Sage from Afar

Posted on April 21, 2013 by greavesk

The pitfall I’d like to avoid, but know I am going to struggle with, is being the “Sage on the Stage”. One of the facets I love about teaching such large classes (600) is that it really is very much like a performance. I do feel like I am on stage. Many days I tell stories to better illustrate a concept I’m covering. When telling these stories, I could hear a pin drop in the auditorium. Sometimes I think students are much more interested in hearing the stories than they are the actual lecture content.

Maybe I can avoid being the “Sage on the Stage” by, instead of feeding students information in the form of lecture content, I could direct them to trustworthy websites where they could locate some of the lecture content themselves. I feel that where students find their information on the Web is critical, particularly for this DPD hybrid class. It is here that I can still keep my sage-like persona, as the curator of content. Once they have the necessary information, I can then guide them through the processes of applying and synthesizing the material they’ve found, and then I could tie it all together through stories in the classroom.

Additionally, an auditorium classroom doesn’t lend itself well to students participating in group activities, so the class isn’t very interactive. I am hoping that the online component of my hybrid class will allow for this type of interaction. I also hope to try group activities in the classroom now that I won’t be pressed for time trying to get through lecture material.

I anticipate this hybrid course will force me to relinquish some of the limelight, which is probably a good thing 🙂

Posted in Hybrid Course Delivery | Tagged | 2 Comments

Trying out my green thumb on Hybrid Course Design

Posted on April 19, 2013 by burnesan

Time to get the gardening gloves out, the water pale, the fertilizer, gardening tools and shears out because Spring is here. Starting as an amateur gardener, I tried out my “green thumb” several years back. I inherited a large patch of rose bushes that were planted by a previous owner. Some of the rose bushes were very mature with thick stalks and beautiful large blooms, while other bushes were younger bushes that had not reached their full maturity but had plenty of room to grow. My hardest learning lesson of improving my “green thumb” was how to properly prune these rose bushes. The first year I did no pruning…which I soon learned my lesson that no pruning results in a wilted petal mess and the mature bushes took over the smaller ones as well as the side of my house. They became overbearing nonetheless. The second year I pruned too much and sadly had less blooms that year. The bushes looked butchered and undernourished. The following years, it was still trial and error, but I managed to find a pruning system that worked when I realized that each bush should be pruned a little differently to maximize the futility of that bush and to not let one bush be overpowering or overpowered in the rose garden. After several attempts, a beautiful healthy rose garden appeared. This same pruning approach will be used when designing my hybrid course. I will apply my green thumb as a “curator of content” who uses a system of pruning that provides enough content, explanation and resources for my students to access, but helps train students to take charge of their own growth and learning. New information, resources and activities will be added to the mix of already present material in a balanced way as to not overpower or under power the significance of each. A key objective of DHE 400, my newly designed hybrid course is for students to develop professional skills needed to be successful in the job market and secure competitive good fit internship and employment opportunities. The goal is to not just “tell” students how to be successful and be the “sage on the stage” but instead to foster their growth through a balance of content, resources, professional development exercises provided in a hybrid learning environment so that students can develop into beautiful unique blooms on their own.

Posted in Hybrid Course Design | Tagged , | 2 Comments

BB 4xx/5xx Biocomputing: Molecular Simulations and Data Analysis

Posted on March 15, 2013 by hsuv

Before they disappear into the wind, our department interviews each of our graduating students with regards to our program and curriculum. A recurring comment in recent years has been a desire to learn aspects of  programming and bioinformatics/biocomputing. Seizing this opportunity to expose students to the command-line and interpreter languages, Joe and I offered to teach a course in “biocomputing” using primarily Python and MatLab.

Having only offered a dry run of the course earlier this year to get a feel of how such a course would flow and the amount of content that could be covered in one term, it made sense to design this course as a hybrid course from the get-go. So, this is not so much a course redesign as a course design. Programming, if you are not familiar with it, is quite often practiced in extreme solitude, accompanied with much head bashing. As we both learned – and continue – to program this way,  Joe and I struggled mightly with how this content could best be delivered in a standard lecture course. The opportunity to “flip” the classroom and spend the face-to-face time with discussion and application is, we felt, ideal to learning new programming skills.

