For Granted

I am wondering more about what we take for granted as we consider this transition, about both the face-to-face class and the online class. We assume that we will use discussion forum as a major means of communication in online classes. We use them in our f2f class, and they translate to online (I mean, they're even called the same thing).  But, now I am thinking about those discussions I have in my f2f class. I don't really want some of them to translate. I take discussions too much for granted in f2f. They often don't work.

Formative Assessments

I have known for sometime the value of formative assessments, where we provide feedback and guidance as the students learn. I enjoy providing them to students, when I can structure courses so that they make sense and are efficient enough to be effective. But returning formative assessments to students, never fails to entertain me. Because students (some not all) have no idea what to do with it. Have we moved so far from formative assessments that students don't know what to do with drafts? I hand back drafts of research proposals that I have spent hours re-writing sentences, rearranging paragraphs. And tell my class, "these are looking really good." I am greeted with responses of "Not mine." "What do you mean?" "You wrote all over it." "What is the last comment I made across the bottom of the last page?" "'This looks like a really good start.'" They act like they have never seen teacher feedback on papers before. And I wonder, have they? The first time this happened I was rather shocked. The assignment is named "draft," I thought that implied there would be corrections to be made before the assignment named "final version" was due. Now I take entertainment value from their consternation (let's face it, I teach research, I have to be a little bit sadistic), and try to explain to them that the purpose of a draft is to improve their writing with feedback from others.
This does make me wonder if I am not providing enough formative assessment in my other classes. But then I wonder how small a class and how few number of courses I would need before I would be satisfied that I am providing the type of just-in-time instruction, formative feedback, and hands on attention that I want to be.

Pondering 144 Characters

I have been reflecting about what it says that we want to communicate in 144 characters or less. It seems like just another way for us (people?, Americans?, I'm identifying with the anonymous "they" here, I suppose) to have instant gratification. I want to know what you think, but I don't want to work to understand it or have it be difficult to grasp. So, I want you to say it in the least amount of space possible, 144 characters. Really, what deep, thoughtful, insightful comments can you make in 144 characters? Perhaps if I was on Twitter I would see some examples. Since I only read tweets that get re-posted to other media sources, I probably have a bad sampling. But the good ones I've read are comedic (which I love), not really places of quality communication. Perhaps it is as the introvert I am speaking, a dislike of small talk prevents me from appreciating the place of 144 character communication.
On one of the blogs I read he regularly embeds tweet-ability for his pithy comments. It drives me nuts. It tells me what I'm supposed to take away from his post (in case I am not a capable enough reader to sort that out for myself); it tells me he thinks I'm too lazy to highlight, ctrl c, ctrl v to share it; it tells me I don't really need to read the whole post, I could get the idea if I just read 2-3 144 character posts. I do try to give him the benefit of the doubt, that's not really what he thinks. This allows me to keep reading his posts.
So perhaps 144 character posts have merit in conversational sense, but it worth considering what we are communicating about what thoughtfulness is in communication if we are limiting your characters to 144. I am all for brevity, parsimony, and being concise, but there is a point at which we are too limited to communicate the depth of what we are thinking about. So I think before using tools in learning settings that limit us in this way we need to be careful in our consideration of what we want our students to learn about communication.

First Thoughts

Reflecting on online teaching pedagogy, it seems a little overwhelming to think about how much pedagogy doesn't translate from face-to-face teaching. Things that I do when teach will be lost completely, like making jokes or checking for understanding. On the other hand, teaching online will alleviate some of the in the moment stress of having students check out mentally during class. I do think it is a benefit to not have a required class time that you must be there, but at the same time, I think many people don't make full use of their online classes because they don't have to set aside time to work on it the way that they have to set aside time to attend class. When they are working on classwork, it is good that they can work at their own pace. On the other hand, the biggest stressor to me, is a permanent public record of responses and possibly critiques to my writing (like this and discussion posts), and I really can't see a way around that one.