Category Archives: Pedagogy

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Instructional Designer 2.0; or, How do I explain my job to my grandparents?

When I taught high school English, saying my job title was an explanation in itself, mostly because anyone I was talking to had experienced high school English for themselves. The only difficulty was to convince them I was still an OK person even though I was a high school English teacher: “Don’t worry—I won’t be correcting your grammar or suggesting syntax improvements during our conversation!”

Now, when I say that I’m an “Instructional Designer,” the expression on most people’s faces is one of polite befuddlement—I may as well have said I’m a “Foley Artist” or “Happy Salad Model.”

That’s why I was surprised when Peggy Maki, the keynote speaker at the Teaching Commons Fall Forum, mentioned instructional designers. In her talk on the scholarship of teaching and learning, Dr. Maki was explaining the connections among program outcomes, course outcomes, assignments, and student learning, and she advocated for a clearer linearity across those elements. As an aside, she said (excuse my loose paraphrase), “And that’s why instructional design is so popular now.”

I was sitting right in front of Dr. Maki when she said this, and I think she saw my politely befuddled face. Popular? Instructional design? I think my friends and family have a vague understanding of what I do, Continue reading →

Is your Mind Set?

I teach several mathematics courses in the Liberal Studies Program at DePaul. For many of the students, this will be the only mathematics course that they will take during their entire college career, and many of them are apprehensive. I try to do a few things to allay their fears or at least help them see that they are in the same boat.

During the first week, I ask them to participate in a discussion forum by responding to the following prompt:

“Most children have a natural affinity for mathematics; they take pride in their counting skills and enjoy puzzles, building blocks, and computers. Unfortunately, this natural interest seems to be snuffed out in most people by the time they reach adulthood.

What is your attitude toward mathematics? If you have a negative attitude, can you identify when in your childhood that attitude developed? If you have a positive attitude, can you explain why? How might you encourage someone with a negative attitude to become more positive?”

This quarter, the students responded very well to the discussion. Those who were comfortable with mathematics encouraged those who weren’t. As the quarter progressed, the students have bonded and helped each other both in and out of class. However, every time I ask this question (and I have for more than 5 years now), I see responses similar to these: Continue reading →

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Just-in-Time Teaching

What exactly is Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT)? Wikipedia defines JiTT as “a pedagogical strategy that uses feedback between classroom activities and work that students do at home, in preparation for the classroom meeting.” The goal of JiTT is to enhance the amount of learning that takes place during class time. The idea is that the instructor will give assignments that the students must complete and submit shortly before class, then the instructor will read the students’ submissions “just in time” to fine-tune the lesson of the day to meet the students’ needs.

The dynamics of today’s classrooms are constantly changing, including the kinds of students that fill these classrooms. Classrooms now consist of part- and full-time working students, commuters, and older students. They all come from different backgrounds and different levels of education. As a result, instructors’ teaching methods need to evolve in order to keep up with the varying student population. JiTT approaches these challenges by gauging the knowledge level of each individual student on a given topic. The feedback that is obtained from the out-of-class assignments help to maximize the effectiveness of class sessions. The feedback also encourages the instructor to construct team-building exercises. Before class starts, they are able to use the students’ feedback to create lessons that will allow the class to work together on the same objective.

JiTT assignments (often called WarmUps) allow students to take a more active role in their learning because it is their hard work that shapes the next class. These assignments should be built in a way that requires students to do a decent amount of research by reading a book or an online article, watching a video, etc. Instructors should also encourage students to practice using problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. The best way to do this is to create a few open-ended and short-answer questions that pertain to a subject that was not previously discussed in class.

With JiTT, student learning is enriched, and it increases the efficacy and success of classroom lessons.

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Keepin’ It Idiomatic: Basing Assessment on Authentic Knowledge

I first had a try with Garage Band about three years ago.  I liked the ease with which I could get started, the editing tools were easy enough to use, the sound libraries are realistic, and even finishing a track was relatively simple. However, after three years of using it on and off, I am using different software for most of my recording needs.  Simply put, Garage Band is hard to play.

