Confirmation for "Uncomfortable, but Not Paralyzed"?

Since my first Digital History class in 2008, I've been telling students that I wanted them to be "uncomfortable, but not paralyzed" based on my sense that it was only when one struggled a bit that deep  learning occurred.  The concept has explicitly shaped much of my teaching since then.  Now the Mindshift blog at KQED is reporting that there are several studies that back up my reasoning.

In one study, published in Learning and Instruction, psychologists Sidney D'Mello and Art Graesser found "that even negative emotions can play a productive role in learning."

Confusion, D’Mello explains, is a state of “cognitive disequilbrium”; we are mentally thrown off balance when we encounter information that doesn’t make sense. This uneasy feeling motivates us to restore our equilibrium through thought, reflection, and problem solving, and deeper learning is the result. According to D’Mello, engaged learners repeatedly experience “two-step episodesalternating between confusion and insight.” Back and forth, between perplexity and understanding: this is how the learning of complex material happens.

In fact, deep learning may be unlikely to happen without the experience of confusion, suggests a study conducted by another researcher, Arizona State’s Kurt VanLehn. The students in his experiment were not able to grasp the physics concepts they were learning until they had encountered, and surmounted, an intellectual “impasse.”

Still another study, this one led by Harvard physicist Eric Mazur, found that students who observed a demonstration in science class understood the relevant concept no better than before—unless the students were asked to predict the outcome of the demonstration in advance. When their predictions turned out to be wrong, the resulting confusion motivated them to consider the concept more deeply, and they learned more.

On a related note, Stephen Ramsey at the University of Nebraska has a wonderful post that eloquently makes the case that attitude is more important than (initial) aptitude in learning programming.

Nearly every programmer I know – and I know some great ones – started out not with a course, or a book, or a teacher, but with a problem that was irritating them. Something in their computational world didn’t seem right. Maybe it was broken, or maybe just missing. But being comfortable with not-knowing-what-the-hell-they’re-doing, they decided that getting a computer to do something new was more-or-less like figuring out how to get the chain back on the bike. They weren’t trying to “be programmers” any more than the parent determined to fix the kid’s bike is trying to be a “bicycle mechanic.”

All of these suggest that cultivating mental habits among our students (and ourselves) where we are okay with being unfamiliar with a subject, okay with struggling to master a concept or tool or problem, okay with working in new formats, okay with failure and trying again is important for intellectual and academic development in school and with the work done outside of school.

Pushing Boundaries

I'll make this public here, partly to keep myself honest, partly to explain why there may be fewer* posts here.

I often say that one of my goals in teaching is to push students beyond their comfort zones, that discomfort is where real learning occurs, and that I want students to become comfortable with being uncomfortable.  One of the parallels to that, however, that I've also made clear in the teaching presentations I've made to faculty is that the concept applies to us as well.    We need to get outside of what we are comfortable with and to learn new skills while remembering what it is like to be a student.

In that vein, and because I've really always wanted to join in the fun that many of my students and my good friends at UMW's DTLT are having, I'm going to participate in DS106 this summer as a student.  The course (phenomenon?) that began at UMW a few years ago had its origins as a face-to-face course in Digital Storytelling in Computer Science.   DS106 has become much more than that, and runs at various points throughout the year with both students taking a formal class with grades and credits and a host of open, online only participants (like me).

I've created a separate site for my various projects to come out of the 10 week course at http://ds106.mcclurken.org/.



*I'm aware that some of you are laughing right now at the idea of "fewer" posts here, given the sporadic nature of my blogging.

Women's History Class Projects, continued

So, a semester's work of work comes down to tomorrow.  As I've discussed before, my Women's History since 1870 course has spent the semester researching and creating a classroom from the mid-20th Century.


The students in the class spent the first half of the semester working on research in the primary sources of the school, especially those resources in our Special Collections department.  They created the following sites for each decade

Site: 1930s
Site: 1940s
Site: 1950s
Site: 1960s

We then voted on which decade would be the focus of our class re-creation and the 1950s was chosen.  We split into new groups to plan the class session itself.  

• Student posts on outlines for the various parts of the recreation, including specific advice and instructions for students.
• Academic Content -- Schedule and description of class activity for Tuesday, including debate and time for discussion of non-academic activities
• Activities -- Outline for how we will work in discussion of non-academic activities on campus.
• Clothing/materials -- Advice on dress code for 1950s students (General, Men, hair, makeup, accessories), and school supplies.
• Photo group -- Re-creating various historical photographs.  Pictures to be taken on Thursday, April 25.
• Student Clubs and Activities
• Classrooms and formal events
• Dorm Life
• Academics
• Campus Photos

Based on all that research and the work done by the students, we came up with the following schedule for tomorrow's class, re-creating a 1952 History class: April 17 schedule.


I'm looking forward to it.  Wish us luck.

The Assignment for Recreating the historical MWC Classroom

As I discussed in this post, my US Women's History since 1870 class will be working on a project in which the ultimate goal is to be able to recreate a class session or two from the middle of the 20th Century.

