So I’m all lined up to do some serious teaching next semester. The bit that I’m most interested in is coordinating the subject I did last semester. I’ll be able to put together a reader that suits what I’m teaching, I’ll get to rework some of my weaker lectures and tutorials, and I’ll be able to redo the assessment. There’s lots of admin work involved, but I’m actually not too bad at that stuff – MLX has made me strong. Plus I quite like the ob-con-ness of sorting and organising and making lists.
One of my first jobs will be getting some feedback from the sessional staff who taught with me on that subject last year. I want to know what worked, what didn’t, what they’d like to see on the subject (or ditched).
The next job will be working through the lectures and reworking the weeks – dumping the dumb stuff, strengthening the good stuff, adding in some useful stuff that was missing last year. I’m aiming for your basic intro to media studies/communications/cultural studies subject, including some really safe, useful ‘textual analysis tools’ (this is something the department really wants), some stuff about media industries and some stuff about audiences. I’m (mentally) dividing the subject up into those three parts (n those that order), and hoping to have three manageable (and hopefully cumulative rather than discrete) pieces of assessment to go with each (though that’s something that needs to be discussed).
I’d like a reader that had a greater emphasis on Australian cultural/media studies (especially in reference to the industry stuff… for obvious reasons), and including some more up-to-date readings (ie not stuff from the 80s… unless it’s something particularly important or awesome).
I’m also keen on strengthening the weekly tutorial exercises. I’m ordinarily not the hugest fan of this stuff, but this type of weekly mini self-assessment is important and can be really useful. Putting together a comprehensive weekly exercise (which isn’t too long) is also a nice way of making sure I structure my lectures properly (which I’m kind of anal about anyway), make the readings really relevant and giving the students an idea of the most important points in that week’s topic.
All this is for a first year subject, so I have to keep it pretty simple. It also has to work as a ‘teaser’ for later subjects – it has to convince these guys in the general arts degree that media studies/cultural studies/communications is fun and interesting and useful.
I’m a big fan of multimedia components in the teaching and learning tools, but I was very unhappy with webct last year. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to get into moodle or another hardcore online teaching tool. But I do think it’s important to have some sort of online component, particularly for teaching across campuses, and teaching students who don’t spend much time on campus.
I am thinking about just using a plain, simple blog. Something like this one (but obviously not this one) which is super easy to navigate, allows me to embed youtube clips, add in useful links, upload lecture notes, etc. I do have reservations about uploading lecture notes to a public forum, though. This is where it’s actually a good idea to have a site where you must log in to get the good stuff.
I have considered other options like druple (bllurgh) and plone, but if I’m going that way, I really think I should use something designed for teaching – like moodle or webct. But I don’t think it’s a good idea to have students learn how to use a whole new system/site, just for one subject. And I’m not keen on learning myself – it’s not really worth the effort.
I also think it’s a good idea to use sites that students are already comfortable with. For obvious reasons. This of course leads us straight to faceplant and myspace. But I’m not happy with faceplant. I don’t want to encourage students to use such a massive data-gathering business tool.
There is, however, the google option. Google docs is something we’re considering using for MLX this year – a central collection point for files and discussions and email and things. But once again, it does require students learning a new system, signing up for new accounts and so on.
So my questions are:
– is it ok to use a blog where the lecture notes are public? My feeling is no.
– should I use something like plone which can have a public ‘face’ yet also requires students to log in to access notes?
– should I just suck it up and use webct?
All of this is very interesting and quite exciting. I’m looking forward to teaching with confidence material I know well, and to being able to strengthen what I’ve already done without starting from scratch. It’ll also be nice to not be working to such a full-on, heinous schedule, writing lectures as I go through the semester.
teaching tools
Great post. Makes me think about how I’m going to teach this semester, picking up a subject I’ve not taught for a few years, but on which I’ve been working in my own research.
Every year I agonise about making lecture notes available online, before or after the lecture. We have an online system you have to be a student to access, and I must admit I wouldn’t consider putting lecture notes anywhere more public than that.
The main thing I want is for the students to come to my lectures. I’m assured by folk who post notes after, and even before the lecture, and also by educationalists, that it makes no difference to attendance, so perhaps I’ll try pre-posting an outline this year. An outline and my quotes is all I usually have, after all; and then I just talk to the PP slides. And yeah, students love and need practice in textual analysis, whatever the text…
I wouldn’t be wild, myself, about getting students to do too much online, because then you have to read and monitor it endlessly yourself, don’t you?
