Week 6 -- Wrapping Up

Perhaps the best part of BOLT is viewing an online course through the eyes of a student.  We looked at the format of a course, as well as all of the tech tools, as students. 

This was quite beneficial.  I can see where and how others would get frustrated, how much they need to learn about the tech in order to complete parts of the course, and where and how they could cut corners.

BOLT confirmed a simple fact to me.  Technology is nice at times, but it has many pitfalls.  Without awareness of them, an online course would fail almost instantly.  I liked Voicethread, but the drawbacks were quite obvious. It requires a steep initial learning curve, and complex threads would take a lot of time to assess and evaluate (as an instructor).  It seems to me that all of the tech tools had challenges like this.

As well, I am still convinced that the profile of an online learner is an organized, self-motivated person who doesn't need much real social interaction to thrive in a class.  I don't think that those people are common.  Throughout BOLT, I found that I tended towards laziness, towards doing the bare minimum, etc.  Granted, BOLT isn't really a college class, but I think that my attitude here would be similar to the attitude of others who take a class that they are just trying to get through.

I wonder if such an attitude exists for me because of the way I've always used computers and the Internet.  Perhaps it's a constructed habit?

So now, whenever I teach an online course, I will keep all of the above in mind.  Which should help make that online course reasonably, if not very, successful. 

Week 5 -- Chunking

As usual, I share my concerns and criticisms.  This is my way of working out struggles with the readings.  Don't take this as too negative.

What I'm having trouble with is the concept of "chunking."  I see how this applies to certain courses--where facts, equations, methods build into more advanced facts, equations, methods, theories.  "Chunking" isn't so easy in a liberal arts class, where associations between "content" occur in dialogue, digressions, and the like.  I think that we do chunk content now in a f2f course, though so often it doesn't build up to, but instead connects with material.  Sometimes these connections happen in class, but at other times students must themselves connect the pieces in the chunks, as it were.  They impose organization on material that's already there.

(I say this as I read Dante, Aristotle, Thomas Pynchon, etc. this summer, and make connections between them.  If I put them altogether in a section of a course, am I necessarily "chunking" them?)

I don't see how "chunking" is part of a hypertext world.  The entire premise of hypertext (i.e., the form(s) of the Internet) is that the user proceeds from one text through to another text through yet to another.  "Surfing" the Internet is the casual term for this, but we do this kind of passing through texts when we are looking for something or learning something.  (I went to Wikipedia looking for an entry, which linked to other connected entries that I click on, and so on.  Or, I went to amazon.com looking for a book last night, found it, saw a link to another, similar book, went to it and looked at it, then through to other recommended books, ad infinitum.)

So is "chunking" on in a hypertext space the illusion of organization on the part of the organizer, the teacher?  As students take our online courses, they are surfing, passing through, all of the linked portals between texts.  And they see the possibilities on every page to pass through to more texts.  Students may not necessarily follow the paths we lay down for them, because we are not aware of all the possible paths we are constructing.

I suppose that the modules are a way of limiting passageways through our course material online, but if we link to places beyond our LMS, we are inviting travel beyond the chunked content.

How does learning, sound learning, work in a hypertext environment?

Week 4 -- BOLT -- VoiceThread

Voicethread fascinates me, and it may even be very useful in a face-to-face course.  It seems to accomplish what I already do in most classes.  In them, students must interact intensely and closely with texts.  Usually, we put a selection from a text up on the screen and look carefully at it.  We also draw on it, circle words, write on it.

Voicethread does all that and more.  It allows each user to comment, interpret, and provide some connection from other texts. (I like Bruce's use of Ferris Buehler in our BOLT thread, because it uses one text to interpret or describe another.)

So now I have questions:

-- At what point does Voicethread become unmanageable?  How many comments/responses are too many? 

--is there a way to thread replies, ala a discussion forum?

--what are the best kinds of responses?  I mean is video necessarily better or more engaging than audio-only?  (I don't like the text feature very much.  It's a small box that requires too much scrolling.)

I wonder if Dordt could get a trial version of Voicethread, so that we could see how well it works in our classes. I'd like to try it.

Week 3

"Ideally, learning objectives should be accompanied by measurable outcomes, which describe ways in which students will be asked to demonstrate that they have achieved the learning objectives."

We began syllabus construction this week, during which we are told that learning objectives are key.   Here we run up against the concept of "measuring outcomes."

I am a little concerned that emphasizing measurability hampers de-emphasizes that which seems somewhat immeasurable to me--critical thinking and vision or perspective.

We can't easily measure who or how well students are becoming kingdom-citizens, just as Plato wouldn't ask us to measure what a just citizen is (the telos of philosophy).  Although, yes, you are to some degree measured, assessed, by your language/rhetoric -- the verbs analyze, evaluate, etc., come up here.  

I think we are in trouble if "measure" is Cartesian (geometric) or pragmatic, where it can become focused on doing or on the world of appearances.

Although I get the difference between "understand" and "analyze," for example.  Putting the objective--what you will become AND accomplish from a course--as a verb that demonstrates internalized and actionable knowledge seems all right.  Make the objective about the whole person--the mind, heart, and body.   I think that's what an online humanities class has to do. 

Week 2 BOLT Reflections

After this week's module, I'm less confident about transitioning to an online course.  I had thought that CORE 120, our college composition course at Dordt, would be easily transferable to the realm of virtual learning.  One major reason is that all communication would be conducted in the medium in which the students had to improve--writing.

What's concerns me now is how to demonstrate the standards of a college writing course in six short weeks.  With the online modules, students work asynchronously and via pre-planned "steps."  In BOLT, we've have six modules in six weeks. 

Yet I realize that my regular course depends upon frequent feedback and some measure of disequilibrium.  Basically, I now think of my current 120 as having many, many more modules than six.  For example, students turn in a summary of an article on the second day of class.  Most of them do quite poorly, because they don't write at the course standard.  This is a shock, and other similar shocks happen, which actually helps students get used to the standard, which is higher and demands more precise work and thinking than they are used to.  (This first week of class is a module of sorts, one of fifteen weeks.)

The week-long module online won't do this work.  At least, I can't envision it yet.  Six big chunks of a summer online course are too chunky.

I'm probably better off thinking about much shorter modules--maybe 10-12 in a 6-week span.  One module every two to three days.  That way, students can receive instant feedback, can know what the standards are, can aim for them as soon as possible.  They are better off doing poorly in the first two of twelve modules than the first two of six.

All this I will keep in mind during the next four weeks.

We begin BOLT.  Online teaching training. 

So far, I've seen much from a student's perspective. Without showing up to a room filled with people, which confirms that you are in fact in the right place, the first days of BOLT online seemed disorienting.  Just me and my computer.  What am I supposed to be doing?  Where am I supposed to go?

At this point, my suspicions about the profile of a good online-learner are somewhat confirmed.  That person has to be self-motivated, self-organized, and absent anxiety about what to do and when. You have to be used to poking around the Internet, figuring things out for yourself. 

This blog is a curious project.  My wife tells me that, in her world, blogging is out and Instagram is in.  Fewer words, more pictures.   This brings to mind my second concern about online teaching: how does one even read the Internet?  Already, I feel the length of my paragraphs here are too long. 

They should be...

shorter.

I see that I have to change my writing style for the web.  Hello, sentence fragments and one-sentence paragraphs!