Looking back...and looking forward

One thing that is becoming clear in the year I've had to consider and reconsider online teaching and learning is that we are too often slow to see the benefits of a changing techno-landscape. Worried that laptops "interfere" with learning (or not paying enough attention to the sage on the stage), teachers insist that they be turned off during classtime. So worried about the trouble students might get into by surfing the web, we used to limit computers in labs to "real" work only--word-processing. Looking back, how short-sighted and silly that seems!

I think the same thing will be said in the not-too-distant future about the use/abuse of cell phones in class. Rather than seeing them as evil devices that interupt or pull students from the assignment at hand, could we not embrace them as learning devices?

Here's a cool tool to help with that. Poll Everywhere makes everyone's cellphone a clicker device. I've been mightily entertained by the use of clicker technology in conferences, but haven't thought seriously about using them in the classroom because of prohibitive costs. They are a bit of coolness that has some application for my work, but not so much as to warrant the funding fight, figuring out how to store them, dragging them back and forth to the classroom, etc. But, what if I could use the idea without the hassle of the hardware? That's what this website does. It turns everyone's cellphone into a clicker device, with the results immediately posted on a website that we can all watch.

I bet there are other ways to think of phones--more so as students glom onto smartphones that will allow them to surf and perform other applications during class. Is it a distraction? Sure, it could be. But so can a pencil and a piece of paper (remember doodling during boring lectures?). Focusing on engaging students--and their tools--rather than limiting their use of technology presents an opportunity for online and in-class instruction.

Reflections from the Online Teaching and Learning Conference

Just back from the OTL conference at Cabrillo College. Great campus, and I'm glad the conference is soldiering on, though it was clearly affected by budget gloom. It seemed to me that it was about 1/2 or 1/3 its normal attendance.

Most of the attendees were gray-heads. Just noticed as I walked along with the group that we were all the older folks, close to retirement. I wonder about that. The majority of CC instructors are 50+, but this conference also attracts K-12 and university instructors, too, so seems like there would be more of a mix (and I think there has been in previous years). So, it might be that the budget has axed attendance by younger instructors. I wonder how many of those attending had, like I did, financed their attendance without help from their campus budgets. I bet a significant bunch. It may also be a sort of tipping point. Maybe this type of conference only attracts the digital immigrants--the digi-natives not seeing the point, immersed in the digital world as they've been all their lives. Hmmmm. There's a dissertation in there.

It's also occurring to me that younger instructors might not be as interested in or see the need for conferences--large or small. My guess is that this sort of f2f networking will go out the window in favor of social networking and video conferencing. This round of budget cuts may put the final nail in that coffin. Anyone working on ways to develop large-scale conferences out there? It's a ship ready to come to port.

New features of the conference that I liked was the greater emphasis on social networking. There was a twitter feature, a conference portal, FB page, etc. Smart thinking on the part of the organizers, as the push in online is clearly in this direction. All of this seemed to work better than the conference itself, an experience antithetical to my first OTL conference, which I attended virtually and found it to be plagued with tech issues. This time, the off-site attendees may have had the best experience. The webinars were the best of the bunch and there were sessions that I attended that were poorly thought out and executed--not the caliber that they have been in the past. So, I may try the virtual route again next year....

On Student Identity and Congressional Paranoia

In the latest Higher Ed Act, Congress requires colleges to have “processes” establishing that “the student who registers in a distance-education course or program is the same student who participates in and completes the program and receives the academic credit. As one might imagine, this has raised hackles for online instructors--yet another instance of requirements (roadblocks) foisted on online courses, yet not required of f2f courses. After the initial dustup over this, the latest word from the Chronicle is that the requirement will only require that campuses develop some type of secure login strategy.

Well--that ought to solve all the problems of student identity! Doesn't it seem as though a student bent on working the system by finding some shmuck who will take the course for him might also give the shmuck his login info?

Underlying this, of course, is distrust of students and of online learning. I bet someday instructors will look upon this paranoia and laugh. Sooner, the better....