Last week, I was a featured keynote presenter for the inaugural Learning 2.0 Conference. It was a great experience. My favorite part was just the excitement and magical sensation of knowing I was sitting here in my home office presenting to a group of educators who were tuning in from around the world. It was a truly global audience -- so very cool.
If you missed my presentation, here is the title, description, and link to the archive which will launch Blackboard Collaborate. Enjoy! And check out the recordings of the other keynotes here.
"Can't You Just Lecture to Me?" Strategies for Transforming Reluctant Learners when Teaching with Emerging Technologies
Have you heard that line before? Teaching with emerging technologies requires not only a new technical toolkit but also a new set of skills for transforming reluctant students from passive into participatory learners. In this presentation, I will share stories and strategies from my own classes, showcased in my new book Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies, to assist college instructors with supporting students who are reluctant to embrace new forms of learning, use social media for learning activities, and play an active role in a learning community. Links to handy PDF guides will be shared to assist you with building a foundation for student success in your Learning 2.0 classroom.
Click here to access the Blackboard Collaborate Recording, when prompted selected "Allow" or "Run" to initiate the session: http://tiny.cc/bfjvjw
On May 19th, I had the pleasure of presenting at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, as the keynote for the EduSoCal10 conference. The event was a creative venture to substitute the Educause regional conference that did not take place on the west coast this year. I'd like to thank Crista Copp, Director of Academic Technology at LMU, and Michael Berman, CIO of CSU Channel Islands, for this speaking opportunity. LMU has shared this presentation, in addition to many other of the day's sessions, as videos on their iTunes U site. I have embedded my presentation below, with permission from LMU.
My presentation explores the art historical role of innovation and risk-taking in western society, highlighting the potential of creativity in teaching to unhinge higher education from its lecture-based traditions. The presentation showcases a specific case study in teaching innovation from my community college History of Women in Art class that examines the learning effects of an instructional model that embraces active learning in the classroom, rather than passive delivery of lecture. Student feedback and survey results are included. This case study was also shared last September, 2009, as an Educause Learning Initiative webinar titled, "Teaching Without Walls."
I'd like to take this opportunity to respond more deeply and thoughtfully to one question I received from the audience. My presentation criticizes the effectiveness of lectures as a learning activity. I was asked (not verbatim), "Given your perspective of lectures, why, then, did you select to deliver your content via lecture?" I had considered the contradiction embedded in my lecture style as I was preparing my content but, truly, hadn't worked through it entirely. In my response to the question, I acknowledged that contradiction but didn't have a clear answer as to why I delivered my presentation via lecture. Now I can lucidly explain this, as I've spent some time thinking about it.
Lectures do have value in learning and I believe my case study demonstrates this fact. However, if I'm given 16-weeks with a group and my goal is to facilitate they their learning of a variety of concepts and ideas, lecture alone is not an ideal activity, especially to fill my precious face-to-face time with my learners. Lecture has an important role in learning but it's not only piece of how we should be facilitating deep learning. As facilitators of learning, we need to engage our audience actively in critique, debate, and discussion to promote higher levels of learning, as well as meet the "offline" expectations of our digital generation of students who are deeply informed by YouTube and TiVo who are most likely to say, "If it's passive content like a lecture is, share it with me digitally so I can watch it when and where it's convenient for me, I can rewind and forward the content, and learn at my own pace."
When teaching a class on a campus, I believe this moment in higher education is our moment, as "teachers"-- not deliverers of information -- to implement technology into our instruction (via web-based tools outside the classroom) to enable us to have more time to work directly with our students in a live setting -- without technology -- resulting in more dynamic, relevant, and enriching learning for our students. "The World is Open," as Curtis Bonk has demonstrated, and our Googled, YouTubed, mobile society has capsized the relevance of a learning model that is based on showing up at a specific time and place, twice a week, for sixteen weeks to hear a professor deliver information that is available in the pocket of most students. It is time for our classroom model to be transformed by technology, just as the rest of the world has been.
Enjoy the video (56 minutes). I'd love to hear your thoughts.
I was recently contacted by from who alerted me that a video recording of a student success workshop I had shared on my blog awhile back was no longer available. I love that aspect of blogging -- when your content becomes unavailable, you find out who your audience is!
I'm still not sure why Blogger deactivated my video but I have shared it here once again, as I'm delighted to learn that it's being shared and put to good use. I do hope there are students out there who find it useful and, if so, I'd love to hear from you!
This is a live recording of a one-hour workshop I presented at Sierra College titled "Are You Ready for an Online Class?" It highlights strategies for a successful online learning experience and sheds light on some of the myths about taking online classes.
I shared a blog post awhile back about an experiment I did in my spring art history class in which I removed all the lecturing from the classroom and rolled them all into podcasts (and PDFs - students were given a choice as to how they access their classes) and spent the face-to-face time with my students discussing, debating and critiquing the class content.
This week there was a great new article shared in the Chronicle of Higher Ed about Jose Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, who has made the bold move to remove computers from his classrooms. His goal? To axe boring PowerPoints from the lives of students and reinvigorate their learning with engaging, human-to-human contact. Hmmmm. Sounds like the stuff learning is made of.
Check it out:
If the concept sounds intriguing to you, I hope you'll join me in September for a webinar I'll be presenting for the Educause Learning Initiative titled Teaching Without Walls: Life Beyond the Lecture, based on very similar concepts as Teach Naked (darn, I wish I had thought of that title!).