Here is the assignment that I developed for the course, in three stages.  Note the use of individual and group work, online and IRL activities, and deep research in the archives of the school.

As always, I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions.  [The full course syllabus is here.]

MARY WASHINGTON CLASSROOM EXPERIENCE RESEARCH PROJECT

This project will be based around researching Mary Washington College classes in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, & 1960s (including course topics, pedagogical approaches, majors, gender stereotypes, technology, and clothing).  As our class lectures and readings look at the experiences of women in the United States in the late 19th and 20th Centuries, our parallel goal will be to understand what college meant to women who came to Mary Washington in the four decades in the middle of the 20th Century.

Each group of 6-7 of you will have a decade to research, using a variety of online and archival sources, as well as interviews with alums from these decades.  Rather than writing a traditional individual research paper, you’ll keep a research blog and work with your group to create a research site collecting together the information that you’ve found.

Primary source resources (many available in UMW Special Collections)

• The Bullet
• Course Catalogs
• Academic Department and Faculty Files
• Student Handbooks
• Photographs (Centennial Collection online plus those digitized, but not online yet)
• Alumni/Faculty Interviews (talk to me about interview waivers)
• Resources from Historic Preservation (?)
• Scrapbooks/Aubade/Alumni Magazine/President’s files

Secondary Sources

• Crawley, William B. University of Mary Washington: A Centennial History, 1908-2008. Fredericksburg, VA: University of Mary Washington, 2008.
• Key UMW faculty and staff (Parsons, McClusky, Thaden, Snyder)

Decade-based Research Groups

I will assign each of you to a group of 5-7 each with a different decade at MWC to research, using a variety of online and archival sources, as well as interviews with alums from these decades.  Each person will keep their own research log/blog and work with their group to create a research site collecting together the information that you’ve found.

Part I — Individual Research Logs

Each student will take a particular set of primary sources (or will interview alumni) and research classroom experiences for their group’s decade.  Each student will share her/his work in progress in the form of four individual research log-style blog posts posted before class starts on four consecutive Tuesdays (1/31, 2/7, 2/14, 2/21).

Part II — Group Research Project

Building on the research done by each of the group members, each group will construct a site for their decade in UMWBlogs.  The design, format, and presentation of these sites will be determined by the group, with a broad audience in mind.  These sites are due by 11:59 PM on Monday, March 12.

Grading for Parts I and II – 30% overall, with an individual grade for research logs and group grade for the research project.

Part III – Class re-creation

Based on those group research sites, we will collectively decide (with the help of some alums), which decade we will then use for the final project, a re-creation of a course session or two from that decade.  The form these class sessions will take is still yet to be determined (depending in part on the decade picked), but they will involve everyone in some way in preparation and presentation.  Specific tasks will be determined after the decade is chosen.  This recreation will take place during the week of April 17.

Grading for Part III – 10%, with individual grades defined by student’s participation in the re-creation process.

PLEASE NOTE: Throughout these projects, all ideas, phrases, and quotes must be cited using footnote-style citations and bibliographies done using the Chicago Manual of Style (16th Edition) or Turabian’s newest Guide (7th Edition).   

Re-Creating the College Classroom of the Past

I just sent the following email to one of my classes for the Spring.

Hello all,

Thanks for signing up for History 328: US Women’s History since 1870.  I wanted to give you a little preview of my plans for our class next semester because the research projects in the class are going to be a little different than that of other history classes (even for those of you who took HIST 327 this fall).

First of all, in many ways, the general structure of the class is going to be fairly standard.  We’ll have lectures on Tuesdays and part of Thursdays, and discuss readings on Thursdays.  There will be a mid-term and a final based on those lectures, discussions, and readings.

What’s different is that the rest of your grade, roughly 40%, will be based on a series of projects we’ll be working on in groups and as a class.  These projects will be based around researching Mary Washington College classes in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, & 1960s (including course topics, pedagogical approaches, majors, gender stereotypes, technology, and clothing).  As the class lectures and readings look at the experiences of women in the United States in the late 19^th and 20^th Centuries, our parallel goal will be to understand what college meant to women who came to Mary Washington in the four decades in the middle of the 20^th Century.

Each group of 6-7 of you will have a decade to research, using a variety of online and archival sources, as well as interviews with alums from these decades.  Rather than writing a traditional individual research paper, you’ll keep a research blog and  work with your group to create a research site collecting together the information that you’ve found.

Based on those sites, we will collectively decide (perhaps with the help of some alums), which decade we will then use for the final project, a re-creation of a course session or two from that decade.

Now, if this project is not the kind of thing you’ll be interested in working on, you may want to look for another class.  But I hope you’ll each at least be intrigued by the idea and perhaps even excited by doing something that is original, fun, and creative, while tying in to the themes we’ll be discussing more broadly for US women in the class.

Have a terrific break and I’ll see you in January.

Dr. McClurken

I'm very excited about this project, so any suggestions you have for the process, the approach, the research sites, or anything else will be greatly appreciated.