But yeah, the first time through a new course is horrendously difficult. At least the second time around you know how the story ends!
Re lots of work online. I had exactly that reservation, Stephanie – I don’t want to spend aaages online reading blog posts and whatnot. I’d much rather we sat about in a group and talked about stuff. So I can see and hear them thinking and working with each other to develop ideas _immediately_.
There are other reasons to be a little reluctant to use online tools for serious teaching. Dale Clapperton makes a good point about that in the early paragraphs of his post “Dissecting the Facebook ‘Terms of Use'” (http://defendingscoundrels.com/2007/10/dissecting-the-facebook-terms.html).
And I think the second time through will be much easier – it is exactly like knowing the ending. Last time I was working at such a furious pace I had no time to ‘read ahead’ – there wasn’t anything written to read! This time I’ll know what I’m working towards and I think that will help me communicate to the students why each week is useful and interesting.
Sounds like my agonies, Stephanie. I worry about whether to put notes online, and if so, what sorts of notes. I’ve written about this in greater detail in an earlier post ( http://dogpossum.org/archives/2007/10/cyber_teaching.html/ ), with particular reference to recording lectures and putting them online.
I’ve found there are a few good reasons for making copies of the lectures available online:
– when you’re teaching students with hardcore work and family commitments (as I am), they really appreciate having a back up if they can’t make it to classes.
– when you’re teaching students who are ESL (or on their 3rd, 4th, 5th language), as I am, they _really_ appreciate having notes – it helps them keep decent notes of lectures, and it lets them sit and listen and ask questions in lectures rather than scrambling to write notes
I’ve found a direct correlation between students who do all the tutes, all the lectures and all the assessment and who do quite well, marks wise. They’re the ones who’ve figured out that it’s in their interest to attend.
The problem is that the students who’d benefit _most_ from both attending lectures and reading notes are also those who’re less likely to realise that they need to do all these things. And no matter how many times you say ‘if you come to lectures you’ll do better’, they still don’t really get it.
I guess it helps to somehow make it really clear, early on, that there are immediate benefits to attending lectures. It’s obvious when you say ‘come next week because that’s when we’re handing out the take home exam’, but there needs to be that sort of immediate cause-effect association.
Thing is, many of my students didn’t do terribly amazingly well at school, or they went to quite crappy schools. So they really don’t have any evidence that attending classes is good for you – many of them have gotten as far as they have by simply knuckling under and working at home.
I tossed and turned over this last year. And I’m no closer to a solution. But my instinct is ‘give them options’, because if you offer students a range of learning options, they’re more likely to find one that works for them. Offering just one won’t help you if you’re not so good at sitting and listening for 2 hours.
… which is of course the sticking point for tertiary education. We privilege that one type of learning (or two types) – sit and listen. Sit and write. Sit and read. Sit and say the right things. We don’t have assessment practices that accommodate different students’ different needs or different learning styles. We are all about elitism and producing institutionalised students with fairly limited learning and teaching skills.
All of this makes me MAD because we (especially in cultural studies) crap on and on about diversity and inclusiveness and participation and so on and so on. And of course the way we preach on about this stuff is in formal lectures and difficult journal articles and long discussions in difficult language. Exclusive discourse, much?
So even though I know that my students are the people this stuff is intended to ‘help’ (doesn’t that thought make you cringe? Patronising, much?), it’s inevitable that the diversity will be squeezed out of them by their university experiences. And it’s hello sausages at the end of the sausage machine degree.
It sucks even more when I hear big name celebrity academics crapping on about ‘public intellectualism’ at conferences, telling us nice stories about how to engage with newspapers and mainstream media to ‘get our story out’. When every day we work with hundreds of people _who are the goddamn public_, yet those same big names are prone to _the most_ inpenetrable, inaccessible jargon-laden lectures and public talks. I think it’s more a matter of ‘engage with the mainstream media to develop your rock star status’ than ‘engage with the media to…’ what? Educate?
Sigh. Breathe. Breathe.
I think I get extra shitty about this stuff because I work on dance. And dance is a nice example of alternative public discourse.