Online Learning

I have never had the experience of teaching an online course, but I have had plenty of experience as a student in these classes. I’ve taken four classes that were taught completely online as well as one that was a hybrid class where we only met in person every other week while the weeks we didn’t meet were taught online. These classes were also diverse in that they were in several different disciplines: criminal justice, homeland security, and sociology. I believe the amount of online classes I’ve been able to take as well as the range of fields they were in speaks to the acceptance and popularity of these classes. Additionally, I should say that only one of these classes was an undergraduate course while the rest were at the graduate level which I think shows one of the main benefits of these classes which is the flexibility to complete the course work at a pace that better works for the individual. This is particularly helpful for graduate students who, the majority of which are also working as well as attending classes.

 

So, why did I make the choice to sign up for so many online classes? All of it was actually not my choice since two of the online classes I’ve taken were required courses for me and only available online. One course (the hybrid course) was taken on the recommendation of another professor. The other two courses were taken for (a) the comfort and convenience I thought it would bring to my schedule of being able to work from home and (b) because I thought the courses would be easier than traditional courses. My assumption about comfort and convenience were certainly true (which goes for the online classes I was required to take as well as those I chose to take) because it freed me from the time I would normally be on campus and traveling to and from campus. They were also convenient in the ability for me to work at a quicker pace than normal. I often would do the work for future weeks well ahead of time, which freed up my schedule even more.

 

My second assumption about the courses being easier than traditional courses, which seems to be the big assumption about online classes from most people, was largely untrue in my experience. Yes, I said I was able to complete weeks worth of work in advance, but that has less to do with the difficulty of the material and more to do with the way I work because I am sure most people in the class were not doing this. Also, as I said, almost all of these classes for me were graduate level courses so there was a high expectation of performance in them. Also, if you don’t like writing, these classes were not easy classes. I think another assumption about online classes is that they are easy because you just take tests online and you have your book in front of you and you just look up all the answers. I had a couple quizzes I took online for these classes, but the vast majority of the work was writing on discussion boards and writing multiple papers. I would say that the papers I’ve had to write for online classes were greater in the frequency in which I had to write them and the expected page length than those of traditional classes.

The Problem of Active Learning

What will you see if you stop by the majority of classrooms on campus? I’d wager that you would see a professor standing behind a podium or at the front of the room while he or she lectures as the students furiously copy from the PowerPoint presentation on the screen. I’ve been the student getting the hand cramps many many times.

In class, we discussed the concept of active learning where the professor engages the students with a variety of different activities to learn the material apart from what I described above. This sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it? It would get the students to participate more and perhaps take a greater interest in the material. Also, it probably breaks up the monatony for the professor who has probably given that same PowerPoint lecture a dozen times. While active learning sounds like it has many positives, it seems like universities keep it from being practiced more due to the size of classes they allow.

While I said active learning probably breaks up some monatony for the professor, active learning also seems to require a lot of additional work out of the professor for planning these engaging classes. When the number of students in a class reaches a certain level, it becomes against the professor’s interests to really try and play with active learning or other different teaching styles due to the time they would have to put in and subsequently take away from something like research. I currently TA for one professor who is teaching two courses this semester. Next semester, she will be teaching three courses. The new, third course is just a second section of one of the courses she is already teaching. When I heard this, I assumed that meant that the course was being offered in two sections to decrease the class size and instead of having one class of 50 students, there would be two classes of 25. However, instead, now there will be two classes of 50. Because of this, her and I have talked about sitting down at the end of this semester and discussing ways to “streamline” the course, essentially removing certain aspects of the class (such as some of the class activities) to make it easier on her to teach since she is on the tenure track and needs more time devoted to research.

Blackboard

Greetings and salutations. Last class we had a long discussion on the pros and cons of Blackboard for both teachers and students. Seeing as how I fit into both of those groups I have some mixed feelings on Blackboard. Before I get into that, I should provide one piece of context to better understand how I approach things. Generally, I am a late adopter of technology. I didn’t have a home computer until my junior year of high school (I’m only 25), I kept dial-up internet way longer than anyone else did, I still don’t have a smartphone of any kind (any kind of touch-screen freaks me out because I’m convinced I’ll break it right away), over Spring Break I finally replaced my 15+ year old two-ton television set for a bigger yet much less heavy HD TV, and right now I’m having a great internal debate over whether to embrace the whole e-reader (if I get one it’ll definitely be some kind of Kindle) thing.

So, needless to say, when I started college I had no idea what Blackboard was and I was quite hesitant about it once I found out what it was and the role it would be playing in the coming years for me. I actually kind of dreaded checking it for a while. My own anxieties aside, once I got comfortable with it, Blackboard is great for students. While it is one more thing you have to check, if, like me, you were taking six classes a semester as an undergrad, you can check all  of your classes from one website. There is one caveat, however, as a student you actually have to check Blackboard regularly. Since I’ve gotten added to various Blackboard courses as a teaching assistant I’ve been able to check some of the statistics available to faculty and have noticed that some students will go MONTHS without checking the Blackboard site for a class.

