My world on the web
wiobyrne (wiobyrne.com)As we deal with the current situation, we not only need to consider F2F, online, and hyflex education, we need to think about what pedagogy could and/or should look like in a post-pandemic system.
The emphasis in the model is on a pedagogic approach which first-and-foremost facilitates connections and forms of interaction, creating social, intellectual and creative presence. Through this, the locations of our institutions, especially the digital spaces, become places within which our students have agency. This then increases belonging and supports learning-as-becoming. This is pedagogy as placemaking through the medium of presence.
In the book Teaching Crowds, Dron and Anderson unpack the different ways that people gather within online spaces. To do so, they focus on three key modes of learning:
- Groups: Distinct entities independent of membership, groups are structured around formal lines of authority. An example are the various learning management systems. Organised hierarchically, they do not allow for cross-system dissemination.
- Networks: Based on individual connections, networks evolve through interactions. Examples of such spaces are social network platforms, such as Facebook and LinkedIn. These spaces create the means easily sharing and connecting with others.
- Sets: Bound together by a commonality, with sets there are no expectations of personal engagement. Some examples of sets are social interest sites, such as Pinterest. Both of which provide means of easily finding similar ideas.
It also has me rethinking my explorations of learning hubs a few years ago.
I move around the classroom, answering questions, having conversations, setting up small impromptu groups to run through a question on the board together. This might sound like chaos but it very much is not. I know what every student is doing, where they are up to and how much they are understanding. This is something I never managed to achieve when I taught in a more traditional manner.
And my students. They are in control of their own destiny. They know why I run my classroom the way I do and they appreciate being given this level of autonomy.
One of the most amazing things to come out of the past year of remote and concurrent/hybrid learning has been the sharing of various learning models that work in our current situation. Many of these
As Juliani highlights, the challenge is identifying the right model for your context:
For Hybrid A/B learning I would have all of the students at home be in one group (Group 1) while breaking up the students in-class into two separate groups (Group 2 and Group 3). However, if your situation is such that you have at home hybrid students and full-time virtual students that group may have to be split in two.
These are discussed further in Catlin Tucker’s new Advancing with Blended and Online Learning Course.
Teachers will often choose a method (e.g. lecture, tutorial, simulation, essay, exam) before (or without) thinking enough about the purpose of their teaching. The choice of technology then becomes shaped by what is possible and available in this already-constrained conception of teaching. By choosing methods first, particularly traditional ones, we may reinforce teaching practices that are unsuitable in online contexts.
(context + purpose) drives (pedagogy [which includes actual uses of technology])
This has me thinking about what works and wondering in what context and for what purpose.
The Brazilian educator Paulo Freire’s book, first published in English 50 years ago, urges viewing students as interlocutors or partners in the learning process.
One odd aspect of the book’s legacy—at least in its English translation—is its popularity in contexts in which students are not oppressed. In an article provocatively titled “Pedagogy of the Privileged,” the philosopher Tracey Nicholls, writing in the CLR James Journal (which is named for a Trinidadian Marxist), for a special issue on bell hooks, grappled with the paradox that, because higher education is still so class-segregated in the United States, radical American educators have found themselves teaching Pedagogy of the Oppressed—and its methods—in colleges and universities for the elite, contexts where students may be more likely to be oppressors. While Freire viewed the purpose of education as the liberation of the oppressed, in elite classrooms, Nicholls observes, the challenge for a liberatory pedagogy is to teach empathy and solidarity with the oppressed—who, in many cases, are not in the room.
Best practices, which aim to standardize teaching and flatten the differences between students, are anathema to pedagogy.
In higher education, too many of us cling to other people’s models, because we have rarely been taught, encouraged, or given the support we need to create our own.
What matters most are the conversations as much as the product.a
Models like Bloom’s are a distraction from the hard conversations we should be having about teaching and learning, and I don’t think that’s an accident.
This is what I like about the Modern Learning Canvas and the way in which it helps frames the conversation.
The best teachers don’t just keep teaching. Instead, they use their pedagogy as protest: They disrupt teaching norms that harm vulnerable students. In my years in the classroom since 2001, I’ve learned something about how to do this. I call it reality pedagogy, because it’s about reaching students where they really are, making sure that their lives and backgrounds are reflected in the curriculum and in classroom conversations.
Reality pedagogy involves connecting academic content to events happening in the world that affect students. The curriculum can weave in specific references to the neighborhoods where young people are from, inequities that they and their families are hurt by, and protests in the community.
This has me thinking about how this differs from inquiry learning or if that is a form of ‘reality pedagogy’? I kind of wonder if this was the hope and intent associated with Modern Learners Canvas in that the focus is not the named practice or pedagogy, but actually unpacking what that pedagogy actually is.
SHOW NOTES:
1:50- David and Will’s focus on customer happiness. Type one and type two online courses. What online educators can learn from the Navy Seals.
13:45- How fear is a part of transformational experiences. What held Will back from starting writing. What music can teach us about great writing.
19:27- Why we fear achieving our vision. Write of Passage guilt. How Write of Passage prioritizes helping people make friends.
27:23- Striking the balance between creating community and letting it grow naturally. How interest groups allow students to create their own communities. The structure of Will’s job as course manager.
35:58- Forte Lab’s yearly planning process. The three phases of Will’s course management. How Will and David are thinking about data collection.
49:14- How Will and David met. How Will’s course feedback led to working with David. Why classical education theory doesn’t really apply to online education.
