Jim Groom & Claudia Emerson Redux

Jim and Claudia presented (neither for the first time at Faculty Academy) on an online literary journal created by one of her classes. Calling Nonce impressive does not do it justice. Check it out for yourself.

[Nearly 40 people crammed into the room to hear them--Standing Room Only....]

One particular point raised by Claudia that intrigued me was the notion of applying to change that particular class from 3 credits to 4, allowing for a "lab" component (or perhaps recognizing the increased time that developing and implementing some of these skills may take). [I'm aware that there are some complications related to campus expectations for what constitutes a four-credit course. Let's set those aside for a second.] What do people think about the idea of a "digital lab" component for more credit?

"The Choir's Getting Larger"

In a conversation today about the difficulty of convincing colleagues of the utility of technology-enabled teaching and a multiplicity of pedagogical approaches, and the concern that the people at Faculty Academy are often the people who have already bought into these notions, one person observed, "We may be preaching to the choir, but the choir's getting larger."

I was taken aback for a moment, but then I realized he was right. Just look at the program for the Academy and you can see an impressive array of departments, ideas, pedagogies, and interests, all who add their voices to the mix.

I would add to that (if I can take the metaphor a step further) that I suspect that the larger choir and its members have never been more in sync with the others in the choir, never more engaged with each other as teachers and scholars, never more able eager to see what others are working on, never been more ready to embrace teaching as a perpetual beta.

[Why now? I suspect it's a confluence of larger trends such as easier-to-use web tools, the rise of digital public learning spaces, and a willingness of students to engage in these online conversations/creations, as well as local strengths such as leadership, infrastructure and support, and the tech evangelism of a key group of people.]

Where do we go from here? Why, back for Day Two of Faculty Academy, of course!

Gardner, Steve, Jerry, and Jim Rock Room B122

Jeff McClurken

I'm sitting here in the panel discussion on "Small Pieces Loosely Joined". I can't decide whether I'm more overwhelmed by the lost opportunity in not using the tools they talked about in my classes this semester, or by my excitement in being able to use them in my classes this fall....

Count me in as the newest fanboy of WordPress Multi-User....

Faculty Academy 2007 is Coming!

Jeff McClurken

Wednesday and Thursday, May 16 & 17 at UMW’s College for Graduate and Professional Studies. See http://facultyacademy.org/blog07/ for more information.

My real blogging began about a year ago, soon after the last Faculty Academy. I'm presenting this year on my class-based wiki projects. Hope to see you all there.

The Checklist Phenomenon

Shannon has been blogging about her first-year experiences over at Loaded Learning. In her most recent post she describes her frustration with some of her fellow students who seemed to just be in college to check off a bunch of boxes.*

The checklist phenomenon is one that has always bugged me, though I think I understand where it comes from. It's easier to go about one's daily life without having to question everything, without having to constantly reexamine one's direction, path, education. There is a reassuring certainty to having a checklist, to knowing exactly what one needs to do that is less draining than having to think too much constantly about one's future or present.

I say this not to rag on college students in particular; I see it in my own life and among my colleagues and our attitudes toward the curriculum. If we know that students will take X set of classes from Y set of categories, then we can be reasonably certain that they have been exposed to a set of ideas that we call "liberal arts" and a major with a particular set of skills and fluencies, and therefore we can rest easy about it.

I've been thinking about this assumption lately, however, as our institution reexamines its general education curriculum. I'm not resting as easy as I have been with our Gen Ed course structure. Why? Because what we don't know with as much certainty is what the students actually get out of these classes, or if checking all those boxes off truly makes them better students or better employees or better human beings. We also don't know if those students make any connections between the various checked boxes or their learning. [With a few exceptions, we don't encourage such connections in structural or specific ways.] I'm beginning to wonder if what we need is fewer requirements for specific content areas and more requirements for self and guided reflection by students on their work, their goals, on their education itself.

Of course, that might still create a checklist of courses and/or requirements that students (and faculty) could check off without the kind of buy-in that real learning and teaching would need. Still, it seems like it would be a start in the right direction, an acknowledgement that we as an institution valued the connections between their various classes, between their classes and their learning, between their learning and their lives, and between their education and their participation as members of larger physical and intellectual communities.

Thoughts? How might we implement such an approach beyond individual classrooms or particular instructors or interested students (because I think that kind of breadth is essential the kind of reflected learning)? [Given the audience for this blog, I suspect I'm preaching to the choir here, and, if so, help me figure out what the counter argument(s) is/are. Why wouldn't this work (and why are they wrong)? :-]




*I think many of us at MW would agree that Steve's Freshman Seminar should be seen as a success if its only contribution (which this is not) was to encourage this depth of reflective public writing by students.

A Surreal History Mashup Moment

So, I'm just wondering how good Google's directions to the Lost Colony are. I guess their search engines really can find anything....






[This comes from an interesting attempt to build historical maps using the My Maps function on Google.]

Confessions of a del.icio.us Addict

In recent weeks, I've become increasingly enamored of the social network and bookmarking service known as del.icio.us. I set an account up nearly 2 years ago now, but largely used it as online bookmark storage. Gradually, through several friends (online and off) I became aware of its other features. Caleb McDaniel (formerly of Mode for Caleb) demonstrated the numerous tagging capabilities through a couple of emails and conversations. [Looking at my own del.icio.us account (del.icio.us/kurastan90) you can see that my earliest del.icio.us links are not tagged, or if they are, the tags were added later.] Yet, even with the new tagging making my bookmarks more accessible to me, I was still using it as an amped-up version of my own bookmarks in IE or Firefox. It was Martha who alerted me to the use of a network and "for:" tags in del.icio.us in this post. [For the uninitiated, del.icio.us allows users to add other users to their network, allowing you to see the sites they're tagging. The "for:" tag allows you to send particular users in your network particular sites in which you think they may be interested.] I began to add various people to my network (first DTLT members, then people from CHNM, and soon others) and realized how many cool sites I had been missing. As I pored over their various sites, I began to mark particular sites for them, and slowly they began to tag them for me as well.

I have managed to convert other colleagues to del.icio.us, and they too have become addicted to the ease, the social bookmarking, the tagging, and the sharing of good sites. At this point, if I run across a link I that I think someone might want, and that person is not in my network, I'm actually a little annoyed. I think about how much easier it would be if I could just add the "for:" tag and they would be able to see it.

I realized recently that I have created a network of people I know (to varying degrees) who scour the internet for me (and I for them). Although we have overlapping interests and therefore look at some of the same sites, we're different enough that they run across resources I don't and vice versa. In this chaotic, information-saturated online world, having a few (or 14) expert researchers sharing the best (or maybe just fun) resources can prove an incredible boon.

Now, to figure out how to add this to my goals for digital literacy and to my classes this fall. More to come....