Painting, Power and Pedagogy: Reframing the Classroom

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.

ELI Seminar Archive Now Public: Teaching Without Walls, an experiment in 21st century learning

Last September 2009, while still employed at CSU East Bay as their Director of Online and Hybrid Support Center, I had the awesome opportunity to share my teaching innovations through a webinar hosted by the Educause Learning Initiative.  The archive of the 60-minute presentation, titled Teaching Without Walls: Life Beyond the Lecture (which soon thereafter became the name of my consulting business), is now public and I invite you to watch and listen and share it with your colleagues.

The presentation is an overview of a semester-long teaching experiment in which I removed all lectures from my community college History of Women in Art class.  The passive lecture content was pre-recorded as audio/visual podcasts (or enhanced podcasts) and shared through a link in Blackboard along with an illustrated text-transcript of the lecture; providing students with a choice in how they would access the lecture content.  After completing the lectures online, my students engaged in interactive online VoiceThread discussions and learning activities, in which they applied lecture concepts in an effort to begin to reach the unit's learning objectives.  After completing the pre-class assignments, students came to class where we spent all of our time actively engaged in discussion, analysis, and debate about the unit's content.  Randomly, students were also given "active learning assignments," for example, "Go to the mall and critically observe your visual surroundings.  Analyze the actions and signs that contribute to the social enforcement of the "male gaze."  Share your experiences in class and evaluate whether or not our society constructs a passive experience for women, situating them as objects of the male gaze.  Is this an extension or break from the effects of western culture's history of art?"

The shift in my course design and pedagogy was strongly influenced by the research I had done about Millennial students.  I wanted to explore the success of this type of learning environment, in an effort to fundamentally question the effectiveness of passive lectures and active classroom time in the construction of critical thinking, visual literacy skills, as well as the success of crafting personalized, relevant learning experiences for 21st century students.

The end of the archive reveals compelling student survey feedback.  I hope you enjoy it and learn from it!  Please share your thoughts if you take the time to watch!

The ELI website also shares a link to an audio recording of my speaking with three of my students at the end of the semester.  Their dynamic voices are still some of the most compelling reasons for shifting our pedagogy and design of IN-CLASS learning experiences, in my opinion.

Teaching Without Walls: Life Beyond the Lecture
Click on "View Archive"

Enjoy!

Teaching without Walls - ELI Web Seminar

I am really jazzed to share the news of my upcoming Educause Learning Initiative web seminar! It is open to all ELI members and I am hopeful my students' voices will contribute to encouraging other educators to take risks with innovative uses of technology to enrich learning and expand face-to-face time and increase active learning in the classroom. If you can't join us for the presentation, please click on the link below and listen to the 20-minute "Student Interview" at the bottom of the page to hear end-of-the-semester reflections from some of my students. Enjoy! As always, comments are welcome and appreciated.

Teaching Without Walls: Life Beyond the Lecture
September 14th, 10:00-11:00am PT/1:00-2:00 ET

Malcolm Brown, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative director, will moderate this web seminar with Michelle Pacansky-Brock, where she’ll pull back the curtain on the classroom of the future, exploring a semester-long teaching experiment in which a class of community college art history students engaged in a technology-rich, web-enhanced, inclusive learning environment. You won't find any lectures in this classroom: they were all made available to students through Blackboard in the form of PDFs and podcasts, giving them options for how they learned. From there, students engaged in dynamic online modules that included VoiceThread discussions, all completed outside the classroom. The course design allowed for class time to be left freely available for discussions and other active learning activities like a "Wiki Challenge" led by fearless students on a quest for extra credit.

Online Social Presence: a success story

About five years ago, I attended a commencement ceremony after my first year of online teaching. I sat in the faculty section of the audience as the graduates names were called, applauding excitedly as I heard names of my own students. But that year I realized something very interesting. It occurred to me that my online students wouldn't be extending celebratory handshakes and hugs to me after the ceremony, which really is one of most rewarding and heartfelt aspects of teaching, because they wouldn't be able to recognize me.