59:11- Why Will and David create “type 2” courses. Why David learns from his students. How Write of Passages integrates feedback.
1:07:20- What feedback David listens to. The future of Write of Passage. Why David tries to solve very specific problems using software.
1:12:10- How the Internet makes attention a commodity. Why WOP can thrive with zero cold traffic marketing. How the Internet will help make creators money in the future.
Research shows few differences in academic outcomes between online and face-to-face university courses. A professor who’s been teaching online for years offers advice on good online courses.
I particularly like Veletsianos’ closing remarks:
These qualities aren’t qualities of good online courses. They are qualities of good courses, period.
Although online learning is different, I feel that what is most interesting is the distance it provides and the opportunity to reassess. This is something that David White and Will Mannon have been discussing.
I suspect we know that the lecture is not as much of a draw as live music or the big screen – the ‘live’ experience is perhaps too similar to the recorded version. This means that we need to work on our live presence (on-site and online), just as many bands have had to, and there are many techniques that can be employed. I’d argue that presence and good pedagogy go hand-in-hand. How can we expect our students to be engaged in something which is unengaging?
We need to refocus our idea of university around the importance of creating moments of shared presence to facilitate new connections – connections in our thinking and connections with those around us.
You know who’s full of shit? Stupid singer-songwriters who say, “I’m just going to go up there and be myself.” They’re full of shit
…
Songwriting has to be 100% personal. It’s walking out onstage. It’s taking a photo, choosing an album title. All that you have to have in mind. It can’t be personal any more. It has to be fantastical, which is still personal. It’s the part of your personality that is a fantasy, that has to… That’s the part that carries the football into the end zone of the audience, but when you’re like, planning the music, of course it has to be one hundred percent personal. I never think about who’s listening when I’m composing. That moment is strictly reserved for you and yourself one hundred percent.
For me this same challenge is present in the lecture paradox.
I remember doing a conference presentation a few years ago in which I received scathing feedback. What I realised in hindsight is that I had put far too much effort into the content and failed to provide enough consideration to pedagogy and presentation.
Surveillance is not prevalent simply because that’s the technology that’s being sold to schools. Rather, in many ways, surveillance reflects the values we have prioritized: control, compulsion, efficiency. And surveillance plays out very differently for different students in different schools — which schools require schools to walk through metal detectors, which schools call the police for disciplinary infractions, which schools track what students do online, even when they’re at home. And nowadays, especially when they’re at home.
the thing that stood out for me was how many great things we have prepared for our students. Now that the school wheel is no longer turning like it used to, there’s no room for fluff – we are thinking about what’s essential. What has to stay. What is worth the effort to get through to our students from a distance. What message we want to send about learning. And it’s good.
Our kids will be
-setting intentions for each day… developing the learning asset of managing their own time.
-collaborating with peers to figure out how to attack problems and give each other feedback.
-undertaking a beautiful balance of game-based, problem solving, investigative maths.
-reflecting on their learning… what made them happy, what was difficult, where to next…
-checking in with teachers often – teachers who will meet students where they are and gently guide their next steps.
-undertaking their own investigations and projects based on their interests.
-publishing and sharing their projects, investigations and ideas with an authentic audience (peers, families, communities).
This is the kind of learning we should have been facilitating all along.
And not a worksheet in sight.
What if, instead of trying to replicate or reinvent school, we allowed this to be a time of creativity? What if we took advantage of the way limitations can encourage innovation?
On one level, Panicgogy means understanding students’ limitations. Some only have smartphones. Some have family responsibilities. But ultimately, panicgogy is about applying compassion to learning.
Sean Michael Morris and other colleagues have a tongue-in-cheek name for what they’re doing right now: “Panic-gogy” (for panic + pedagogy).
On one level, Panicgogy means understanding students’ practicalities. Some only have smartphones. Some have family responsibilities. Some have been sent home and need to find a new place to live, new job, and new health insurance. Professors may feel that the simplest option would be transitioning to class over video chat, but for all these practical reasons “It’s not really realistic to think that students can just show up and start taking class at the same time every day in an online environment,” says Morris.
Robin DeRosa explains that where an online course can take up to a year to develop, therefore the current transition is about care, compassion and community. Additionally, where possible this work should engage with the current situation:
“Whatever field you teach, I think it’s worth asking how is that field affected by the public health crisis and what contributions could the field be making right now to help people in their communities.”
Because of the Coronavirus, schools across the world are sending students and teachers home and moving towards online learning. Parents and students are being assured that the learning will continu…
To summarize, ask yourself a few questions when you are shifting from regularly meeting students to providing an online/digital program:
- What should you do to most effectively utilize synchronous time, when you have it scheduled?
- What can you take out of your course so that you are reducing the expectations of students working from home, with less support than they get at school?
- How can you make assignments engaging, interactive, and interesting?
- What kind of things will you assess and how can you ensure that assessment is something that authentically assesses the students skills and competencies?
How can you shift the learning experience beyond just shifting everything online?
If I was helping folks, my suggestion an strategy would be… do as little as possible online. Use online for communicating, caring, attending to people’s needs, but not really for being the “course”. Flip that stuff outside.
I began to realize that theory isn’t simply something you study abstractly. It is something you use. Theory provides us with a foundation for practical knowledge and a lens for making sense out of our world. With that in mind, here are seven reasons teachers should know educational theory.
I have often wondered about why to do a PhD. I have been told about the benefit of going deep, but Spencer offers another perspective, a context in which to appreciate research.
