearly impossible for education research to have kept up with the boom in tablet use over the past year, such that we would be able to make informed decisions about the impacts of table-based learning on education outcomes. The article cites one study, but it's hard to imagine there's much more information out there at this point - and to me, this seems like it should be enough reason to put the brakes on a push for full-blown tablet-dependency. Also, the tiny blurb about environmental impacts of tablets vs. textbooks was not very complete (ex. the comparison to textbook impacts only considered paper-making and ignored ink, printing, and especially shipping, which would be expected to be a huge negative for heavy textbooks), which makes me wonder about what other apsects of the "manufacturing cost" analysis were ignored - I'd be particularly interested to know more about who would reap the economic benefits from this transition, and who is pushing for the move? What about human-rights violations associated with much of the resource extraction and manual labor that takes place in foreign countries so that we can have these fancy gadgets? Ok ok, getting a little far afield from the education pro's and cons....
So what about impacts in the college classroom? It seems like many of the concerns listed for K-12 ed may not be applicable for college and it seems like the benefits could be huge. If text book authors and publishers can capitalize on the connectedness to other sources of information, they could lead students to new depths of understanding of their material - I am specifically thinking about things like science text books, where there is usually not a lot of effort at connecting the material in the textbook with current research (aside from some watered-down examples used to illustrate concepts) or with the process of the generation of scientific knowledge. In traditional textbooks, keeping pace with research or trying to connect students to the research process that generated the accepted content that they're reading about is just not possible given the non-dynamic nature of the printed book. However, e--textbooks could include links to open-access research articles, or to the websites of the research labs where the examples in the book come from - this would allow students to have guided access to in-depth material on subjects they found interesting, and would hopefully help them gain an appreciation for where this "textbook" knowledge comes from. I'm sure there are many other possible types of interactions/extensions of the basic material that are already being developed for networked e-textbooks - it seems like the possibilities outweigh the possible negative side-effects for the college environment.
So what about impacts in the college classroom? It seems like many of the concerns listed for K-12 ed may not be applicable for college and it seems like the benefits could be huge. If text book authors and publishers can capitalize on the connectedness to other sources of information, they could lead students to new depths of understanding of their material - I am specifically thinking about things like science text books, where there is usually not a lot of effort at connecting the material in the textbook with current research (aside from some watered-down examples used to illustrate concepts) or with the process of the generation of scientific knowledge. In traditional textbooks, keeping pace with research or trying to connect students to the research process that generated the accepted content that they're reading about is just not possible given the non-dynamic nature of the printed book. However, e--textbooks could include links to open-access research articles, or to the websites of the research labs where the examples in the book come from - this would allow students to have guided access to in-depth material on subjects they found interesting, and would hopefully help them gain an appreciation for where this "textbook" knowledge comes from. I'm sure there are many other possible types of interactions/extensions of the basic material that are already being developed for networked e-textbooks - it seems like the possibilities outweigh the possible negative side-effects for the college environment.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Post-TPI perspective.
Here's a slightly illegible screen capture from my TPI Results page (http://teachingperspectives.com/drupal/tpi/tpi-results?nodeid=3424&name=Carrie). Even though the graphics are fuzzy here, I think that keeping this visual on hand will help me improve my awareness of my own teaching perspectives - including ways I hope to improve the connectedness between my "intentions" and my "actions". When I read through the interpretation of what "teaching-world-view" each of the 5 perspectives encompasses, I felt most drawn to the Developmental perspective. I think that this kind of came out in the wash when my highest "intentions" rating was in the Developmental category - however, I scored a couple of points lower in the "actions" sub-category for the Developmental perspective. Another aspect of my results that caught my attention was that I scored evenly in the Apprenticeship and Developmental perspectives, which might indicate that I answered some questions in contradictory ways. I'll be interested to take this assessment again after having given more thought to my teaching goals (I'm still feeling a little rusty thinking about my teaching methods, goals, and beliefs, as I've been away from teaching for 2.5 years now). Many of the questions in the inventory were thought-provoking, and I found myself having a hard time choosing an answer on many of the questions - in part, I think this is due to the difficulty of partitioning beliefs and methods into so many supposedly mutually exclusive categories. It seems like the best teaching approach would combine all five perspectives, transitioning fluidly between the approaches associated with each perspective depending on the level of the students' prior knowledge and experience, and the material being presented. It's hard to imagine an Ecology class being taught without any "Transmission"-style teaching, because there is a certain amount of content that all students need in order to move to higher-level problem solving and complex thinking about issues. It's also hard to imagine teaching an Ecology class without acknowledging that a major part of my motivation for teaching is that I want students to understand how ecosystems work so that they can see the value of protecting them from further damage, hopefully inspiring some kind of "Social Change".
Monday, January 14, 2013
Technology and teaching and blogging, Oh my!
Having only taught a couple of times, and not within the past couple of years, I am feeling a little rusty. I am hoping that this course will not only help me get back into the habit of thinking critically about my own teaching methods, but will also help me develop skills that I can use in the short term (ex. advising, guest lectures) long term (TA'ing or acting as instructor of record) teaching roles.
I have always been a borderline technophobe while at the same time appreciating the potential that technology has for creating new "transmission" (to borrow a term from the TPI) methods. I view this class as a way to overcome my subtle techno-terror and to learn (with what is sure to be excellent guidance and support, judging by the first class!) how to use existing and emerging classroom technologies to my advantage. One particular avenue I'd like to explore is how I can use technology to engage students in field labs (ex. new ways to observe ecology at work).
I have always been a borderline technophobe while at the same time appreciating the potential that technology has for creating new "transmission" (to borrow a term from the TPI) methods. I view this class as a way to overcome my subtle techno-terror and to learn (with what is sure to be excellent guidance and support, judging by the first class!) how to use existing and emerging classroom technologies to my advantage. One particular avenue I'd like to explore is how I can use technology to engage students in field labs (ex. new ways to observe ecology at work).
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