Info Age #4 -- The Documentaries

[Be sure to check out the earlier installments of my discussion of my History of the Information Age senior seminar as well:   here, here, and here, as well as the class timeline and the list of the first set of projects to be placed in that timeline.]

Assignment #4 in this course was the group documentaries on some aspect of the Information Age.  I didn't give the students a great deal of direction, other than to say that they needed to show change over time, that they should be between 5 and 10 minutes, and that they needed to upload them somewhere where they could be seen (they all chose YouTube).  They had about three weeks to come up with a topic (related to the class discussions of the digital age), research, film, and edit the video.

Each group had a basic video camera, and they had access to the editing stations in our Digital Media Lab (with iMovie and Premiere).   Ultimately, only one group used Premiere, one used iMovie, and two used Windows Movie Maker.  Although they had been given a brief intro to video editing at the start of the semester by DTLT, most of them were going to be doing video capture and editing for the first time.  I recommended that they test out their cameras, video files, and basic editing before they got too far into the process so that they could figure out problems in advance.

They presented the documentaries to the class and they were a great deal of fun.  Certainly, the videos aren't as polished as they would have been if I had spent more time in training them how to use editing software, or if they'd had more time in the semester to work on them (both points the students make in their after-project posts, linked below), but I'm quite impressed with the work they produced and their willingness to throw themselves into the projects.  

• Group 1 – How the rise of modern forms of transmitting information have affected the U.S. Postal Service  
• Student reports -- 1, 2, 3, 4
• Group 2 –  Tutorials Through Time 
• Student reports -- 1, 2, 3, 4
• Group 3 – Shift from card catalogs to digital catalogs in libraries, with a focus on its effect on librarians 
• Student reports, 1, 2, 3, 4
• Group 4 – Documentary on the history of the internet and its effect on Higher Education, using the University of Mary Washington as a contextual lens
• Student reports -- 1, 2, 3, 4

What's your take?  What suggestions do you have for future iterations of the assignment?

Info Age Assignment # 3 -- The advertisements

[Though I still need to go back and blog about the first two assignments in my History of the Information Age senior seminar (the creation of our class timeline and the first set of projects to be placed in that timeline), I decided to go ahead and post about this assignment anyway.]

For this assignment, the class split into four groups, each to work on their own fictional advertisement.  The goal of this assignment was to have students explore what went into advertisements in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and/or 1960s.  We read several pieces on the history of advertising as part of our weekly class reading on the history of communication and information, and students did further research before they actually created their projects.  [Some of the ads juxtapose topics that are chronologically out of the time period of the ad style, but I think that actually helped, in that it forced students to do more than just copy previous advertisements.]

Students threw themselves into researching the way that advertising was done in terms of themes, colors, wording, images, stories, tone, even font.  And at the end I think that they learned quite a bit about the difficulty and possibility of communicating in ways that go beyond text itself.

Check them out and let us know what you think.

• Tupperware Print Ad -- http://infoage.umwblogs.org/2011/10/24/post-war-woman-and-the-spread-of-information/
• Weight-gain Print Ad -- http://infoage.umwblogs.org/2011/10/24/gain-flesh-gain-the-girl/
• Further explanation of the group's research and approach, some technical discussion, and photo issues.
• Wurlitzer Jukebox meets the Hipster Print Ad -- http://infoage.umwblogs.org/2011/10/23/advertisement-project-the-wurlitzer-jukebox/
• Discussion of advertising research
• Gutenberg Press Radio Ad -- http://infoage.umwblogs.org/2011/10/23/radio-advertisement/
• Sources used
• Further explanation of the group's research and approach.

Collaborative Course Construction

I'm teaching a new course this semester, a senior seminar on the History of the Information Age.  I've got a great group of students who are interested in the topic, but also in breaking out of the normal senior readings seminar.  I've challenged that format in another senior seminar, Adventures in Digital History (2008/2010 iterations), but this class is a bit different.  ADH is primarily a project based class, where the process of creating the projects is the entire focus of the course.

For this seminar on the Information Age, I wanted to try something different.  I wanted to combine digital history projects with a genuine engagement with  scholarly readings and discussions of themes.  But I also wanted to engage the students in creating the course itself.

So, in late July/early August I created a rough syllabus (version 0.9) here.  It has a rough semester calendar with four broad eras of the "Information Age" -- Print (and its predecessors), Early Networked Communication, Broadcasting, and Information in the Digital Age.  It includes three books I had the bookstore order and will have the students read over the course of the semester.  It includes what I see as the non-negotiable parts of the course:  

"Students are expected to attend all classes, read all assigned texts, post regularly to the individual blogs, participate in class, and help lead two weeks of class discussions.  Students are also expected to contribute to the creation of a public, digital timeline of developments, events, people in the information age and add materials to it all semester."

Participation will be worth 40% and blog posts will be worth at least 10%.  

Here's what I don't know and what I want to figure out with the class over the next 10 days or so.