This isn’t all the student’s fault since some professors don’t use Blackboard to its full potential and as I said just use it to house a copy of their syllabus. I think a reason for this, at least at VCU and in my department, has to do with the number of adjuncts we use. Adjuncts teach the majority of our introductory classes that have the largest amounts of students and the adjuncts also have the least amount of experience with Blackboard. Over the past summer, my department chair asked me to meet with two new adjuncts two weeks before the semester started to give them a tour of how to use Blackboard (neither even knew what it was) and of course the first question they both asked was “How do I post my syllabus”?

 

On a completely unrelated personal note:

I PASSED MY COMP. EXAM. That deserved all caps. Meeting with my concentration advisor next week. There’s a small chance I may be done with all my course work, but I’ll probably at least have one more semester before I move into the dissertation phase.

“The Montillation of Traxoline” or “The Role of Assessment in Learning”

A couple of blog posts ago I wrote about my experience taking the comprehensive exam for my PhD program (no word on the success of that yet, by the way). That purpose of that exam is twofold. First, the exam is used to determine if I’ve learned the things in my classes that I was supposed to learn and second, am I ready to move on to the next phase of the program . Basically, performance on the comprehensive exam is how my progress in the program is being assessed.

 

This leads me into the topic from last class which was about the role of assessment in learning. How do we evaluate learning? Well, before class this week I would have told you through grades or the exams and other assignments through which grades are received. While that is part of assessment (which would summative assessment), there is also formative assessment which focuses on understanding how students are learning and improving their performance. This type of assessment would seem to capture the true essence of what education is about, but does this mean there is no place for grades? I think the answer to that is of course not. There have to be formal evaluations of students even if it is just for “sifting and sorting”.

 

To jump back to my personal experience with the comprehensive exam, obviously that is a case of summative assessment. It can also certainly be thought of as a tool for “sifting and sorting” since if you fail the exam twice you’re kicked out the program. Was that exam the best way to determine whether I’ve learned what I was supposed to have learned in the program so far? I don’t necessarily think so…after all, wasn’t passing the classes the exam questions were based on evidence of me learning the material? If anyone wants to take a stab at explaining that to me, I’d welcome it.

Learning Taxonomies

Some thoughts on the three learning taxonomies presented in class:

 

Bloom’s Taxonomy

This is the one that makes (a) the most sense to me and (b) I think is the best representation of how I learn. As you move up the pyramid model the level of thinking becomes more complex. You also can’t make it the top of the pyramid (the highest level of thinking) without moving your way through the other levels. Each level builds upon the last.

 

Shulman’s Table of Learning

I like the circular nature of the way this model is shown. Although, by using a circular model, it seems like you could jump into the process at any point and you’ll come all the way around. When you look at the descriptions of the stages though, it seems like you have to start at the “engagement and motivation” stage. This stage is actually the only real issue I have with this model. This stage states, “Learning begins with student engagement. Engaged students are actively involved in their own learning and are motivated to acquire knowledge and develop understanding”. I would make the argument that I’ve learned things without any real engagement and motivation. I can tell you things from classes that I had no interest in taking and only did so because I had to take something (let’s say for elective credits). I was just there to get the grade so I could progress in a program. I did not have the motivation to actually “learn” in those classes and in no way would I have described myself as “engaged”. However, I suppose the argument could also be made that I was engaged and motivated to learn simply by showing up to the classes or going to the classes to progress toward a larger learning goal.

 

SOLO Taxonomy

It took me a few tries to grasp what was going on here and I think that’s because my eyes automatically go to the graph-like representation of the taxonomy and that thing makes my heard hurt. When I cover that up and just look at the description of it, it makes a lot more sense. This is probably my least favorite of the taxonomies, but to be honest, none of these taxonomies are really bad. They all make sense.

 

Professional Specialty Seminar

Last night was the start of my second PFF class for the semester: Professional Specialty Seminar. Originally, there were two sections of this class: one for students in the social sciences and one for students in the hard sciences. Unfortunately, only a small amount of students signed up for both classes, so the classes were combined. Even with both classes meeting together there are only 11 students in the class. I was not exactly pleased with this going in since my biggest complaint about the first PFF class I took a few semesters ago was all the information that was not applicable to me since I am not in the hard sciences and all the information about labs and other science-related things hold no significance for me (no offense, science people). I was looking forward to something geared specifically toward the social sciences even if its not aimed at my specific discipline. So, it looks as if I’ll be hearing more about the hard sciences again. I’ll be interested to see how different this class is from my first PFF class since a lot of the material (at least looking at the syllabus) seems to cover similar ground.

