Thoughts at the End of CIC Online Humanities Consortium I

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I have been asked to share some thoughts with the faculty and administrators who will be starting the second CIC Online Humanities Consortium, funded by the Mellon Foundation. We just finished the concluding workshop of the first consortium yesterday. I've gathered some thoughts.

We carried out assessments of about the efficacy of online learning with the great folks at Ithaka S+R. One finding was that students say that what they liked best about their online courses was flexibility. This was their number one issue.

I will admit that this made me a bit sad. I scoured the internet for digital information and projects to enliven my course – to make it collaborative and up to date and exciting. And for that I get a “thumbs up for flexibility?!”

But I also understand this. The demographics for college students have changed even since when I started teaching more than 15 years ago. Students are busier than ever; they have jobs, or two or even three. They often have obligations to family. And they may not be the magical age of 18-22, which we sort of assume the students will be. So, sure, I can see how flexibility may be the main issue for them. But that also doesn’t mean it’s the only reason we need to offer these types of courses.

At the first Consortium's concluding workshop, we talked about how our digital/online courses introduced students to how to use media/the digital for something other than selfies and social media exposure. I believe that these type of courses help us to harness the digital world and make it work for education and student learning. These are skills that are essential for our students. And I completely reject the notion that they are “digital natives.” They are “digital consumers” like most of us, but they - like the rest of us - need to learn how to harness the power of the digital world for their future jobs and lives. From my experience, being IN an online course can help students learn these lessons.

Thus, I believe it is imperative that faculty become familiar and comfortable with digital pedagogy. This online consortium, and through it my work with Steve Kerby, who is an Instructional Technologist/Guru, has taught me a few things that I find are influencing my teaching, in all its formats:

START WITH LEARNING OBJECTIVES. Everything is about that. Not content – not topics. It’s about learning objectives.

Think about the learning objectives and "chunk" the course into modules that make sense together.

Then think backwards:

• Make sure you have the right activities for students to do/read/watch to get to those learning objectives for that “chunk” of the course?

• Make sure there is adequate time to reflect and THINK about the module. They may need time to circle back after answering a question, but then reading others’ comments on the discussion boards.

• Make sure you have adequate and appropriate assessments to see if they learned that which you hoped/intended.

I now approach every class this way: what do I want them to learn from this course, from this topic, from this reading, from this particular class meeting period. And I then build accordingly. I think it's made me a better teacher, and I'm very grateful to the CIC and my colleagues that were part of the first consortium for teaching me so much.

What are your thoughts on online teaching?

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