How are online tools and OERs shifting my teaching practices?
These past two weeks, I have been learning about new online tools and what OERs actually mean. As with most new knowledge and information, it feels both exciting and overwhelming. In trying to reduce the latter and sustain the former, I have decided to think about all of this in relation to the course I am developing for delivery in online mode in Semester 2 this year, race & ethnicity (SO212). By trying to apply it specifically to something I am doing, I feel like I am laying down the boundaries in which to 'innovate' with my learning and teaching practices. In this blog, I want to document the 'what' of my activities for this new course and reflect on the processes by which I got there.
What will I be doing?
Students will work in groups to produce a video using powtoon focused on '5 myths about...' a Pacific-based ethnic group, in which they will use research-based evidence to challenge these myths. To support and motivate student use of powtoon for this assessment, I will use the same tool for the lecture material I create for the course. These will include videos produced by myself and videos produced by others as OER on lecture topics. Since these will come before students have to start planning their own work, the idea is that it will help foster both enthusiasm and creative ideas for students. At the same time, because I will have used it for multiple things, I will be able to help with the inevitable troubleshooting the use of new tools produce.
The student-produced resources will then be made available for future course offerings and ideally as open educational resources beyond USP. Now this second part is going to require me to go through the maze of policies and processes involved in licencing OER. I have gone through a course introducing me to all of this--but let's face it, I am really going to understand all of that as I do it. Perhaps it will be the subject of another blog as I do it--my colleague in sociology who is designing a PG course only with OERs, has told me who to contact at USP. That's my first step.
I am also interviewing different academics and activists from the Pacific on their experiences of race & ethnicity. These will become a podcast in the course for modeling the type of reflections on race & ethnicity I want students to do in the course. While I will not make student reflections public, the podcasts with the academics and activists will be, and this too should serve as an OER (provided everything works out). I am going to be encouraging students to do audio reflections using the Poodle tool on moodle instead of submitting writings.
How did I get there?
The decisions to do these things in this course has been very much a product of my PGCTT journey and a lot of informal discussions about learning and teaching in the Pacific. The original plan for the course had just involved lectures, group work to write a research brief on a country in the pacific and then a presentation by students in groups on how the story about race & ethnicity can be changed. Every time I looked at the plan, I knew it did not really taken into account so much of our understanding of L&T, but I just did not seem to be able to make the time to think about it differently. The assignments in ED402 gave me that time and the first couple of weeks in ED403 have given me the motivation to use a new online tool and drive to use and create OERs. The decision to use the same online tools as teaching material that students will then use for assessments comes from ED401 and the BBB experience there.
What am I taking away from all of this?
Changing the way we teach requires reflective and learning spaces. How do we create those spaces for ourselves? The community of practitioners that our SOSS L&T Talanoa sessions , the Community of Practitioners in HE initiated by Shikha, are great spaces that have emerged at USP that I appreciate. Perhaps for me, this blog will also become my personal space? van Wyk (2013) points to the value of the blog as a reflective space for teachers.
Effective learning and teaching strategies require constant adjustments--it grows out of using feedback, experience and new information and knowledge. The hardest part of this I find is organizing the time to make the adjustments, given that we are constantly chasing external criteria and standards, the contextualized ones seem to get deferred. I have not found an effective way of revising my courses each session in a holistic manner--instead the changes are partial and disconnected. Another element I want to integrate better into my practice is peer-observation and feedback--disconnected from the requirements of staff review, I would like to build this in on a regular basis. Given the lack of time of everyone, one way to do this could be to connect with PhD students interested in academic careers, and get their feedback as they try a new component of the course--with online learning environments, we can get peer observation based feedback beyond colleagues we know. I have started this with one of our PhD students in sociology for my new course Crime and Deviance and it is immensely helpful.
Students often demonstrate their learning way beyond and often only after they leave our classes, in both its positives and negatives. How do we document this in a meaningful way? A research project I initiated focused on this with students in my previous institution will have its first publication out in September this year at the Asian Journal of Women's Studies (will update the link with the article is live). But this has involved a longitudinal qualitative study with a small graduating cohort. How do we really do this in a meaningful way in larger institutions like ours?
As I finish this blog, I am noticing that these elements are starting to shift how I will articulate (and practice) my teaching philosophy, something I have not really re-written since I came to USP.
What will I be doing?