In class, we are proposing to utilize “Pair Programming”, which is an agile programming technique in which two people share one computer. The driver types in the code and the navigator (or observer) reviews the code as it is being typed in. Thus the driver is free to focus on completing the task at hand, and the navigator is there as a safety net/sanity-check. Among the benefits to pair programming is better code (usually of simpler design) and shared knowledge (both specific to the task and programming in general). In the classroom it is expected  that knowledge will be passed and shared between pairs of programmers as they work, and that they will pick up programming techniques from each other. Additionally, as pair programming tends to reduce the number of bugs, morale among students should also be improved (writing a program that does what you want it to do is a nice feeling!). “Best practices” indicate that driver and navigator roles should be switched often to avoid disengagement. We also plan to switch up pairs during a coding assignment. This would necessitate that each member of a pair understands the code and the rationale for their approach so that they can explain it to the “incoming” person. Coding assignments will be given in class in order to reinforce concepts initially presented online.

That’s what we have so far…

Posted in Hybrid Course Design | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

MTH 493/593 Algebra and Geometric Transformations III

Posted on February 26, 2013 by dickt

This is the third course in a “capstone” sequence of mathematics courses for those mathematics majors who intend to pursue licensure to teach secondary school mathematics.  It is a slash course since the MS degree program for licensure draws students from other bachelor’s degree programs and those students may wish to take this course.

In this term the focus is on the application of geometric transformations in the formal mathematical study of symmetry.  That might sound dry, but it provides an opportunity to use mathematics in highly visual media, including art.  There turn out to be exactly 7 mathematical groups (a technical term) that completely categorize structurally “strip” patterns (like one might see adorning the frieze of a building) and exactly 17 mathematical groups that completely categorize repeating two-dimensional planar patterns, the so-called “wallpaper” groups.   The study of these groups lies at the heart of the course, combined with some additional topics that extend to 3 dimensions, or relax some of the strictly repeating conditions on 2-dimensional patterns.    My experience has been that students leave the course with a heightened awareness and appreciation for symmetry in the world around them (new eyes, so to speak).

I found this to be an especially attractive candidate for a hybrid course, since the online features would lend themselves to students posting photographic examples of patterns exhibiting the symmetries under study.   Also, dynamic geometry environments provide powerful tools that beg to be used in a course like this.

Posted in Hybrid Course Content, Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

WS 482/582 Global Perspectives on Women’s Health

Posted on February 23, 2013 by shirazim

In this course women’s health issues are examined from a global perspective in the context of a woman’s life and through a feminist political lens. Central to our discussions will be an analysis of the interplay among race, class, and gender in shaping particular health care outcomes. The course stresses the potential for women’s agency and autonomy with respect to improving their health and environments.
Although the course has many learning outcomes the two most important ones are for the students to be able to demonstrate a clear understanding of the impact gender inequity has on health and examine health issues affecting women globally, in terms of their cultural and social contexts, not as a rationale for practices but as a basis for understanding.
In redesigning this course for hybrid delivery approximately 50% of the course will take place in a traditional face-to-face classroom and 50% will be delivered via Blackboard. Within the course Blackboard site students will access the learning materials and syllabus, receive lectures, discuss issues, submit assignments; email other students and the instructor; participate in online activities including small groups; and display your final projects.We will meet in the class room at the start of the week to discuss the upcoming activities or to review concepts. We will also schedule guest speakers, participate in library workshops and engage in small group activities.
I’m hoping this hybrid format of learning will combine both the efficiency and accessibility of online learning with the value of peer /peer and peer/ instructor interactions .

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Redesign of Food Law

Posted on February 22, 2013 by waitecuj

Course: FST 421/521 Food Law

Food Law introduces students to the complexity and nuances of food regulation at the federal level with the focus being predominantly on Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-regulated products. The course begins with introductory/review material of legal basics including the concept of federalism, agency jurisdiction, and rule-making procedures. The middle portion of the course focuses on adulteration of foods (chemical, physical, microbial, and economic). We finish up the term discussing regulations relating to misbranding of foods. This is a relatively large enrollment (~80 students, mostly food science students) course that satisfies the Bacc Core Synthesis requirement for Science, Technology, and Society.  In the past, the course has met on MWF for 50 minutes.  We are still deciding on the exact meeting format (days and times) – trying to find that “perfect mix” of number of days and times to meet with a large class; most likely 1 in-class day for either 50 or 80 minutes.

I believe that there are many goals to our hybrid course redesign, but I am the most excited about giving the students more responsibility and ownership in the learning process.   To do this, we are transitioning from “lecture notes” (i.e., PowerPoint slides) provided on Blackboard to more appealing recorded short lectures and incorporating readings and videos into the major content of the course.  These will be used as background material for journaling online and for working as a group to create wikis about important federal court cases and student-led discussion/debate in the classroom.  I am excited about using the online portion of the course to force some level of preparation for in-class discussions and presentations.  I think this will bring a tremendous amount of interaction amongst the students; this is definitely missing from our current approach.  I am grateful for the time we have to develop the course (next offering is Winter 2014), but at the same time it seems like a long time before we get to test it out.