I was deeply bothered by this because I knew I spent much time with my online students in dialogue but it was text-based dialogue which didn't allow for us to exchange facial gestures, emotions in our voice, etc. There was a lot that was lacking from our dialogue, this I knew all along, and this empty moment at graduation is when it all became poignant to me.

That was a turning point for me. I then began to integrate podcast lectures (hosted on iTunes U); engage students in VoiceThread discussions that allow for me and my students to discuss topics in text, voice or webcam comments; and leave weekly announcements embedded in video format (recorded live from my webcam with viddler.com). The video announcements and podcasts all were accompanied with text-based transcripts to help promote accessibility and give students options for how they wanted to engage the content.

Yesterday I had a great moment. I was on campus (it was actually my very last day there before beginning my new position) and I was in my car stopped at a stop sign. A young man walking along the side of the parking lot flagged me down as if he wanted to ask me something. I assumed he needed directions. When I rolled down my window he said, "Excuse me, aren't you Michelle Pacansky-Brock?" When I replied, "Yes, do I know you?" He said, "Yes! I'm Cameron. I was in your online class this semester!"

It was really a cool moment. We proceeded to talk about his experiences -- I asked him about his new baby, as I recalled he had a newborn as the semester was beginning, and we talked about his wife who is an artist. I recall in his final class blog post he mentioned that the class (art appreciation) actually brought him closer to his wife because he now had the vocabulary to discuss visual arts with his wife intelligently.

We said our good-byes and I went on my way. To me that moment is evidence of the potential for multimedia communications to increase social presence in an online class and foster and deeper sense of community. If anything, bridging the gap between virtual learning and face-to-face relationships really makes the experience feel more valuable and meaningful.

Beyond the Lecture: Students Reflect on Innovative Lecture Strategy

I am now wrapping up my final semester of teaching art history at Sierra College. Interestingly, my most exciting innovations this semester have been in my face-to-face class, as this has finally been the semester in which I've fully integrated all the content I've developed in my online History of Women in Art class into my face-to-face Women in Art class. Now I am beginning to assess my students' perspectives on how this very non-traditional learning environment has affected them.

Today I had the pleasure to speak with three wonderful student volunteers -- Ashley Abba, Heather Caldwell and Kaylee Schlosser -- about their thoughts on this semester. I have plenty more assessing to do including a full survey that is currently deployed, as well as a self-assessment but I thought I'd go ahead and share this recording because -- well, I'm just excited about it!

Here is some context:
This 20-minute conversation includes three students' perspectives about how Michelle's non-traditional teaching environment enhanced their learning experiences as students. Instead of spending class time lecturing, as a traditional college art history classes are typically structured, Michelle had her students access her lectures via podcast or print prior to coming to class via Blackboard and a link to iTunes U.

During the 16-week semester, her students also participated in visual, interactive VoiceThread discussions before their class meetings and had the opportunity to volunteer to lead the class in "wiki challenge" competitions that involved identifying key aspects of artists' lives and accomplishments and presenting them in the class wiki. The wiki content, once "approved" by the class, resulted in a portion of the assessment content.

Listen to the interview.

Online Students - The Real Experts

I'm very excited to be attending the 14th Annual Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning in Orlando from November 5-7, 2008. I have been honored with the request to participate in the pre-conference workshop on November 5th titled "Ask the Experts." This will be a panel event with presentations from last year's awards winners. My presentation will be 15-minutes in length.

I have been having a tough time framing my presentation. I want the presentation to be dynamic and convey a clear essence of what makes my online classes unique and worthy of last year's Excellence in Online Teaching Award. So, it occurred to me that I should pause and "ask the experts" directly. So, yesterday I sent out an email to all 105 of my current online students, the true experts, asking them to kindly reply with a brief description of what makes my class special or unique from other online classes. It's always interesting to ask for open-ended feedback from students like this. I learn so much.

So far I've received many responses. Common favorite aspects of my classes include VoiceThreads because "they make me feel like I'm really in a classroom" and for the web cam introductions and feedback I provide for my students. Seeing me speak to them promotes my presence in their learning experience which encourages them to participate and stay connected. Others note the benefits of hearing my voice through my audio announcements and podcasts. Students also appreciate having the option to read my lectures or listen to them or do both: "I can read and listen (which helps me learn the best)."

Ning is also a big hit this semester. I have created a Ning community for my Art Appreciation students to interact in (with required blog posts). One student shared, "the whole Ning approach is really fun and a good way of getting us to interact moreso than with any of my other 5 online classes I've taken/am taking. It makes the class feel more together, not as detached, yet a fun way of doing assignments opposed to discussion boards or just homework assignments." Also, "Ning has really helped me grasp the other students personalities." Ning seems to be a natural community builder and, personally, I love that it's closed to just those students who I invite. Much more secure than using Blogger, as I previously did for my students' blogs.

Much of this feedback is common to the results of recent surveys I have deployed and hearing the feedback is so important because it reassures me that I'm on the right track. But my reason for sharing this is because many students have also simply commented on some things that can't be conveyed through technology. Here are a few excerpts:

• "You care very much about the subject and your students and learning. You like to teach and share the knowledge."

• "You teach in a way that makes us think, that makes us view our environment differently and therefore also think about things differently."

• "The online tests are easy to understand how they work and is on materials we study...not trick questions."

• "You explain things clearly and thoroughly. Your assignments are consistent and easy to follow. Your interaction is top notch..."

• "...[I]t is your personal touch and enthusiasm that make the class so engaging and thus, effective."

Students' perceptions and overall impressions about their experiences are so important for instructor tap into. They've given me a fresh perspective on my class and I look forward to using their insights to frame my presentation.

Podcasting Success with iTunes U

Measuring the "success" of podcasting in education is a slippery slope. However, at Sierra College we have a clear indication that podcasting is in demand! Last spring I began facilitating a series of trainings for faculty and staff titled "Audio Development" in our new iTech Lab. The workshop is 18-hours long (it meets 4 times for 4 hours sessions plus 2 hours of outside work) and participants leave with the ability to record and edit audio files with Audacity, create mp3 files and upload them into their very own podcast on our brand new iTunes U site. Our iTunes U site received its first trickling of downloads during our Summer 08 session and this fall things have really picked up. In addition to training nearly 40 faculty members on podcasting, our distance learning staff is rigorously recording and converting all our live television classes into video podcasts. The result? Well, we were anxious to identify whether or not our students would bite. Despite the fact that our site has not been advertised at all and despite the fact that we don't even have a prime time spot in the "iTunes U" section of iTunes, there have been over 3,600 downloads in just four weeks. Amazing!

Last week I presented to our Associated Students of Sierra College and showcased our site in addition to the innovative podcasts Broome Community College is putting together. The Sierra students loved Broome's reality show concept titled "On The Quad" and their "Campus Life" podcast generated loads of ideas. One student commented, "This is better than YouTube!"

So, how will this alter the landscape of higher ed? Well, in lots of ways. First, if you've already completed your college education, imagine all those days you sat in a lecture hall intently following your professor's every motion, gesture and word. Despite your best efforts, you always had lingering questions, right? Even though your professor was considerate enough to periodically ask, "Any questions?" were you even confident enough to say, "Yes, could you repeat that five more times?" I know I never said that even when I desperately needed the repetition. If classroom sessions are recorded and offered as podcasts, students can review over and over and over again ... and take it with them to the gym on their iPod! Or how about our ESL students? Imagine how success will improve for them with podcasting.

Of course, let us not forget our online students who have been learning for years without hearing the personal voice of their professor. That too is changing with podcasting.

But what really excites me is the potential for iTunes U to extend a sense of our campus community to our online students who never come to campus (and comprise more than 10% of Sierra's FTES)! Imagine offering podcasts of student success workshops, club events around campus, welcome messages from campus leaders, panel discussions with faculty members and guest speakers? No longer will they only have the cold stare of a Blackboard log-in page as their "welcome" to Sierra College.

Check out Sierra College on iTunes U!