Students will work in groups to produce a video using powtoon focused on '5 myths about...' a Pacific-based ethnic group, in which they will use research-based evidence to challenge these myths. To support and motivate student use of powtoon for this assessment, I will use the same tool for the lecture material I create for the course. These will include videos produced by myself and videos produced by others as OER on lecture topics. Since these will come before students have to start planning their own work, the idea is that it will help foster both enthusiasm and creative ideas for students. At the same time, because I will have used it for multiple things, I will be able to help with the inevitable troubleshooting the use of new tools produce.
The student-produced resources will then be made available for future course offerings and ideally as open educational resources beyond USP. Now this second part is going to require me to go through the maze of policies and processes involved in licencing OER. I have gone through a course introducing me to all of this--but let's face it, I am really going to understand all of that as I do it. Perhaps it will be the subject of another blog as I do it--my colleague in sociology who is designing a PG course only with OERs, has told me who to contact at USP. That's my first step.
I am also interviewing different academics and activists from the Pacific on their experiences of race & ethnicity. These will become a podcast in the course for modeling the type of reflections on race & ethnicity I want students to do in the course. While I will not make student reflections public, the podcasts with the academics and activists will be, and this too should serve as an OER (provided everything works out). I am going to be encouraging students to do audio reflections using the Poodle tool on moodle instead of submitting writings.
How did I get there?
The decisions to do these things in this course has been very much a product of my PGCTT journey and a lot of informal discussions about learning and teaching in the Pacific. The original plan for the course had just involved lectures, group work to write a research brief on a country in the pacific and then a presentation by students in groups on how the story about race & ethnicity can be changed. Every time I looked at the plan, I knew it did not really taken into account so much of our understanding of L&T, but I just did not seem to be able to make the time to think about it differently. The assignments in ED402 gave me that time and the first couple of weeks in ED403 have given me the motivation to use a new online tool and drive to use and create OERs. The decision to use the same online tools as teaching material that students will then use for assessments comes from ED401 and the BBB experience there.
What am I taking away from all of this?
Changing the way we teach requires reflective and learning spaces. How do we create those spaces for ourselves? The community of practitioners that our SOSS L&T Talanoa sessions , the Community of Practitioners in HE initiated by Shikha, are great spaces that have emerged at USP that I appreciate. Perhaps for me, this blog will also become my personal space? van Wyk (2013) points to the value of the blog as a reflective space for teachers.
Effective learning and teaching strategies require constant adjustments--it grows out of using feedback, experience and new information and knowledge. The hardest part of this I find is organizing the time to make the adjustments, given that we are constantly chasing external criteria and standards, the contextualized ones seem to get deferred. I have not found an effective way of revising my courses each session in a holistic manner--instead the changes are partial and disconnected. Another element I want to integrate better into my practice is peer-observation and feedback--disconnected from the requirements of staff review, I would like to build this in on a regular basis. Given the lack of time of everyone, one way to do this could be to connect with PhD students interested in academic careers, and get their feedback as they try a new component of the course--with online learning environments, we can get peer observation based feedback beyond colleagues we know. I have started this with one of our PhD students in sociology for my new course Crime and Deviance and it is immensely helpful.
Students often demonstrate their learning way beyond and often only after they leave our classes, in both its positives and negatives. How do we document this in a meaningful way? A research project I initiated focused on this with students in my previous institution will have its first publication out in September this year at the Asian Journal of Women's Studies (will update the link with the article is live). But this has involved a longitudinal qualitative study with a small graduating cohort. How do we really do this in a meaningful way in larger institutions like ours?
As I finish this blog, I am noticing that these elements are starting to shift how I will articulate (and practice) my teaching philosophy, something I have not really re-written since I came to USP.
Thoroughly enjoyed reading your post Sara. Great idea of engaging PhD scholars in feedbacks, I too believe in engaging with former students and colleagues for feedback/critique to fine tune my courses. I am glad you mentioned the need to revisit your teaching philosophy and I look forward to reading it - you would have noticed that the course also requires you to do that. Any reason why "learning way beyond and often only after they leave our classes" is in blue , I clicked on it thinking it was an active link, you might want to check that. So, please keep us all posted on how you go with your learning and teaching innovations and modifications via "CoPin HE" so that others could also apply it in their courses/classrooms too.
ReplyDeleteThanks Shikha--have update the missing link. And will do as you suggest!
DeleteGreat read Sara. I enjoy working with you because of your willingness to try out new tools and look forward to this powtoon assessment.
ReplyDelete