Do Schools Kill Creativity?

Just got back from the ACTE (Association of Career and Technical Educators) conference in St. Louis. Have you ever had butter cake? It's my new favorite dessert. And maybe my new favorite meal!

That aside, however, what I really wanted to share with you today was some insight from Sir Ken Robinson. He is the author of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, as well as Out of Our Minds, a book on creativity and innovation. Sir Robinson spoke at our opening general session. He was very funny, but he also made a number of sobering points about education.

His general theme is that our schools fail to recognize anything beyond society's standard definition of intelligence or learning. (His talk reminded me of the concept of multiple intelligences, to a degree). He laments that we continue to try to teach the same way today that we taught hundreds of years ago--and that in the process, we are alienating millions of students and convincing them that education is boring, old-fashioned, and unnecessary to anything of interest or use to them.

You Tube has an animated video of a presentation given by Sir Ken. It's fun to watch, and contains much of the information he shared with us at ACTE. Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U. (The animation also made me want to revise every online lecture note I ever created and build them like this animation is built!)

A National Digital Public Library

An article in the Chronicle last week notes that plans have been underway for some time to develop a national digital public library. The goal of the project is to, "assemble the collections of archives, museums, and universities across the country."

In the last year, planning has apparently become more serious, with a target date of April 2013 to have it "up and running." It appears that there is cooperation among a number of organizations to provide funding AND to provide access to a variety of digital collections, with Sloan and Arcadia currently serving as the primary funding sources.

It's an intriguing idea, and of course, entirely possible technologically. Many challenges exist, however, as shared by Doron Weber, vice president for programs at the Sloan foundation:

"There's a massive amount of physical, logistical meetings that have to take place in the next 18 months," he said. It will be essential to get firm commitments from institutions about what they're willing to make part of the library. "Right now we have phenomenal support from most of the institutions in the country," he said. "I think it's always hard when you have to get very specific about what collections are in and what collections are out."

While the Chronicle article is password protected, there are several articles online about the concept, as well as a Wiki that houses planning information (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/dpla/Main_Page) and the DPLA page (http://dp.la/).

Blackboard "Share" Feature

Loved today's announcement that Blackboard with incorporate a "share" button into the system, allowing faculty to choose to openly share course content. It will be interesting to see how and when this is implemented and what kind of control faculty will have over what exactly they wish to release. Stay tuned!

Teaching Without 18 Graduate Hours in a Subject? GASP!

"But here, it's O.K. that I don't know something. I can figure it out, and my job is to help the students do the same thing. It's very collaborative." This quote from Sarah Benson, an art history and comparative literature professor at St. John's College, refers to her experience teaching geometry at the request of her college. She begins by noting that, "There is bit if imposter syndrome." Ms. Benson was asked to teach geometry precisely because she knew very little about it. Now THAT'S placing trust in your faculty!

"As much of academia fractures into ever more specific disciplines, this tiny college still expects--in fact, requires--its professors to teach almost every subject, leveraging ignorance as much as expertise."

This article, "Seeing Value in Ignorance, College Expects Its Physicists to Teach Poetry," from the October 16 edition of The New York Times Education Edition,  truly fascinated me, particularly with the current emphasis not only in Colorado but around the county on the requirement that faculty have multiple hours or even an advanced degree in any area in which they wish to teach.

St. John's president and board apparently believe that we learn (and teach) best those things of which we are ignorant. The degree to which this college has eschewed what most of us see as the "norm" in higher education (far beyond even the concept of teaching something in which the faculty member is not degreed) is fascinating , and this article makes me wonder if these folks might have at least part of the solution to our concerns about teaching students to think critically.

David Wiley on what's missing from OER

From Iterating Toward Openness, The Primary Challenge of the OER Movement:

http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/2042

1. The Complete and Utter Lack of Assessment in the OER Space. Humans are famously terrible at judging whether they’re “getting it” or not during learning. One of the primary reasons the CMU OLI courses are (and have been shown to be) so incredibly effective in supporting learning is because they include frequent formative assessments that help learners check their own understanding. These assessments provide immediate feedback, allowing informal learners to determine with greater confidence whether or not they’re “getting it.”
The vast majority of OER in the world do not include any assessments.

I think there is more agreement of what is good content than there is on what is good assessment, so perhaps assessment is more difficult.  If content is used for multiple reasons does that change what should be assessed or how it should be assessed?

Lisa

Lunch and Learn

Thinking about 30 minute lunch and learn topics.  I have three to come up with for the fall.....

Discussions - this one would run over the different types of discussions, why and when to use them, how to grade them, etc.  Needs a catchy title.

Orientations - CMC requires online faculty to do an orientation of some sort.  Here I'd talk about the different ways faculty orient students to their courses, from elluminate, to Voice Thread, phone, etc.

What's up in Online Learning:  the new LMS, new online course standards, new online course observation form.  Really just an opportunity to ask questions and make comments.

That leaves all of the fun stuff for the spring.  I need some new technology topics, course design topics.

Lisa

What to do with Lectures?

You spend a lot of time perfecting the lectures you give in face-to-face classes... that should mean you need something similar in the online classroom.  Why do you include lectures in your teaching repertoire though?  What is the purpose exactly?  

1. Clarify the sticky parts of the course.
2. Add material that is not included in the text.
3. Emphasize the material that is most important.
4. Keep momentum going in the course.
5. Add applications and current events.

I am sure there are other reasons for lecture as well, plus you use class time to go over exams and homework, have students do group work, etc.  

There are several places to put lectures in an online course.  First, you could develop a set of taped or written lectures (say Powerpoint with voice-over) and put them in an specific content place.  Clearly this is a good way to handle anything that can be developed once and used for several semesters.  It is a good way to add any material missing from the textbook and to clarify sticky spots in the course.  On the other hand it doesn't do anything for momentum and current events.

You can develop a weekly (or twice or thrice weekly) announcement - again either written or recorded - that discusses current material.  In Blackboard this can work particularly well because you can automatically email each announcement to students.  This reminds them they are in a class and that they need to stay abreast of requirements.  The drawbacks are that email doesn't handle video well and that the announcements are also a good place to handle the housekeeping details -- due date reminders and such.

Last is the discussion option.  You can break your lectures up into sections and use them as discussion starters.  To do this start a discussion thread with the first part of a lecture, ending with a question or two that you commonly ask students.  Discuss that for a day or two, then post the next lecture section, again ending with a question or two.  This can be very labor intensive, but is fairly effective.  

The other option is to break the lecture into sections and post each as an individual discussion thread.  For some reason though the multiple discussion threads seem to be off-putting or frightening to students.  It also eliminates some of the conversational aspects of the single thread as too many student respond in the same way to each question instead of moving on.

Personally I use all of the above, depending on the type of material.  What's your favorite place for lectures?

Lisa