Posted in Hybrid Course Delivery | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Eric’s Hybrid Course in a Nutshell

Posted on February 15, 2013 by weberer

Course: SED 412/512

Foundations of Technology in Teaching Math and Science

At its core, the course I am redesigning for hybrid delivery focuses on educating pre-service teachers on effectively integrating technology into mathematics and science classrooms. This naturally involves a myriad of possibilities, but we focus on understanding what technology, any technology, can afford a teacher in the classroom that traditional instruction may not. The course typically consists of about 25 undergraduate and graduate students and is taught in both the winter and summer terms. Interestingly, the undergraduates make up most of the winter enrollment but graduate students make up the majority of the summer enrollment. During the winter, the class meets in person on Mondays and online on Wednesdays and for a short time on Friday. During the four week summer course, we meet in person Monday, Wednesday and Friday and online Tuesday and Thursday.

The in class meeting time focuses on hands on experience using technology, presenting mock lesson plans created by the teachers for their students, and followup to discussions and summaries posted during the online portion of the course. The students will spend a significant amount of their online time working in small peer groups that are assigned at the beginning of the term. They can be thought of as mini learning communities. Within these groups, students collaborate and participate in discussions, reflections on reading, interpretation of national standards for mathematics and science, and even work on a small grant proposal related to technology use in the classroom. The students will both work and revise the core assignments of the course, lesson plans, in the classroom and online setting. I link the course delivery modes by ensuring that all assignments that occur online feedback into the in person meeting or assignments that occur in the in person meeting feedback into the online portion of the course.

Of course, this is all in theory until I put it into practice this summer. However, I am excited to be learning about hybrid delivery, as I think it has potential to vastly improve the educational experience for pre-service teachers.

 

Posted in Hybrid Course Content, Hybrid Course Delivery, Hybrid Course Design | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Can’t follow directions

Posted on January 29, 2013 by hsuv

Let’s look to the future, shall we? I know we are early in the process, and I for one have very little clue about what the “online content” of our course should or will be. However, I am equally concerned about the in-class (“f2f”!) content as well. You see, I read the NY Times op-ed “Revolution Hits the Universities” by Thomas Friedman  and have been wondering about what sets a bricks & mortar university apart from MOOCs. I’m all for democratizing education, but in this op-ed, the argument that MOOCs are somehow important because 40,000 students can sign up for a free course seems like empty bean counting  Sure, this avoids Pitfall #3 “Avoid being the sage on the stage”, but certainly exacerbates Pitfalls #1 and #4. How can any person provide meaningful feedback to 40,000 students? Crowd-sourcing the grading of a writing assignment for a “class” of this size would be fraught with all sorts of problems, so would these courses simply be examples of filling “student containers” with content? I think the in-class portion of a blended course is where the B&M university can earn its pay and is one important place where tuition paying students should/will be able to perceive the value of their education. I know that hybrid courses and MOOCs are employing different paths to different ends, but if a goal of education is to teach students how to think, I hope to learn in this workshop how to reinforce thinking in both the f2f and online environments for different class sizes up to large “lecture” courses.

Posted in Hybrid Course Delivery, Integrating Online & On-Campus Learning | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Role of “Content Curator”

Posted on January 29, 2013 by pennerm

It seems the role of a “content curator” for a hybrid class can take many forms.  With unlimited time an instructor may be able to verify the validity all new content (“new content” being that introduced by students, rather than the instructor, from whatever sources they might access).  At the other extreme, the instructor would would simply let new content stand on its own – neither verifying or denying its validity.  I assume most instructors would prefer the former approach over the latter – but the issue is time. I am going on the assumption that motivated students in upper division courses will access information unfamiliar to the course instructor.

Posted in Hybrid Course Design | Tagged , | Leave a comment

No desire to be the sage on the stage

Posted on January 27, 2013 by waitecuj

In all of my years of education (too many to count), I have only truly experienced one professor that truly was a “sage on the stage” – son of a Southern Baptist preacher, he had inherited “the gift” and he could connect with the audience in a meaningful way when talking about anything or nothing at all.  Interestingly, he was the professor for an AgEd course focused on alternative teaching methods and was a major criticizer calling “lecture” to lowest form of instruction and the least effective way to learn.  I try to avoid the “lecture” as much as possible and I am excited about reorganization of Food Law to force the creation of a “lecture-minimal” course.  I am the most interested in designing course modules and assignments that lead to more student-led learning, especially in groups.  I am intrigued by the idea of having groups create wikis; I believe this is an assignment that could be very useful for our course.  Has anyone of you used these in the past?  If so, do you have examples of instructions and/or rubrics?

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments