Michael Bugeja’s opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Reduce the Technology, Rescue Your Job,” struck a nerve today.  He started by noting that for “most of this decade, professors embraced the pedagogy of engagement, wooing students via technology and ignoring the costs because traditional methods, from textbooks to lectures, purportedly bored students who multitasked in the wireless classroom.”  He then noted the massive cuts occurring across higher education, and suggested that these “facts alone merit an immediate technological and curricular assessment, or else hundreds more professors and staff members could lose their jobs in the coming weeks and months. You may lose your job.”

Bugeja raised the valid point that too often technology decisions are made without factoring in true costs, but he then suggests that teaching centers (like the one at which I work) are part of the problem for pushing the use of technology for teaching and learning.  His final paragraph reads:

• “I challenge anyone objecting to these arguments to look in the eye of secretaries, janitors, adjuncts, advisers, and professors of eliminated programs and say that avatars, clickers, social networks, and tweets—and the pedagogies, IT expenses, and teaching centers supporting them—are more important than feeding their families. To believe we can afford both indicates how incapable many of us are of making the difficult choices that the times require.”

It would be easy to dismiss this article if I did not think that his way of thinking was not reflective of many in mainstream faculty.  I have seen a number of faculty in higher education, as well as teachers in K-12, who see technology as an evil.  In many ways, they want to wall off their classes from the outside world.

That image of a wall is particularly relevant today, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  President Reagan has always been one of my favorites, and one cannot think of him without hearing his exhortation:

“Mr. Gorbachev…tear down this wall!”

That is the line most remember, but I like his comments later in the same speech, in which he stated “this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.”

Bugeja’s comments to reduce technology in order to save jobs ignores the realities of a changing world…much as the Berlin Wall did.  Technology in and of itself is not evil, and technology integrated into education is opening minds, not closing them.  The participatory web and open access to information has created freedoms that never existed in the past.  Those freedoms directly and positively impact learning.  As Derek Bruff noted in a comment to Bugeja’s piece:

“…point out that Bugeja has focused here on the cost of instructional technology, but not on the benefits to student learning. There’s plenty of research that shows that student learning is positively affected by instructional methods that involve more active student engagement before, during, and after class. Technologies that support or facilitate such instructional methods are certainly worth exploring, if our goal is student learning. When conducting a cost-benefit analysis, it’s only appropriate to spend as much time thinking through the benefits as it is thinking through the costs.”

“…if our goal is student learning…”  Well said, Derek!  If one shifts the microscope from technology to student learning, one might find many traditional classrooms in trouble!  President Reagan made his speech in 1987, and during that same period, Chickering and Gamson developed a seminal work on teaching and learning, their Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Instruction.  They synthesized fifty years of research on teaching to develop these principles:

Good practice in undergraduate education:
1. Encourages contact between students and faculty
2. Develops reciprocity and cooperation among students.
3. Encourages active learning.
4. Gives prompt feedback.
5. Emphasizes time on task.
6. Communicates high expectations.
7. Respects diverse talents and ways of learning.

Rather than cast technology as an evil, I would suggest that technology is a powerful tool that encourages contact between students and faculty, provides avenues for reciprocity and cooperation among students, creates new venues for active learning, enables more timely and prompt feedback, and gives new opportunities to keep students on task.  High expectations can now be communicated in multiple ways across social media that students are using, and these diverse and multiple paths respect the talents and new ways our students are learning.

We certainly need to be fiscally prudent with taxpayer and tuition-funded monies, but now is not the time to build walls and isolate our students from a 24/7 wired world.  Instead, we need to actively help our students create the learning networks that they will need to thrive in the 21st Century.

So to Mr. Bugeja and others who agree with him, I say “Tear down this wall!”

I just finished reading Dan Willingham’s (2009) book, Why Don’t Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. It is an excellent book full of practical suggestions to improve teaching, both online and in the classroom.

Dan Willingham is currently Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia.  His research focuses on the brain basis of learning and memory and the application of cognitive psychology to education. He writes the “Ask the Cognitive Scientist” column for American Educator magazine.

In this book, Willingham asks the question many of us have asked.  After all, students are born as naturally curious creatures, so why are they turned off by education, even when they are paying to attend?  Why can they remember the most trivial detail from a TV show or the words to a popular song, but not remember the answers on our tests?  Willingham submits nine principles that he states explain this disconnect.  Through these nine principles, he first attempts to explain how the minds of students work and then relate how to use that knowledge to improve teaching.

Principle 1: People are naturally curious, but we are not naturally good thinkers; unless the cognitive conditions are right, we will avoid thinking.

Willingham states that our minds are not especially well-suited for thinking; thinking is slow, effortful and uncertain.  So rather than thinking in most situations, we revert to relying on our memories – following courses of action we have taken previously.  Paradoxically though, people tend to find successful thinking pleasurable – we like to solve problems, provided they are not too tough.  John Medina (2008), in his book Brain Rules, stated that we are all powerful and natural explorers, and Willingham would agree.  For problems to be solved, he suggests that the thinker needs adequate information from the environment, sufficient room in working memory, and the required facts and processes stored in long-term memory.  In translating this to our classrooms, he suggests that we stage our instruction so that students have relevant problems to solve, respecting in the process their cognitive limits.  Varying how these problems are presented to students and changing the pace can keep us from losing the attention of our students.

Principle 2: Factual knowledge must precede skill.

Willingham states that there is no doubt that memorizing lists of dry facts is boring, but it is equally true that trying to teach students to analyze or synthesize in the absence of factual knowledge is problematic.  These skills require extensive factual knowledge.  He quoted Einstein, who said “Imagination is more important than knowledge”…and then spends the chapter refuting Einstein.  From his cognitive perspective, knowledge is more important in that it is the prerequisite for imagination.  For Willingham, this implies that in every course reading is fundamental.  We should ensure that a knowledge base is in place before requiring critical thinking.  This does not mean that boring presentations are okay.  One of Medina’s Brain Rules: We don’t pay attention to boring things.  Willingham suggests that one solution is look for some of that knowledge base outside of class – meaningful and pointed assignments using TV and internet videos can provoke learning.

Principle 3: Memory is the residue of thought.

Humans cannot store everything that happens in memory.  So the brain selectively stores memories.  And if one has to think about something carefully, the brain reasons that it might have to think about it again in the future, so it is a memory that should be stored.  Medina stated this in two of his rules – Repeat to Remember and Remember to Repeat.  Willingham provides some interesting research on memory.  The lesson appears to be that material to be learned must spend some time in working memory (they think about it), but equally important, students need to think about the meaning of the material.  It does you little good to use a clever video as an attention getter if at the end of class, the students remember the video but not the material covered.

Principle 4:  We understand new things in the context of things we already know, and most of what we know is concrete.

We want students to be able to apply our lessons in new contexts, but the challenge is that the mind does not like abstractions.  The mind prefers the concrete.  Cognitive research therefore suggests that understanding abstractions is really remembering in disguise.   If students are given lots of examples of a concept, the chances improve that they will then see how to apply a concept to new situations.  Many of us have experienced the students who parrot our words back to us…but appear to not really understand.  They exhibit shallow knowledge of the material.  Students with deep knowledge tend to understand not just the parts but the whole.  Therefore, it helps students to not only provide examples but to also ask them to compare the similarities and differences between examples.  Deep knowledge should be your goal, but Willingham also argues that we should be realistic about just how deep our students can get in our short time with them.  At best, we are launching them on a voyage of discovery.

Principle 5: It is virtually impossible to become proficient at a mental task without extended practice.

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell (2008) stated that what Tiger Woods, Mozart, and Bill Gates had in common was ten thousand hours of practice.  Willingham agrees that practice is crucial – it helps one gain competence, helps one improve, helps protect against forgetting, and helps in transfer to new situations.

Principle 6:  Cognition early in training is fundamentally different from cognition late in training.

Willingham notes that experts did not start out thinking as experts; they thought as novices.  From his point of view, students are ready to comprehend but not ready to create knowledge.  We should therefore not necessarily place students in positions where they are expected to create new knowledge (unless our reason is to have them take the journey, not create the destination).

Principle 7:  Students are more alike than different in how they think and learn.

There will probably be some push-back on this principle, but Willingham basically states that there really are not different learning styles.  He argues that what we consider as styles are really differences in cognitive abilities.  From his point of view, there is little substantive research that demonstrates the existence of multiple intelligences.  So rather than focusing on differences in students, he suggests focusing on differences in content.  Delivering the same content in multiple ways creates multiple examples and provides change, which adds interest.  Medina might agree with Willingham.  He suggested in Brain Rules that instructors should stimulate more of the senses – and that vision trumps all other senses.

Principle 8:  People do differ in intelligence, but intelligence can be changed through sustained hard work.

Alvin Toffler (1970) in Future Shock noted that the illiterate of the twenty-first century would not be those who could not read and write, but rather those that could not learn, unlearn, and relearn.  Willingham suggests that intelligence is not a fixed trait, but rather a malleable one that can be impacted through hard work.  Labeling students as dumb or slow becomes self-fulfilling.  He suggests rather that we focus on and praise effort and process, not ability.  If we treat failure as a natural part of the learning process and encourage hard work, we create a more positive learning environment.

Principle 9: Teaching, like any complex cognitive skill, must be practiced to be improved.

The previous eight principles apply equally to use as teachers.  We therefore need to practice, reflect on our processes, and seek feedback to improve.

Willingham concludes by noting that cognitive science can help us improve education, but it is not the whole story.  Classes are not just cognitive spaces but also emotional, social, and even motivational spaces.  Small and Vorgan (2008) in their book iBrain suggested that due to a generation immersed in digital media, a new digital divide is developing where younger students are comfortable online but lack social skills, whereas their older teachers are social but need to hone their technical skills.  Willingham would suggest that understanding cognition can help balance these conflicting concerns in the classroom.

His final thought bears repeating:  “Education makes better minds, and knowledge of the mind can make better education.”

In the past three posts, I have covered the first 39 “rules” from Alan Webber’s Rules of Thumb.: 52 Truths For Winning at Business Without Losing Your Self (2009).  I found this book to be relevant not only for entrepreneurs in business, but for those changing the paradigm of teaching by moving online.  This post will complete my review of his rules and their application to online teaching and learning.  Here are the last thirteen:

Rule #40 – Technology is about changing how we work.

Webber makes a great point that directly ties into our work in online teaching and learning – “It’s never about the technology – it’s always about what the technology makes possible.”  Technology is a moving target.  The online environment today is totally different than just five years ago due to the increased two-way interactivity now possible.  Rather than adopting “a” technology, we should be about adopting technological concepts that allow us to bring learning alive.  The question is never Wordpress versus Blogger or Moveable Type, but rather whether blogging can improve dialogue and connections in your class.  This rule also suggests that it is okay to try new approaches to teaching and learning due to new affordances technology grants rather than trying to shoe-horn our old course into an online learning environment.

Rule #41 – If you want to be a real leader, first get real about leadership.

In business, leadership is not attached to a single job title.  It is also not attached to a specific gender or race.  In classes, the same can be said.  Leadership is a way of thinking and acting, and we do our students a disservice if we do not cultivate that.  Real leaders grow new leaders, and real teachers grow the next generation of leaders as well.  How is your class organized to recognize and cultivate thinking and acting as leaders?

Rule #42 – The survival of the fittest is the business case for diversity.

Webber noted that diversity is the key to adaptation and the way to tap new ideas.  It is a way of learning new ways of thinking and operating.  Much has been written about the anonymity of students online, but I would suggest that one can also create opportunities that expose the diversity of thought.  I will never forget an early online class I taught in which college leadership was being discussed.  A white American male posted a lengthy comment about authoritative leadership, and then one male student from Guam started his post with “I am a Chamorro and that is not how we think…”  Online classes open up wonderful opportunities for cross-cultural, gender, or racial discussions in a safe environment.  Exposing our students to diversity of thought equips them for success in the flat world.

Rule #43 – Don’t confuse credentials with talent.

In business today, particularly with the speed of change that is occurring, it makes sense to hire for attitude and then train for skills.  I wonder if we are guilty of the reverse in education.  We (and our students) place great value on degrees and grades.  The number one question we tend to get in class (online or F2F) is “Will this be on the test?”  If we were in the talent business rather than the credentialing business, we faculty and our students would be focused more on learning and less on grades.  Do our classes help or hurt our students’ future job prospects when it comes to attitude?

Rule #44 – When it comes to business, it helps if you actually know something about something.

The same can be said for teaching online.  Our role as faculty has definitely changed.  We now live in a world where Scantron tests are obsolete if students can enter the question into Wolfram Alpha or Google or Wikipedia and ascertain the correct answer.  But that is not learning.  Our role has evolved from knowledge giver into a knowledge guide, which does mean that we have to know something about something…so that we can guide those who only check the first five returns in Google.  We should want to move our students beyond information to knowledge.

Rule #45 – Failure isn’t failing.  Failure is failing to try.

Webber noted that the articles in FastCompany magazine that garnered the greatest reader responses were the ones where authors talked about their failures and what they learned.  One cannot take risks without having failures, but the question becomes what one does with the lessons learned.  That is true of online teachers and it is true of online students.  Regardless of the myth of the digital natives, the truth is that the online environment is still outside the comfort zone of many students (as it is for many faculty).  Yet, this new environment offers rich opportunities to try things that could never be tried face-to-face.  I recently required my graduate class of technology-frightened students to research a Web 2.0 tool and then post a multimedia presentation on that tool in a wiki to their fellow classmates in a two-week period…with no instruction on “how” to do that.  But I also told them that anyone who successfully posted a multimedia presentation passed the assignment.  They ended up amazing themselves, posting a combination of YouTube, Jing, and Camtasia videos on 25 separate tools.  They also learned that the lesson was not the presentation but the journey in preparing and posting the presentation.  After that two-week period, I no longer had a class of students scared of technology.  Almost all of them ended up applying their new skills in the K-12 classes they taught.  What excites me most is the spirit of experimentation that has suddenly erupted in these teachers.

Rule #46 – Tough leaders wear their hearts on their sleeves.

Webber noted that the kind of leaders the world needs are those who exercise tough leadership with warm hearts.  I believe that the worst mistake an online faculty can make is to be invisible.  It is okay to have a tough course but your students should “see” you as someone who is passionate about the subject matter and caring about their success in the class.  The social presence of the faculty impacts learning, retention, and ultimately student success.

Rule #47 – Everyone’s at the center of their map of the world.

I am currently in Boston visiting my daughter and grandkids.  One of the lesser known tourist attractions is the Mapparium, a three-story tall stained glass globe that you walk into and stand at the center of the world.  It certainly is a unique view of geography.  Yet, unique views are common.  I was talking with my good friend Bruce Robinson last night.  Bruce is Headmaster of the British School of Boston and was my roommate at University of Nebraska as we worked on our doctorates.  Bruce is also originally from Australia, and he had a world map that (to me) was upside down and showed Australia as center of the world.  Technology has given us all the ability to construct our own personal learning environments in which we are the center of the world, with linkages to information and knowledge being generated all around us.  This concept that not only are we at the center but also we are responsible for our own learning is a great literacy that we need to pass on to our students.  Webber makes a great point in Rule #47: ”

“It’s a big world-and getting smaller all the time. It’s not so much that the world is flat.  It’s that we are all connected…you’re in the middle, and so is everyone else.”

Rule #48 – If you want to make change, start with an iconic project.

Everyone talks about “change” yet few really believe in it of do it.  The concept of change is too nebulous for most people.  So Webber suggests that the road to change is to pick a doable project that provides proof of concept and makes change believable.  So if you would like to add online courses to your education delivery mix, don’t try to do all of them immediately.  Pick one course that has impact and do a proof of concept design and delivery.  When we started the online delivery at Gwinnett Technical College in Georgia, we started with three courses and 41 students.  Within five years, we were offering 200 courses a quarter with the largest online technical college enrollment in the state.

Rule #49 – If you want to grow as a leader, you have to disarm your border guards.

It is an unwritten law of business that the higher you rise, the more inaccessible you become.  Webber points our that business today is more than numbers and rationality; that emotional intelligence plays just as important a role.  In a similar view, faculty who teach online need to be accessible and real to their online students.  It is too easy to put up barriers to access – rigid office hours, unreturned email, no use of social media like Facebook or Twitter.  Think about how accessible you are and what barriers may be blocking students from getting to you.

Rule #50 – On the way up, pay attention to your strengths; they’ll be your weaknesses on your way down.

We are all fascinated by lists of the best…but when it comes to businesses, those in the Fortune 500 today probably will not remain there.  Take a look at the Fortune 500 from fifty years ago – the top company was General Motors!  Every strength also has the potential as a vulnerability.  There are lessons from GM that can be applied to higher education.  We need to examine our strengths today with new lens of digital connectiveness, ubiquitous access to information, and open publishing.

Rule #51 – Take your work seriously. Yourself, not so much.

Great advice…whether you run a company or a class.  I start all of my online classes with an icebreaker to get to know my students…and to let them get to know me.  There are a ton of interactive websites that can be used for ice breakers online. One I have used in the past with college-aged student is “Gone To the Dogs.” You click on GAMES (along the left side menu) and fill out the Dog Breed Calculator test to find out what breed of dog you are!  Turns out I am a “Azawakh” (or Tareg Sloughi)…a large but very skinny dog from the sub-Sahara. It is “rangy, leggy, lean, rugged, and elegant”…and my wife might suggest that I am three out of the five and leave it to me to figure out which!  My students love it – and we begin that first week making connections with each other.

Rule #52 – Stay alert!  There are teachers everywhere.

Wonderful way to end the book!  Webber suggests that we should all stay open to what we are hearing and be willing to listen and learn.  I note in my syllabus that I expect to learn as much from my students as they do from me, because I set my online classes up with the expectation that we are all co-creators of knowledge who learn from each other.

Webber ends his book by noting that the old rules no longer apply and that we need new rules of thumb.  That suggests a continuing evolution.  He asks that we all share our Rule #53, and has set up a website – http://www.rulesofthumbbook.com – to facilitate that sharing.

So – four posts covering 52 rules.  What do you think?  What would be our Rule #53 for online teaching and learning?  Leave a comment here and let me know!

Earlier this week, I posted the first two posts reviewing Alan Webber’s Rules of Thumb.: 52 Truths For Winning at Business Without Losing Your Self (2009).  I got a nice note from Alan at his website:

“I just read your blog on Rules and I can’t thank you enough! Taking Rules and applying it to the concept of achieving excellence in teaching is a terrific way to migrate my (mostly) general rules to a very specific (and very important) context. As you say at the end of your blog post: do they hit the target, or are they off the mark? It’s good learning for me, by the way, to watch you port the rules into your own work/life and test them to see if they actually offer practical, useful, helpful guidance. Thanks for the posting here and the serious application on your own site!”

I agree that it is useful to take books like Alan’s and reflect on their merit in the context of one’s own work.  So with that in mind, here are the next thirteen rules:

Rule #27 – If you want to be like Google, learn Megan Smith’s three rules.

Megan Smith is Google’s VP of new business development and strategy.  Her three rules that got Alan’s attention:

• The customer participates.
• The customer drives,
• Open systems beat closed systems.

These relate directly to online teaching.  Even more so than in the classroom, the role of faculty shifts online to facilitation of a learning journey in which the students are participants and co-developers of knowledge.  As Michael Wesch has pointed out, no one knows as much as all of us, so let your students drive and see where it takes you!  And of course, to let them drive, you need to leave the walled gardens of course management systems and venture out into the open web, taking advantage of open systems like Twitter, Ning, and even Wikipedia.

Rule #28 – Good design is table stakes.  Great design wins.

Webber noted that today design is what differentiates companies.  The same can be said for online courses.  Good design should be the norm.  Great design differentiates courses.  To me, design means a lot more than just loading content.  It means you have thought through your course objectives and designed the content, interactions, formative feedback, and assessments to clearly deliver the learning objectives.

Rule #29 – Words matter.

Webber quoted Mark Twain who said “The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and lightning bug.”  When faculty move their courses online, they have created an environment for online learning, but have they created an environment where learning occurs online?  Look at how you communicate to your online students.  How are your expectations communicated?  How are the students’ voices communicated?

Rule #30 – The likeliest sources of great ideas are in the most unlikely places.

In business, great ideas do not necessarily emerge from R&D centers, but rather from the trenches or the fringes.  Tom Peters quoted Jack Welsch on this, who said, “You can’t behave in a calm, rational manner.  You’ve got to be out there on the lunatic fringe.” In teaching online, do you see yourself as the only source of ideas, or do you set your students free to seek new ideas from unlikely sources?

Rule #31 – Everything communicates.

Your online design, your “Faculty Information”, your syllabus, your communications in discussion boards, blog comments, and wikis…they all send messages about you, your passion for teaching and the subject matter, and your openness to connecting with your students.  Equally important, what you decide not to use or do also communicates.  How do you brand yourself?

Rule #32 – Content isn’t king. Context is king.

I love the quote by Walter Wriston that every day “I’m presented with three types of information.  Facts, wrong facts, and damned lies.  My job is to know which is which.”  That same rule can apply to online teaching.  The internet is awash in facts, wrong facts and damned lies.  Teaching our students how to navigate and analyze this massive pool of data is a key literacy for this age.  As Webber noted, context is how we add value.

Rule #33 – Everything is a performance.

We faculty know this from teaching in the classroom, but have you considered your “performance” in an online class?  How do you come across to your students?  Do you have an authentic voice and social presence online?  Great teachers are known for their delivery, and that is as true online as in the classroom.

Rule #34 – Simplicity is the new currency.

In the Center for Teaching Excellence, we spend a lot of time examining new Web 2.0 applications.  Some are just cool, but at the end of the day, we always need to ask ourselves – Do they make our life easier or more complicated?  Would it solve problems for me or make problems for me?  The same can be said for your online course design?  Do you make it simple for students to figure out the flow, or is finding assignments a problem?  Is your course flow consistent week to week?

Rule #35 – The Red Auerbach management principle: loyalty is a two-way street.

Arnold “Red” Auerbach was the coach of the Boston Celtics who won 938 games.    When talking about why the Celtics were successful, he stated that you should not reward players on statistics but on contributions to the team; don’t con the players and they will not con you; and remember that loyalty is a two-way street.  Trust and loyalty go hand in hand.  In business, Webber talks about how many managers demand loyalty from employees but do not give loyalty back, preferring instead to use fear and intimidation over leadership.  It makes me wonder about how we as faculty come across to our students?  Do our online policies make it clear that we mistrust our students, or do our policies show respect and trust as their foundation?  To me, this goes hand in hand with high expectations.  Expect much of your students, trust them, and they will rise above your expectations.

Rule #36 – Message to entrepreneurs: managing your emotional flow is more critical than managing your cash flow.

Webber’s message to entrepreneurs is that one should not get so focused on making money that one loses one’s mind.  His solution – great partners, lots of laughs, loud music, and comfort food.  This is a tough one to map to online learning….and yet, it resonates with me on several levels.  I work hard to make my courses meaningful…but fun nonetheless.  I tend to have Pandora playing when I am working online.  In other words, if I continue to have fun teaching online, my students will enjoy the experience more as well.

Rule #37 – All money is not created equal.

Webber is focused in this rule on not just raising capital to start a new business, but in also creating relationships as part of that process.  While we do not necessarily raise money in our online teaching, we do need to raise social capital.  Our students will relate to us and our content much more if they have connected with us.  This relationship stuff is very important – it underlies any community of learners.

Rule #38 – If you want to think big, start small.

Webber interviewed Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus about his work with microcredit.  In answer to the question on how to pick problems to work on, given so many problems in the world, he said, “Start with what ever is right in front of you.”  Many faculty are intimidated about moving their courses online, as the issues seem too numerous.  This advice works equally well for them.  Start small.  Create simple interactions to connect with your students initially, and then build on the experience over time.  I am currently thoroughly enjoying the graduate course I teach in School Leadership, but this course evolved over the four semesters in which I have taught.

Rule #39 – “Serious fun” isn’t an oxymoron; it’s how you win.

Webber quoted Dan Pink, who said that “People rarely succeed at anything unless they are having fun doing it.”  Yet we tend to load our courses down with the rules on what students cannot do, as opposed to the freedom to learn and learn well.  I take it as a real complement when my students tell me in course evaluations that my course was “fun.”  That meant that I got it and they got it – the subject matter is serious but the learning journey around that serious subject matter can be darn fun!

And I have to admit, it has been fun mapping Webber’s rules to the context of online teaching and learning.  I will finish up his Rules of Thumb in the next post.

Yesterday I started an examination of Alan Webber’s Rules of Thumb.: 52 Truths For Winning at Business Without Losing Your Self (2009).  As Webber noted, these amazing times require one to rethink, reimagine, and recalibrate what is possible.  In other words, it is time to rewrite the rules.

I looked at the first thirteen rules yesterday, using as a lens our initiative to help faculty move their classes online.  Continuing today:

Rule #14 – You don’t know if you don’t go.

Webber suggests that we all need to get out of our comfort zone and experience new things.  How many of us as faculty spend time in the social media that our students use?  How do we add relevance to our students’ lives if we do not understand their culture?  You don’t know if you don’t go!

Rule #15 – Every start-up needs four things: change, connections, conversation and community.

Webber noted that these four words are not just a cute mnemonic device, they represent a foundation for a new type of business plan.  They also form a nice foundation for an online course.  In moving courses online, teaching (and learning) practices have to change.  Online courses work best when students make connections with the content, the faculty, and each other.  Learning occurs through conversations (synchronous and asynchronous).  The goal in online learning is to create a community of learners.

Rule #16 – Facts are facts; stories are how we learn.

Nothing is dryer than just the facts.  Facts come alive when coupled with stories that touch us.  My colleague Bud Deihl has been working with faculty at VCU to start a digital storytelling initiative.  Technology provides some wonderful tools these days for faculty to tell their stories…and for students to tell theirs.  Learning becomes more personal when stories are used, and more learning-centered if students become involved in telling those stories.  In my classes last year, I had quite a few online students who were frankly scared of technology, and yet when I pointed them to CogDog’s 50+ Ways to Tell a Story and let them begin telling theirs, magical things began to happen in the class.

Rule #17 – Entrepreneurs choose serendipity over efficiency.

There are safe ways to teach and there are creative ways to teach, and the two rarely coincide.  Online teaching and learning has opened new creative approaches for both my students and myself.  It is work, but it is also fun, exciting, and more vibrant than recycling the old lectures I used to use.

Rule #18 – Knowing it ain’t the same as doing it.

There are a lot of “experts” who theorize about best practices for teaching online.  But the critical component for me is whether these experts have actually done it – taught online themselves.  In a like manner, faculty will learn more the first semester they actually teach online, and there are no manuals or websites that can replace that crucible of experience.

Rule #19 – Memo to leaders: focus on the signal-to-noise ratio.

The signal-to-noise ratio comes from electrical engineering – the higher the ratio, the clearer the message being transmitted.  It is also a term I heard in my Navy days.  When hunting submarines, our job was to pull their signals out of the acoustic noise in the sea.  We used technology to improve the signal to noise ratio.  Today, our job as faculty is to still improve that signal-to-noise ratio.  The internet is awash in noise and distractions.  We do have tools such as RSS feeds that can help us improve our signal strength and focus on finding those bits of information that enhance the learning process.  Webber suggested that leaders need to do self-assessments about themselves, their company, their values, and their metrics in order to improve their signal-to-noise ratio.  Good advice also for faculty and the course they teach.  Particularly online, how clear are we on goals and objectives?  What processes are we using to help students critically examine our subject matter?  Do the metrics we use map to our learning objectives, and do our students understand that?

Rule #20 – Speed = strategy.

In an age where change is happening at a dizzying pace, the winners will be those who can see the change and adapt the swiftest.  This may not be true for every course, but every course can benefit from developing students who are critical thinkers and adaptive thinkers.  It raises the question as to how we unleash our students to question old models and create new ones.

Rule #21 – Great leaders answer Tom Peters’ great question: “How can I capture the world’s imagination?”

Is your course “insanely great?”  If not, why not?  Timid approaches to learning do succeed every day, and imaginative experiments in learning do fail everyday, but which excite you and your students more?  Considering how to have one’s course capture the students’ imagination is a great exercise in keeping at bay the status quo.

Rule #22 – Learn to see the world through the eyes of your customer.

The learning is a class changes when the faculty stops being a salesperson for her or his discipline and instead becomes a partner with students in knowledge creation around the discipline.  We faculty are guilty of being so passionate about our course that we fail to examine our course through our students’ eyes.  If we want them to want more than a grade, we have to work at creating opportunities so students see the relevance of the course to their own lives, lighting their own passions about the subject matter.  Some of the social media open new opportunities for making our students’ thinking visible.  It is one of the reasons I feel I get closer to my online students than my face-to-face students.  In the 24/7 online environment, I end up spending more time seeing the world through their eyes.

Rule #23 – Keep two lists: What gets you up in the morning? What keeps you up at night?

Webber noted that some people have jobs while others have something they really work at.  The first question really gets at what are you passionate about, while the second is about being honest about what works and what does not.  What would be on your two lists?

Rule #24 – If you want to change the game, change the economics of how the game is played.

I love the quote from Jerry Garcia that starts this chapter – “You do not want to merely be considered just the best of the best.  You want to be considered the only ones who do what you do.”  I have always considered that great advice for an online teacher as well.  Rather than looking for the same ways of doing what you used to do in the classroom in an online class, look for new ways of teaching that the online environment and social media open up.

Rule #25 – If you want to change the game, change customer expectations.

John Tagg noted in The Learning Paradigm College that students are equally guilty at low expectations (you feed me what will be on the test, I’ll regurgitate it).  But as Chickering and Gamson noted in their classic Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education, high expectations lead to improved performance.

6. Communicates High Expectations – Expect more and you will get more. High expectations are important for everyone — for the poorly prepared, for those unwilling to exert themselves, and for the bright and well motivated. Expecting students to perform well becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when teachers and institutions hold high expectations for themselves and make extra efforts.

In the online environment, expectation management is critical.  Rubrics are an excellent means by which your expectations can be crystal clear.

Rule #26 – The soft stuff is the hard stuff.

Does your course focus on the bottom line (grades) or investing in the future?  Do students leave your course motivated to continue their learning journey or glad the course is done and the box is checked for graduation?  What do you focus on?

These rules are resonating with me.  Are they with you?  I’ll continue my examination in the next post.

I have just finished Alan Webber’s Rules of Thumb.: 52 Truths For Winning at Business Without Losing Your Self (2009).  It is a quick read and yet deserves reflection and discussion.  Webber previously took the traditional business magazine in exciting and rule-breaking directions with FastCompany, and his reason for writing this book is that these amazing times require one to rethink, reimagine, and recalibrate what is possible.  In other words, it is time to rewrite the rules.

The 52 chapters each cover a “rule” with typically a story from Alan’s past coupled with a “So What?” reflection on what the rule means.  As Tom Peters noted:

In short, Rules of Thumb, featuring 52 “rules,” is a marvel. Practical. Philosophical. Fun. And, above all, wise. Ever so wise.

Here is a sample:

#10 A Good Question Beats a Good Answer. #14 You Don’t Know if You Don’t Go. #16 Facts Are Facts; Stories Are How We Learn. #20 Speed = Strategy. #23 Keep Two Lists: What Gets You Up in the Morning? What Keeps You Up at Night? #26 The Soft Stuff Is the Hard Stuff. #28 Good Design Is Table Stakes. Great Design Wins. #29 Words Matter. #33 Everything Is a Performance. #42 The Survival of the Fittest Is the Business Case for Diversity. #45 Failure Isn’t Failing. Failure Is Failing to Try. #46 Tough Leaders Wear Their Hearts on Their Sleeves. #49 If You Want to Grow as a Leader, You Have to Disarm Your Border Guards. #50 On the Way Up Pay Attention to Your Strengths; They’ll Be Your Weaknesses on the Way Down. #52 Stay Alert! There Are Teachers Everywhere.

I would like to have listed all 52—there are no losers in this set. (In fact, I believe Alan’s idiot editor sliced about half of them from the first draft, which I saw; damn shame.)

Fact is, I love Alan, and I love his book. Yes, he truly is a wise man.

Ahhhh…as only Tom Peters can write!

But I agree with him.  In fact, what struck me was how many of the rules fit our current initiative to help faculty move their teaching and learning online.  So I thought I would spend a few blog posts examining Webber’s rules and their fit with our initiative.

Rule#1 – When the going gets tough, the tough relax.

Webber noted that one of my heroes, Edwards Deming, was famous for his eighth point in creating quality in an organization – Drive Out Fear.  Webber suggested that you not let fear undermine your chance to do what you want to do.  I could suggest that this equally applies to faculty considering teaching online, but for me, it suggests a deeper truth – No course will ever have learning at its core if fear rules the students.  Webber suggests that one should smile and enjoy the trip.  I would say that works equally well for faculty and students in an online class.

Rule #2 – Every company is running for office.  To win, give the voters what they want.

Webber noted that every day you are running for office, and that every vote counts!  He states that you have to prove to your customers that you get them and care about them.  While I would not necessarily equate students with customers, I do believe that it is important that online students “see” you as a real person that cares about them and their learning.  Giving students what they want does not mean watering down a course, it means giving students clear organization, clear directions, and the respect to allow them to be co-explorers in the learning process.

Rule #3 – Ask the last question first.

Webber noted that when one starts with “Do you know the point of the exercise?”, it becomes a way to reverse-engineer the project.  In a similar manner, students will understand their online work better if they understand what the point of any assignment is…how it relates to the learning objectives of the course and ultimately to why your particular course is important and relevant to their lives.

Rule #4 – Don’t implement solutions.  Prevent problems.

I was always impressed that the first time a Sony Trinitron TV was plugged in and turned on was when a customer pulled it out of the box.  Sony did not wait until a TV was built to test it, it incrementally tested each component along the manufacturing process such that the assembled TV worked, period.  That makes sense in manufacturing, yet too many faculty use only a mid-term and final to assess the learning that takes place in their classes.  Building in formative assessment and shifting the responsibility for learning equally to the students makes as much sense in online learning as it does for Sony.

Rule #5 – Change is a math formula.

The formula is that change happens when the cost of the status quo is greater than the risk of change.  Up until now, most good online faculty have been early adopters.  The status quo has worked for most faculty, who continue to teach the way they were taught.  However, in the past few years, the internet has slowly become integrated into the status quo.  From social networking to twittering, a new generation of both younger and older adults are routinely using the web as part of their lives.  Failing to integrate the web into teaching and learning risks alienating this new generation.  The tipping point is rapidly approaching where failing to provide online classes will be a marketing issue for some programs in higher education.

Rule #6 – If you want to see with fresh eyes, reframe the picture.

Webber quoted Ted Levitt who suggested that many companies suffer from a serious problem of not really understanding what business they were in.  Some business do get it.  Southwest Airlines is not in the transportation business – it is in the freedom business.  Starbucks is not in the coffee business, it is in the “home away from home” business.  Harley Davidson does not sell motorcycles, it sells a lifestyle.  It begs the question – how do your students see your online course?  Do you see your job as “teaching” or do you see yourself as someone who sets up a learning environment and builds a learning community?

Rule #7 – The system is the solution.

One could go many directions with this in higher education.  After all, our schools and our courses tend to be very siloed, acting as if each was independent of the other.  In truth, our courses are systems within systems, and our students spend four-plus years trying to figure out the interrelationships between them.  It carries over in our online classes.  We load students and content into a course management system and expect learning to occur.  Learning would be optimized if we took a more system-level approach.  I am a big believer in TPACK, which looks at the appropriate technology and the appropriate pedagogy for the specific content students are exploring.  In our online class, we use a variety of social media to enhance the course management system and connect our students with others in the discipline.  In the interconnected system, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Rule #8 – New realities demand new categories.

Webber stated that solving today’s problems means moving beyond yesterday’s outmoded categories.   The online environment is creating new categories every day – ebooks, unparallelled access to information, wikipedias, virtual worlds, open-source, crowd-sourcing, new forms of academic publishing, to name a few.  In a hyperlinked world, a seat-time approach to education using hard-bound books no longer fits.

Rule #9 – Nothing happens until money changes hands.

Okay, maybe one rule that would be a stretch applying to online teaching and learning.  After all, this book was written primarly for entrepreneurs.  And yet, there is something to be said for not only creating enthusiasm for learning in your class, but also having tangible results – the first paper or the first video or the first podcast created by your students and submitted for your (and peer) review.

Rule #10 – A good question beats a good answer.

This resonates with me as a researcher.  Good research almost always raises good questions as part of the research.  Given how knowledge continues to grow, it makes sense that we develop our students to be questioners rather than parrots who feed the “correct” answer back to us.  As history has too often shown, the correct answer only works for so long before a more correct answer comes along.

Rule #11 – We’ve moved from an either/or past to a both/and future.

Webber suggests that entrepreneurs today have to reject the old either/or choices and instead look for both/and synergies.  When Barack Obama suggested that there were no red states or blue states, just red, white and blue states, he was reframing a both/and future rather than an either/or past.  Higher education likewise needs to move past face-to-face or online classes to a both/and approach that gives both options to our students.  At a past institution where I worked, the majority of our “online” students also came to campus and took face-to-face classes.  We and our students should value building a degree around a combination of face-to-face classes and online classes.

Rule #12 – The difference between a crisis and an opportunity is when you learn about it.

I am a different teacher today than I was three-years ago.  The reason – my network who continually feeds information to me, whether through Twitter, Ning, or Google Reader.  This rapid assimilation of knowledge allows me to keep my course current and relevant.  It suggest to me that these new skills I have developed now need to be part of my classes so that my students develop similar skills.  Knowledge-sharing is now a normal part of my life, and it is a job skill my students will need.

Rule #13 – Learn to take no as a question.

While my passion is online teaching and learning, the reality currently is that most faculty who seek me out do so to web enhance their face-to-face class, and have no interest in online teaching and learning.  And yet, to me, web enhancing a class IS online teaching and learning.  I am slowly learning to take the NO about online teaching and learning as an opportunity to open a new dialogue with my colleagues.  I am a victim of my own rose-colored glasses, and I really need to better understand the reluctance others have, so that I can do a better job helping them when the time is right for them to move online.

I’ll continue with the next 13 in the next post.  My question to you – on target or off the board?  What do you think?

It started when my friend Eduardo Peirano tweeted a link to me and two others about an article in the May 29th edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education.  In “I’ll Never Do It Again,” Elayne Clift laid out her reasons for never teaching online again.  Her five reasons included:

1. “Virtual community” is the ultimate oxymoron.
2. The lack of immediacy in communication is maddening.
3. The quality of education is compromised in online learning.
4. Show the money (more work for the same pay)
5. Online teaching can be very punishing (requires more time)

She wrapped up her comments with:

“Weary and obsessed, I began to feel that, despite my best efforts, I was not up to the task, not in control, not meeting my own standards. On top of that, I suspected my students didn’t like me very much. That hurt. I began to break out in rashes and suffer sleepless nights.

That’s when I knew that I would not do it again and would chalk it up to experience — even if that decision meant hanging up my chalk altogether. Try to talk me down. Tell me I didn’t give it enough time. Call me old-fashioned and out-of-date. Just don’t call me to teach online.

I’ll leave that to (younger?) teachers who like living in a virtual world of virtual students with virtual goals, capacities, and ideas. Me? I’ll stick to the virtues of live human interaction — in the classroom and elsewhere — in a world rapidly becoming, as some of my students might say, “totally unreal!””

Eduardo knew that this 59-year-old (younger?) faculty would rise to the bait!  He had started a discussion forum around this article in his Ning site for Higher Education – College 2.0.  In his post, he noted:

“Aren’t online teachers complicating themselves. At the face to face classes there is nothing similar to forum discussions. So the discussions between the students should be very important for their grade!! They should be allowed to help each other and the teacher’s role is to point them to good resources and to support and facilitate the discussions and learning. If the homework is a collaborative paper each student should be responsible to contribute with some paragraphs (Michael Wesch: A Cultural Anthropologist Looks at Digital Technolog…) or presentation.”

I posted a reply on the College 2.0 forum, but I was fairly certain that Elayne Clift or folks that agreed with her would never see it there.  So I posted the same comments in a Chronicle Forum for article discussion (as well as linking this comment out on Twitter).  Jon Becker was more eloquent in 140 characters but summed up my feelings pretty well:

My more lengthy comment was:

Elayne Clift certainly had issues with teaching online, but it appeared to me that she attempted this course without changing any of her practices, and teaching online is fundamentally different than teaching face-to-face.  I am as old-dog as Clift, but I also have been teaching online for 14 years at a variety of institutions, and see things a little different than she does.

A “virtual community” is only an oxymoron if the faculty does not instill a sense of community through her or his own social presence in the class.  Using social media and collaborative activities, a community can not only form but be very strong.  Social networking tools can lead to a rich communication not only within just the course but with discipline experts worldwide.  We recently held a webconference with our class and guest speakers, and we also opened it up to the world through Twitter.  Others in the field from around the country joined the webconference and began interacting with our students in the chat box.  You could not duplicate that in a physical classroom.

As to lack of quality, that is more an indictment on the institution and the faculty than on online learning.  In my most recent class that I co-taught with another, several students used the term “life-altering” to express their appreciation for the quality of learning they found in our class.

The comments about money and time suggest to me again that Clift attempted to be the single expert on the stage rather than co-opting her students into the learning process.  I find the time distributed nature of online learning works well for me, but much of my focus is on helping students learn how to learn and teach each other.

I was lead author of a white paper published by our Center for Teaching Excellence on online teaching> http://bit.ly/11DBMx. It focuses on the practice of teaching online, and may offer an alternative view to the one espoused by Clift.  Please add to the conversation – we would be interested in your thoughts.

That was near 1pm today.  Another person had started a similar forum called “Teaching Online.”  By dinner time, these two comments had been read over three hundred and two-fifty times respectively, and a lengthy exchange was developing in the forum.  What I found fascinating was that our comments evoked such strong reaction from two faculty who had never taught online. I respect more the comments from those who had taught online.  My Twitter network is biased towards technology but was much more aligned with my own comments.

In several Chronicle comments, there was a note of fear that the “good old days” were gone and that because of online learning, higher education was going to hell in a handbasket.  “Beatitude” noted “I hope to God this isn’t the future for all of higher education…”

“Beatitude” raised a number of interesting points.  He or she noted that online courses were fine in the summer as long as they did not take resources away from [real] courses in the academic year.  (My interpretation).  There was a bit of fear about potential loss of jobs due to outsourcing.  And a note that many students currently taking online courses live on campus and take these courses from their dorms.

All true.

Yet, there is no real discussion about “learning” or academic success.  My simplistic view is that online is simply a mode of delivery, as are large lectures, small classrooms, and even tele-delivery to remote satellite settings.  We do not burn down large lecture halls because significant numbers of students fail those classes.  We instead look at best means of delivery given the context of large lecture halls.  Online should be no different.  Castigating online as something to fear for the future seems narrow-sighted.

Recent polls suggest almost 100% of entering students already own a laptop.  Given wireless connectivity, there really is no course anymore in which some online learning does not occur.  Our students are using Google and Wikipedia, either in class or outside it (not to mention Facebook!).  The question is not whether students are online or not but rather whether we faculty are guiding their online lives towards learning that matters.

Lisa Lane had a more positive note in her posting in College 2.0 on this matter:

“Faculty who’ve been teaching online awhile have a responsibility to share their experiences, tips and tricks with those just starting out. Mechanisms need to be in place for them to do that, whether it’s professional development programs, training seminars, or social interaction (online or in person). I could, and have, provided many, many solutions to the overload so many new online instructors experience trying to make their online class as much like their on-site classes as possible. There are indeed ways to design the experience to be easier and better for all.”

I agree with Lisa (and I think our White Paper was an attempt to do just the type of sharing she suggests).

Eduardo hit my hot button today (or more correctly, Elayne did).  What are your thoughts?  Have we not reached the point where the debate over the efficacy of online learning is past and where we should instead be focusing on the new practices needed to make online learning the success many of us have already seen it to be?  As always, I would be interested in your comments and reaction.

{Photo Remixed from Gill Wildman}

The delivery of courses online is nearly as old as the web itself, but as with any innovation, some faculty members have been early adopters while others have watched the development with both interest and skepticism. As publishing and managing content on the web has become easier, and as the delivery of online courses has become increasingly more popular, more faculty members have begun exploring ways to offer their courses online.

There is a common perspective that moving a course online is primarily about designing and sequencing course content. While content is important, we also believe that recent changes on the web – toward a more social and interconnected space – have necessitated the rethinking of what it means to make the transition to online teaching and learning. The unprecedented access to information coupled with the ability by anyone to publish online are disrupting how one teaches and learns, raising questions in the minds of faculty as to whether their own practices should change.

Jeff Nugent, Bud Deihl, and I at the Virginia Commonwealth University Center for Teaching Excellence where I work have authored a white paper, Building from Content to Community: [Re]Thinking the Transition to Online Teaching and Learning, that is intended to serve as a resource for faculty who are teaching online or are considering making a transition. We hope this paper serves as the starting point for conversation, and invite you to share your ideas by leaving a comment at our CTE blog or here.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts!

For their final assignment, we asked our graduate class that Jon Becker and I taught on Educational Technology and School Leadership to reflect on their 15-week journey. Their reflections are captured in the Wordle above. We had twenty-five K-12 teachers who immersed themselves in the Web 2.0 stream for a semester and examined applications to their teaching and to school leadership. The reflections indicated that they thoroughly enjoyed the journey.

The Wordle points out some obvious observations – everyone focused on technology and their students. Many discussed the immediate application of web tools to their teaching in their own classrooms.

I was struck, however, by some of the personal observations that did not emerge in this Wordle. One student noted that she had just been selected as Teacher of the Year for her school, which she attributed to her engagement in our class and her excited reapplication of her learning from our class into her own school. Another student stated that she had originally wanted to move out of the classroom and into administration because she felt burned out in the classroom. Our class had so re-energized her that she now saw that she could have a greater impact on children and learning by remaining in the classroom and helping her digital kids grow. Several students used the same term in their individual reflections – “life-altering”.

While I am both proud and humbled by the impact this course had on many of our students, I suspect much of the impact was similar to the impact I saw in myself this past year. The more I network and connect, the more it impacts me on a personal level. Our students began to see this too. Many reflected that “professional development” had taken on personal aspects that they had never considered before.  It was a paradigm shift to move from professional development as something you attend to professional development as something for which you take personal responsibility.

This provides interesting context as we get ready for our week-long institute with seventeen faculty on teaching and learning with technology.  Trent Batson lamented yesterday that “life on campus goes on as normal. Faculty members are still expected to publish in traditional journals, still expected to meet their classes in rooms equipped with chalkboards and designed for lectures, and still expected by their students to tell them what they should know so they can write it on paper during a test.” Our hope in the institute is to break that cycle – help faculty see – at a personal level – the impact that the web now has on teaching and learning.  Jeff Nugent suggested one way to prepare for this week was for each of us facilitating it to return and update our own notion of our personal learning network. So here is what I came up with:

(Link to full size image)

My PLE contains traditional methods of information gathering like journals, listservs, and even morning coffee sessions. But I am also mindful of and tapped in to numerous web applications, where I hear the conversations taking place worldwide on topics of interest to me. Some of those conversations pop up in Delicious, some through my Google Reader, many from Twitter or Facebook. When I go seeking information, I tend to look in Delicious or Wikipedia, but I also still Google things, though I am increasingly looking to Twiiter as a search engine.

While I tried to collate items in neat areas of “collect, communicate, collaborate, and create/share,” the truth is that the interconnections are numerous and blurry.  Twitter is all of the above.  Our class wiki was all of the above.  Delicious many times is all of the above.

The key for me is that the web now weaves itself into all aspects of my work life at a deeply personal level.  In keeping with the interactive nature of the web, it is no longer enough to passively receive information.  Personal learning includes actively connecting and communicating with my network across multiple paths.

It seems that the “buzz” about PLEs and PLNs has died down recently, yet I found it illuminating personally to relook at my own concept of my own learning environment and network.  I suspect that it will continue to evolve.  What do you think?  What resonates with you?  What seems off base?

I would be interested in your thoughts.

Forty years ago when I was a plebe at the U. S. Naval Academy, I learned quickly that naval officers never said “I don’t know.”  The correct response if you did not know the answer was “I’ll Find Out, Sir!”  And then you had better find out!  It is a little thing, and yet, from an attitude perspective, huge.  “I don’t know” is a passive response requiring no action.  “I’ll find out” is a proactive response requiring action.

As I said goodnight to Michele, I was reflecting on her comment about my not saying “I don’t know.”  That is a personal attitude, but could it not also be transferred to our students? After all, it is simply an expectation that students will take responsibility for their own learning.

We have been debating the efficacy of allowing laptops in classrooms here on campus.  At the risk of calling them old-schoolers, there is a segment here that flatly bans the use of laptops or mobile devices in their classes.  To me, that is inviting a passive student to your class.  Luckily there are faculty here who feel the opposite.

The alternative as these other faculty have found is to tap in to the natural curiosity of students and set the expectation of “I’ll Find Out!”  At a brown bag lunch last week, one faculty talked about the excitement of having students in his History class fact-check him during lectures and pull their impromptu research into the class discussion.  I totally agree, and I think the attitude applies whether you are talking face-to-face or online classes.

In my online classes at both the undergraduate and graduate level, I have tried to set the expectation of student-generated content to add to the learning process.  My current class is a good example.  I have enjoyed co-teaching Educational Technology and School Leadership this semester with Jon Becker.  Over the past twelve weeks, we and our students have collaboratively explored the integration of Web 2.0 in K-12 programs.  At the start of class, we had a group of self-described technophobes who were very worried about taking an online class.  Through the use of active learning and collaboration in a wiki, they have grown comfortable working and sharing online.  Now, they wonder why their colleagues are not doing the same.  During the past week, the online discussion was rich with commentary about the professional development of K-12 teachers.  It was interesting to see my students moving from a former expectation that it was the administrator’s job to provide professional development to one that espoused personal learning in a networked world as the key to professional development.

“I’ll Find Out!” may be the heart and soul of learning-centered teaching, but I am coming to the realization that it also is the heart and soul of faculty development as well.  Of course, it requires action on the part of each individual.  A personal learning environment or network does not materialize overnight.  It requires time and conscious thought to develop a learning network that works for you.

Trying to figure out how to facilitate that process will tug at me for the next few weeks.  In June, Jeff Nugent, Bud Deihl and I will be guiding our annual Teaching and Learning with Technology Institute.  Our theme this year is Teaching and Learning in a Networked World.  Our challenge will be to introduce faculty to the power of networked learning and to assist them in developing their own networks.  I have had the luxury of a full semester with my class, so this is a tall task to attempt in one week.  It will be interesting to see how we do.  Will we succeed?

I’ll find out.

{Photo Credit: Ezalis, Chrisfreeland2002}