• I don't know quite what that timeline will look like yet.  I don't know what will make it on the timeline, how exactly we'll construct it, what we will add to it and how.
• I don't know what the other 50% of the graded portion of the course will consist of.  
• I imagine some of it will be material that enriches the digital timeline, but I don't know what that will be yet.  
• Some preliminary discussion of ideas on the syllabus comments suggests a student interest in group projects, perhaps video recorded oral histories of aspects of the Information Age.  
• Others have discussed the value of infographics for displaying particularly perspective on trends/ideas/concepts.  
• It's also possible that they will include formal or informal presentations of their work as part of the graded portion of the course.
• I don't know which topics the class will want to focus on and for how long.
• On a related note, I don't know which readings/texts/images/videos we'll be using beyond the three core texts to explore the topics the class wants.
• I don't know if this will work.  But I've got a group of students who genuinely seem excited by the chance to try, and so I'm excited too.  

More to follow.

Lecture: Teaching and Learning with New Media

I've not posted on this blog in a while (see ProfHacker.com and http://mcclurken.org/ for other goings on).

However, I was honored to be asked to give one of the inaugural lectures in the Teaching Excellence series begun this year by UMW's Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning.

What follows is the video and a list of the links mentioned in the talk.

Thanks to all for the opportunity and the questions. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions.

Overview

What is New Media?

My Goals in using New Media tools

Examples of Classroom Use

Assessing the Impact

What Can You Do?

What is New Media? – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_media

UMWBlogs

Blogging – Teresa Coffman (EDUC) and Steve Greenlaw (ECON)

Blog as course management tool — Sue Fernsebner’s Freshman Seminar: Toys as History

As site for collecting hard-to-find research sources for students –Steve Harris’s Hist 485: Researching Russian and Soviet Resources

UMWers & New Media

• Skype
• Digital Storytelling – Jim Groom’s course
• Audio from the past– Marie McCallister’s 18th-Century Audio Blog
• Digital Games – Zach Whalen’s site with links to courses
• TEDTalks – For a class based on TEDTalks, see this FSEM I co-taught with Tim O’Donnell
• How-To Videos
  • See UMW library ShowMe videos
  • See Academic Services videos
• Zotero – See History & American Studies Department Zotero group library
• YouTube

Low Levels of Technology Use

Wiki for discussions in all my courses

Blogs as Individual/Group Reflections

• Veterans FSEM – http://rwelker.umwblogs.org/2008/10/
• TEDTalks FSEM – http://ted2009.umwblogs.org/

Blogs as Research Logs (Historical Methods/Digital History)

• Topic Discussion — http://eweaver.umwblogs.org/2007/09/06/my-topic/
• Research Problems — http://amandashumaker.umwblogs.org/2007/10/22/frustration/
• Lessons Learned and Shared — http://megamcdh2010.umwblogs.org/2010/03/16/week-9/

More Intensive Uses of New Media Tools

Examples of Individual digital projects — US History in Film

• Bonnie & Clyde
• Wall Street

Class Museum of history of technology projects (http://historyoftech.umwblogs.org/)

See also Krystyn Moon’s 19^th-Century Museum – http://amst312.umwblogs.org/

Adventures in Digital history course

Digital Toolkit

UMWBlogs, Omeka.org, Simile Timeline, Delicious.com, YouTube, GoogleDocs, Flickr

• 2008 Class & Projects – http://digitalhistory.umwblogs.org

• – Historical Markers Project (HMP) — [6]
• – James Farmer Project (JFP) — [7]
• – James Monroe Papers Project (JMPP) — [8] and [9]
• – Alumni Project (AP) — [10]

Adventures in Digital History 2010 — http://dh2010.umwblogs.org

• UMW Images Project
• Life and Legacy of Mary Ball Washington
• James Monroe’s Letters as Minister to France
• City of Hospitals: Fredericksburg in the Civil War

Student Impact Survey — From November 2009 — Contact me directly for details

ProfHacker.com

Writing a Strategic Plan for Academic Technologies & Libraries

Our institution is going through a major process of strategic planning, and one on a fairly accelerated timetable. We need to have a complete draft by May and after feedback from the Board and the rest of the academic community, have a plan in place by November. I'm a member of the strategic planning steering committee, the group responsible for directing the process and for writing the final report, as well as being part of some of the discussions of the pieces of the report.

Now, strategic plans are funny things. Done right, they can set aspirational and practical goals for an institution that can drive fund-raising, shape organizational decisions, and determine the investment of key resources. Done wrong, they can create needless animosity, fear, confusion, and leave an institution in worse shape than before the process. But even when done well, the best strategic plan is useless unless the administration and the academic community as a whole relies on it, turns to it, uses it. So, the first question might be, why bother? Why invest time in an enterprise that has such a potential for failure? The answer is that I believe that this effort is a real opportunity for change, a true chance to articulate a vision for the direction of this institution, a remarkable moment in the life of the institution. I, and many of my colleagues, choose to see this as a time to think boldly about the future of the liberal arts university we care so much about.

One area in which I believe bold, visionary thought is both required and possible is in the area of academic technologies and libraries. I see the three key reasons why this area of discussion is particularly important for Mary Washington right now.