The Dreaded Comprehensive Exam

Well, it has been a while since I made a blog post. The last couple weeks I’ve been preparing for my comprehensive exam in my PhD program. I’ve actually been preparing for a few months, but the last couple weeks I really kicked it into overdrive while also trying to take some time off from other endeavors to focus.

I took my exam last week which was spring break. I can definitely say this was the worst spring break I’ve ever had. Also, I was originally supposed to be presented a paper I’d written at a conference in New York City, but obviously that didn’t get to happen. Luckily one of my co-authors took over presentation duties for me.

Since the people reading this are primarily in the academic field, just to give you an idea what the exam is like for my program, the exam is a take-home and you have a full week to complete it. It’s four questions (two required and two you choose from a pool of four). Each question represents a different core class in the program. For instance, one of the required question represents a research methods class so you are given a topic and have to come up with a research design. You write 10 pages per question for a total of 40 pages in a week. Certainly the most I’ve had to write in a week.

I picked up the exam on the morning of Friday the 16th and took it straight to the coffee shop I like to write at and went right to work on it. I will say that I was happy (as I could be) with the questions I got. There was nothing I saw that left me completely dumbfounded (unlike some of the questions I’ve seen on previous versions of the exam they make available on Blackboard). While each, individual, question was not bad, having four of them at once to finish in a week was very daunting. I did manage to get it done though and turned in. Now to wait to hear my fate.

Since I’ve passed this milestone in the program (and hopefully PASSED this milestone) I can get back into the swing of things. It took me a few days to recover and I needed some time to relax, but now I plan on jumping back into this blog on a more regular basis. I plan on making one more post tonight. Aside from taking the PFF class that required this blog I also enrolled in an additional PFF class that starts tonight. I’ll be adding my thoughts on that class later.

Twitter-gate

Well, I’m on Twitter and I’ve tweeted…granted, I’ve only tweeted twice…and both times were in the class that talked me into using Twitter, but I’ve still tweeted. I’m a tweeter. I’ll admit, It was entertaining with everyone in class using it at the same time and seeing our tweets come up on the screen, however it was just entertaining and still not something I see myself using in the classroom. It is still not even something I really see myself using on a personal level either. Like I said, I haven’t made any additional tweets since last class. I don’t even think to check Twitter regularly, although maybe if I had one of those fancy phones like a lot of people and I had the ability to check it at any moment, like in a long line, then I might feel differently. If I do think of something I’d like to tweet, I have to try to remember it and wait until the next time I’m at a computer to do so. I’m currently only following the people in my class and a couple of comedians I like a lot since I at least get some laughs out of their tweets.

When work follows you home

I’ve heard that one of the great things about a career in academics is that, aside from when you actually have to be in the classroom, you pretty much make your own schedule. Academics isn’t a 9 to 5 job. I’ve also heard that this is one of the negatives of academia as well. Since there is no 9 to 5 there is no official point in the day where you can say that work is over. You decide yourself when you’re done working. If you’re somewhat obsessive or neurotic (as I believe most academics are to varying degrees) you never really feel done because there is always that one last thing you can finish or that one thing you can try to get ahead on or this new idea that you want to flesh out a bit. Even when I think I’m done for the day or I think that I just can’t possibly work on whatever project anymore, a little while later I’ll at least start thinking about my work again either because I thought of a potential solution to a problem I’m having or just that voice in my head that tells me I should be working on things will get louder.

To be fair, I do have a lot on my plate. I’m a PhD student taking 3 classes and 1 Preparing Future Faculty course. I take my comprehensive exam in just about a month now. I TA for two classes. I’m trying to finish a paper I hope to send to a journal. I work a shift at a restaurant every weekend. Despite being pulled in several directions at once, I feel like I do need to find a way to distance myself from work better than I currently do. I guess I’m saying I could use some more “me” time. I miss playing videogames. I miss reading something that’s not a textbook or article besides on winter and summer break. Maybe if I could be more focused and productive during the times I feel like I should be working, work wouldn’t follow me to the Byrd Theater and try to talk to me about what I should be doing and making me feel guilty while I’m sitting there waiting for the Muppets to start.

Twitter…ehh

So I’m doing the readings for tomorrow’s class and they both revolve around the use of Twitter in teaching. I look at the overview for the class tomorrow as well and see that not only will we be talking about Twitter, but we will also be setting up Twitter accounts that we will maintain and use throughout the semester. When this class started I was slightly apprehensive about the idea of creating a blog, but I could see the usefulness of it and I resolved to at least give it a good try. This Twitter thing though…I have to say I have several negative feelings about Twitter and I’ve been against creating one and just kind of hoping the Twitter craze would pass by sooner rather than later. I also have a very difficult time seeing how I could actually use it in a class I would teach. Like this blog, I’ll still give Twitter a try because I want to get everything I can out of this class, but there is going to need to be some serious convincing on the instructor’s part tomorrow.