1. Virtually everyone who talks about the future of institutions of higher education sees academic technologies and libraries as critical vehicles (paths, jump-starters, incubators, facilitators -- choose your metaphor as you wish) for the growth of colleges and universities.
2. Academic technologies offer a chance for smaller institutions to compete with much larger schools with much more sizable resource budgets. Also, assuming a basic computing infrastructure is in place, digital tools and technologies also allow for a quick ramp-up time for projects, easier piloting of new ideas, access to significantly larger (and better organized) library and archival collections, and widespread changes to existing systems or practices.
   
3. Finally, UMW already has a number of critical resources in place with which we can build, create, and innovate boldly. [UMWblogs is perhaps the best known digital tool, and Faculty Academy may be the best-known event; but by "resources" I really mean a dedicated group of librarians, instructional technology artists, staff, and faculty. It is these genuinely creative, caring, thoughtful, reflective, and revolutionary people who must lead and effect the bold changes for which I'm hoping.]

In the next month, the strategic planning discussion group on Academic Technologies and Libraries needs to come up with 2-3 big goals in this area for the institution with several smaller objectives and a number of specific measurable benchmarks that would reflect progress toward those goals and objectives.

So, help me and UMW to think boldly about these critical components of a successful institution. What would be on your top list of goals for a small (~4,000 undergraduates, ~1,000 graduate and professional students) institution of higher learning? What are the necessary digital and/or library components of an liberal arts university of the 21st century? What could we do to be a leader among our peers in the fields of academic technology, library services and information resources?

Digital History and Undergraduate Digital Literacy

As so many of my posts, this began as a comment on someone else's blog that grew unwieldy as a comment.... In this case, I was joining a discussion about teaching undergraduates digital history begun by the wise Mills Kelly at edwired and continued in the comments by Sterling Fluharty of PhD in History and others. Mills expresses concern about the lack of attention to the question of undergraduate teaching in a recently published panel discussion in the Journal of American History about "The Promise of Digital History" . [As Mills points out, it's quite a useful panel other than this glaring omission of teaching undergraduates.]

So, my comment (and now this post) is an attempt to explain from my perspective why digital history is important to teach to undergraduates.

My goal in teaching undergraduates digital history is to offer students new ways of approaching their own research and thinking and writing. Our department has agreed that "digital literacy" is core to our expectations for our undergraduates (along with critical thinking and reading, the creation of original ideas, the deployment of evidence to support one's arguments, and the ability to present those arguments in sophisticated written and oral forms).

Now, I know the notion of "digital literacy" has been overused and has multiple definitions, but I actually like the phrase for people's familiarity with it and for that very richness of meanings. So, I've viewed the goals of my undergraduate digital history course through some of those definitions.

• One goal of my digital history course is to teach the most conventional form of digital literacy: How does one find and evaluate online materials for scholarly (and non-scholarly) uses? How does one begin to sift through the massive content that is available in an systematic and/or creative way? What are the pitfalls and perils, the promises and potentialities of the online information experience?
• Another facet of digital literacy is the notion of digital identity: This is a class that, through individual and group online presence (often blogs and wikis, but many other tools are available as well), explicitly engages students in discussions of their digital identity. How should we present ourselves to the online world (personally, professionally, and intellectually, but also individually and in groups)? [In future iterations it might even encourage them to create their own centralized online presence that wouldn't necessarily be housed by the university (or restricted by a single course). We've been engaged recently at UMW in a number of discussions related to this notion of enabling students to take control of their digital identity. See Jim's post and comments for one take.]
  
• Increasingly I have become convinced that a key, but often overlooked, aspect of digital literacy is a willingness to experiment with a variety of online tools, and then to think critically and strategically about a project and to identify those tools that would be most useful to that project. [Note that I'm NOT talking about training in a specific tool or even a set of tools. This is not an MS Word or Blackboard skills class. This digital history class offers students a "digital toolkit" from which to choose. There certainly needs to be some basic exposure and technical support, but part of the goal is to get students to figure out how to figure out how a new tool (system, software, historical process) works on their own.]
  
• Broadening the previous point, one of my desires for students is for them to be comfortable with being uncomfortable as they try new things. Figuring how to deal with constantly changing technology is something we all are dealing with, yet in higher education we often put students in new situations only when they first begin. Before long, they've got the process and procedures down and can churn out 8-10 page papers in their sleep. Yet what kind of preparation is that for the larger world? I know, I know. There are much larger philosophical and practical and even political issues at work here. But my point is simply that it's good for college classes to shake students (and faculty) out of their comfort zone. Real learning happens when you're trying to figure out the controls, not when you're on autopilot.
  
• Finally, I think digital literacy for undergraduates in history should encompass at least some exposure to the complex new approaches to research in the discipline offered by recent advancements in computing, including text-mining or GIS (if only because that those methods are influencing a new generation of scholarship that students will need to understand to assess). As they become more accessible and widely used, there will be more opportunities for students to also engage in the application of these tools in their own work.
  

Now, one of the issues raised by Sterling on Mills's blog post was whether the goal of an undergraduate history class was to train students for particular jobs. My response to that is both practical and pedagogical. No, I don't see this course as preparing them for particular jobs. However, I do see the class as preparing students to be adaptable citizens and workers, with a sound grounding in who they are (on- and off-line) and a willingness to try new things, to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Having said that, I've had several alums of my first digital history class get jobs that were direct results of the skills (and portfolio of projects) gained in the class. In some cases it was because of a specific tool that they'd worked with; in others it was because of the package they were able to present to their potential employers. Certainly those students felt like the class had been worth it for them.

Finally, although I've been talking specifically about one class, aspects of these ideas have made their way into most of my classes, as well as those of several of my departmental colleagues, including that of our methods class for majors. Still, I suspect there will be a need for (at least) one class in my department that is explicitly focused on Digital History for a long time to come.




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

WordCamp Ed DC 2008

So, I've gratefully accepted an invitation to speak at WordCamp Ed DC 2008 on "Teaching Undergraduates with Blogs" at GMU's Center for History and New Media on Saturday, November 22. If you're in the area, come check it out. [Heck, it's free!]

I'm planning on talking about my uses of WordPress (MU) blogs in various classes. So, WordPress as: CMS-alternative, research log, reading reaction journal, individual project site, "permanent" group project site, and potential e-portfolio. Then I'll discuss how students have responded to the process, maybe show a few good examples of students taking it to the next level.

Any suggestions for my talk? Issues to raise? Points to ponder?

A Radical Idea for the Teaching Center

As is so often the case for me, this post began as a comment on someone else's blog post (Steve at Pedablogy) and grew to a silly size, so here's my expanded version:

I've been having this radical idea lately (and it's one that may make no practical sense, given our institution's resources and structure), but here it is. In the conversation that the UMW University Committee on Digital Initiatives had with the CIO of Rhodes College, we learned that they had combined the IT and Library departments into one group. One advantage of this for students and faculty was that if you had any questions/ideas/interest about a research/informational topic/project/idea you went to a single place, where you would be referred to the person or people who could best help you (reference librarian, programmer, ITS, or some combo). From a user perspective it helps avoid the paralyzing question about where you go and it avoids some of the "siloization" that seems to be such a problem for academia.

What if the UMW teaching center worked in a similar way? [Here I'm thinking of combining, DTLT, the Speaking and Writing Centers, maybe even academic tutoring.] What if you had any kind of question about teaching or learning and you just had a single source to go to? E.g., I want to brainstorm new assignments to engage my students more fully in a text. Go to the single entry point and you have access to a number of options, a number of experts in various aspects of teaching and learning. Maybe you can talk with someone from the speaking center and someone else from DTLT to create a project.

Imagine what it would be like to be able to have all of those resources in one place, easily accessible to faculty and students. Imagine what collaborations might emerge. Another benefit of having all those groups under one institutional roof would be that they would be able to talk to each other and bridge some of those silos of effort and innovation. [I'm not so naive to think the silos would disappear.] Another potential benefit might be streamlining of spaces and resources and administration.

Obvious Cons: It would take a special group of leaders to make this work. It would require combining some radically different departmental cultures. It might result in fewer people working to support faculty and students in these areas (the dark side of "streamlining"). It risks restricting the nimble, creative nature of at least one of those departments. With the wrong leader, it risks overemphasizing one method or approach over others. Perhaps it should just focus on pedagogy and leave student services where it is.

What am I missing here? [I'm sure a great deal.] And, if the plan itself is impractical, how could we take some of best aspects of it and implement them now, in 2 years, in 5 years?

Quick update on Digital History

The semester and several of my larger responsibilities are coming to a head at the same time, but I wanted to pass on a quick update on the Digital History Seminar. My sense with 4 weeks left in the semester is that although some of the project groups are beginning to reach a stopping place, that most of the groups are beginning to comprehend how much they still have left to do. This realization is causing some tensions in the groups, especially as some people look around and think that they are further along in their work than other members of their group. There is also the issue for some groups of trying to coordinate the various efforts and approaches of 4-5 different people. And I suspect there are some groups still trying to hammer out their vision for their project.

All of this is okay, all of this is expected, and only part of it has to do with the technological aspects of the class. I think these groups, though some may have some stressful moments ahead, will build on the significant work already accomplished to finish some impressive projects.

Responding to a Post about Teaching and Technology

One of our students, Joe McMahon, has posted a blog entry about the problems related to the (mis)use of technology by professors. [It's amusingly titled, "You Can’t Make Me Drink the Kool-Aid: Part One."]

I wrote one of the longest comments I've ever written and decided I spent enough time on it to repost it with slight modifications here.

I asked others for their opinions on this piece and now Gardner's called me out on this as well, so here goes.

I would say that blogging (or wiki-ing, or any assignment, technology-based or otherwise) needs to be created with a purpose. I suspect that all of my colleagues have a goal (or often multiple goals) in mind when they create an assignment. What do I hope to accomplish? What form should it take? What sources do I expect students to engage with? How creative/analytical/exploratory/argumentative do I want students to be? How much freedom should they have to shape their own assignments? The list goes on and on.

For me the question about the use of technology is integral to every assignment I create. [Of course writing your papers on lined note pads is using technology. But Joe is raising the point that for some of these assignments the technology is transparent and well known, allowing students to focus on the content (their argument, their research, their style) without having to spend time figuring out to create a new page, while for others the time spent (in and out of class) figuring the tech out distracts from the focus on content.] I get that. As a result, it's a conscious choice (one of many that I make when creating an assignment and a class) when I ask students to learn a new technology in order to complete my course. [And frankly I try to always make my thinking on the goals of assignments transparent to students (regardless of the tech involved), although not always at the beginning of the class -- sometimes having them struggle a bit on their own is part of the intended process.]

Where I think I really have an issue with the post's argument is with the notion that students are losing out on content by spending time learning a new technology. First of all, every course I create leaves out much, much, much more "content" than I can possibly cover in a single semester. So, each class is a series of choices I have to make about what gets left out. Are students disadvantaged by the material I leave out of my US History Survey on the battles of Revolution so that I can focus on the popular culture of the time? Maybe, but since I can't cover everything then I have to focus on the areas that I think are most important in creating a general student experience of learning about the past.

I'll give you another example with even more of a parallel: I could probably cover those Revolutionary battles if I didn't spend a third of class time engaged in class discussions of primary sources about the Revolution (and other topics), but instead lectured every class period. Lecturing is an incredibly efficient way to dispense content, though fairly problematic in terms of learning content and even worse if you want to build more skills than just passive note-taking and oral processing. I choose to leave out historical content in order to encourage a set of academic skills that I think are useful beyond the classroom (reading primary documents, understanding context, placing yourself in the past, contributing orally to an ongoing discussion, connecting the words of people in the past to the modern perspectives).

For me the use of (newer) technology fits this category as well. Yes, I'm asking students to do something new, or to push themselves, or to think about doing something in a different way, and yes, that potentially takes away from their time to read (or learn) about those darn battles, but that's a choice I've made as the creator of the course. That choice is based in my desire to balance the skills and content portions of my class (that's an over-stated dichotomy here) to provide the best possible experience for the students going forward, not just in that course, but hopefully in others as well.

[I haven't discussed engaging students directly here. I would simply echo Gardner's perspective on this in his comments on the post, adding only that by being as transparent as possible about my thinking with my students that I'd like to think I've been fairly successful as engaging a sizable percentage of them over the years.]

Joe has followed up his first post with a series of suggestions for professors thinking about using technology in the classroom, many of which I agree with. He's also suggested a Faculty Academy session with students and faculty brainstorming about ways to increase student engagement related to technology. Sounds like a good idea.

What is Learning (and What Are We Teaching)?

This question comes from Shannon over at Loaded Learning. Her recent blog post asks "What Is A Student’s Job?" Steve at Pedablogy has decided to ask his first-year advising students to respond to Shannon's post. I'll be very interested to see if they take him up on it and what they have to say.

Shannon's question about the "students' job" rightly raises questions of students' responsibility for their own education. I was struck, however, by the implications for college professors (heck, for the mission of higher ed itself) in the challenges raised by Shannon's post.

What is college preparing student’s for? Is it to be academics? Skilled people for the work force? Contributing members of society?

For the most part it feels like college is training us to be academics, but I don’t think the college is really aiming for that, or should be aiming for that. Of course some people will go on to be educators and work in a highly specialized area of their major, but most likely the vast majority won’t. I will also say that besides content there are goals and themes that carry through college, being able to critical think, speak well, write well, etc. But at times college can really seem like k-12 redux where the content is just more in depth and the papers about the content are longer.

These issues are not new, but they resonate for me at this particular time. I've been working on making students' work more transparent to others (in and out of the academy) and more (explicitly) relevant to them post-college.* And a new longitudinal study suggests that so-called "career-oriented majors" find their post-college footing more quickly than so-called "academic majors". Now, I'm sensitive to the notion that this focus on post-college work can easily get away from much of what is great about learning and teaching in higher education. But there are real pressures facing the academy in clarifying our relevance (and justifying our high expense) to the larger world. At a minimum, I think it's worth reexamining our goals for particular classes and for the larger collegiate experience.

I'd be interested in hearing people comment on the issue of what you see your classes and our college education as doing, here or on their own blogs. [I don't want to interfere with student comments on Shannon's blog post, because I think that part of the conversation is even more important to get going.]


* [Full Disclosure: Shannon's post says nice things about one of those efforts, my Digital History Seminar.]

UPDATE: Might as well add this post from Inside Higher Ed for one take on what's wrong with Liberal Arts Colleges and we need to do to change to the conversation. (I should say that the post has some intriguing ideas, though I add it only as further additions to the larger discussion.)

Week 2 -- Still Chaotic

This week the digital history seminar addressed information architecture and web site design, the open-source presentation software Omeka, and looked at other examples of digital history projects. [With the help of DTLT's programming, semantic web touting, open-source and server guru, Patrick, of course.] Finally they split into their groups to continue brainstorming about their projects.

I suspect the notion of information architecture is still a bit overwhelming as they are just beginning to narrow down the possible choices for their projects. Figuring out how to lay out their data in a structured way is difficult to comprehend if what that data might be is still not clear. I think they really liked Omeka, though they've been running into some problems figuring out how to use it. [I've mostly told them to just play with it on their own in the test install Patrick set up, something they've had mixed success with.]

For two groups (the James Farmer project and the James Monroe Papers project) the process of deciding on the scope, nature, and form of their project is both enriched and complicated as they are working directly with interested faculty members who have expertise in their area. These two faculty members came to meet with those groups on Thursday and began the process of working with them. Getting to know each other, getting a sense for what each can bring to the process, and getting a feel for various expectations were all part of the process of that meeting.

I'm still very excited about the class and I continue to enjoy going in each day. I'm a little concerned that content is still secondary in the students' minds as they struggle with the various tools and skills they're being shown. I'm going to need to continue to remind them (and me) that the digital tools and skills are just different ways of presenting what they want to say.

"Uncomfortable, but not paralyzed"

I gave my digital history class a "pep talk" at the end of last week to address the concerns some of them had about feeling overwhelmed and uncertain about exactly what I wanted them to do this semester.

I explained that I wanted them to be uncertain, that I wanted them to be shaken out of their normal writing and researching experience, that it was in those conditions that they were most likely to learn. However, I explained that I wanted them to not be so overwhelmed that they felt like they couldn't do anything. I told them I wanted them to be "uncomfortable, but not paralyzed." It sounded funny after I said it (no faculty quote t-shirts, please) but it's a good summary of the environment I hope to create in this class. [Though comfortable is the ultimate goal.]

It came up again today in class as the students looked blankly when they were asked if they had any questions. So I asked, "uncomfortable or paralyzed?" They laughed and we moved forward.

I'm still concerned that some people are closer to paralyzed than uncomfortable, but I think they're willing to ask questions when they're stuck.

Web Filtering and the Schools

Fair warning: This is a rant about the inability to access certain social tools in certain K-12 school systems. [For another rant on a similar subject see this rejection of over-the-top web-related fears in education.]

I've presented and talked with a number of different K-12 teachers from a number of different school districts in my roles as a history professor and as a relative of numerous such teachers.

I've increasingly been annoyed by the trend among many school districts to block access from their networks to more and more websites. Now, let's be clear. I understand that there is a great deal of material out there that we'd rather our students did not look at. But the process of filtering and blocking is done is such an awkward, blunt manner that the process of teaching is being impacted. [This is not to mention my problem with the notion that blocking access makes these things go away; we should instead be teaching students to engage the Internet in responsible ways.]

Let me give you some examples.

• del.icio.us and ma.gnolia.com -- social bookmarking sites -- I tried to demonstrate del.icio.us to a group of teachers recently, only to find that it was blocked, for reasons no one could explain. -- How exactly are these a threat to individuals? Seriously, can somebody explain this one to me?

• Basic Searches -- I was on a K-12 school network and trying to find a citation for a friend to a scholarly article on Civil War prisons. I remembered the title, "Houses of Horror," but was stymied by the keyword filter placed by the school system on the Google Search I ran. Now, I was able to find a workaround to locate the citation, but finding things online are difficult enough without such restrictions.

• YouTube -- YouTube is blocked by many school systems, and perhaps I can understand why. However, there are many useful videos on there for history (and other) teachers. Why can't teachers access such materials, even if students can't? Why block an incredibly useful resource for teachers? [I know there are walled garden version of these: TeacherTube, unitedstreaming, etc. But none of these are YouTube, the largest and most important of the video sites.]
  

The two biggest problems I have with the filtering are:

1) It ignores the reality that most students will figure out a way around such filtering. Or even if not, they'll find this stuff outside of school, and likely outside of the guidance of the people who are trained to teach students how to process information in a responsible way. At the least, guided time online outside of walled Internet gardens better prepares students to be better Net citizens. How are students to learn information literacy if they get only a filtered version in the place where they are supposed to be learning critical thinking, source evaluation and knowledge creation?

2 ) It shows a remarkable lack of trust for teachers themselves. Blocking teachers' access suggests that although they are trusted with teaching 20-40 students at any given time, they are not capable of figuring out which sites are appropriate and which are not. The filtering systems used are too often blunt objects which make it harder for teachers to do their jobs well. [I've talked to teachers who've never been on YouTube, never heard of del.icio.us, never tried any one of a number of tools central to Web 2.0, and the main reason is that they don't have access to them in the classrooms and schools where they spend so many hours each day.]

I acknowledge that K-12 school systems face real problems in protecting children and young adults from the worst that is online. I understand much of the effort that they've made in this area, and comprehend that there are very real financial and technical constraints. However, in order for school districts to prepare their students for the digital world in which so often live, filtering systems have to become more targeted, and until they are, teachers need to be able to bypass those systems to gain access to some sites that are wrongly blocked.

Am I off the mark here? Am I missing something? Are there other obvious sites/tools being blocked I haven't listed here? Let me know.