Let me add a little background to this.  I’m a former music teacher, performer and clinician with a Master’s degree.  I’ve got more than twenty years experience on three of the instruments I have at my disposal through Garage Band, but I struggle to play them well in this software.  Why?  They are not idiomatically designed.  I just can’t get used to trying to play guitar or bass with my fingertips on a screen, touching to play a note. I’m expecting to finger a note, and strum or pick with the other hand.  Here it takes all my fingers just to punch out a decent bass line.  Oh, and did I mention that if I don’t hit the note in exactly the right place, the string will bend?  Ask any guitar player and they’ll tell you that bends aren’t easy to do, but Garage Band makes it almost necessary to bend if you want to play at all.  I miss the feel of the strings on my fingers too.

Now I know that Apple can’t make all those things happen.  There isn’t a way, at least not yet, to make the keyboard actually feel like I’m pressing keys, or make guitar chords that feel right. (By the way, these are next to impossible to do by hand.)  But I did have a hope that perhaps someone who is an actual musician wouldn’t have to feel like a fool using this software.  After many years of playing an instrument, muscle memory takes over.  You may not realize it, but you have learned to expect certain position cues, responses and reactions from the instrument that just aren’t there in a virtual capacity.  Unless the virtual instrument is an instrument first and a computer controller second, those features may never be there.  Whose guitar has only eight frets anyway?

Just as it is important to try and design music performance software that will actually be musical, it is important to make these sorts of connections in all kinds of education. Continue reading →

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My Oversharing Adventure: Travel Notes from the Land of Millennials

I give you my word that by the end of this article, you won’t feel bad about yourself. You won’t feel behind the times because you refuse to tweet course announcements, or follow your students on Instagram, or friend them on some new app that tells you what they had for breakfast.

I care about your feelings because I understand your pain. I was born in one of those years that generation X and millennials have agreed to treat as a demilitarized buffer zone. Part of me feels a kinship with those who came before me. I share their concerns about online privacy. I’m a little worried about those NSA data bunkers and the fact that kids today don’t return phone calls. I even hesitated to list the year of my birth in this very public blog post, which is probably a sign I’m not a true millennial.

On the other hand, part of me longs to burn my gen-X passport and defect to the reckless frontier that is the Republic of gen-Y. To learn what I’ve been missing, I recently embraced my dual citizenship and spent a few weeks living as a native among the millennials. Within days, I went from shaking my fist at Miley Cyrus, with her twitpics and her twerking, to sharing artsy photos of melted ice cream and Vine videos like a true gen-Y artiste. I also created a profile on Vizify, which took my yawn-inducing data from LinkedIn and transformed it into a slick collage of photos and infographics. (For more on that, view the video below.)

I like that my Vizify profile peels back the professorly veil just a bit without leaving me overexposed. Continue reading →

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Sex and MOOCs

The commonality of sex and the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is they both are very attractive: while the former has been attractive since the beginning of mankind, the latter has become a “hottie” within the last year or so.   In the past few months, the two concepts caught my attention through parallel encounters: one from a book about late-life adventures in sex and romance by Jane Juska who loves using this male masturbator, the other through a series of diaries published by instructional designers at the University of Sheffield on their research and implementation of MOOCs.

Although vastly different in genre, content, audience, and purpose, Juska’s A Round-Heeled Woman and the diaries of Sheffield’s MOOC experiences intertwined and interacted in my mind. They reminded me of the joy of learning through narratives and stories.

As someone with an instructional design background, I shouldn’t be surprised to see that learning happens as an outcome of both casual and intentional experiences. Many learning theorists, from John Dewey to Art Chickering, claim that learning is a result of interaction and connection, and after reading both Juska’s book and the MOOC diaries, I felt a desire to share some of concepts I encountered: Continue reading →

Low-Cost Student Assessment

Student X has done the reading all term, they promise! It just happens they missed [concept covered in reading] and must’ve been [doing a good student-like activity] when you talked about [concept covered in lecture]. Now it’s finals week, Student X has no idea what is going on, and it’s going to hurt to fail them. If only there were a way to ensure they were doing the reading (or at worst, have documentation when the grade challenge comes)…

I have been working with James Riely, who teaches a hybrid Data Structures course in the College of Computing and Digital Media, to develop a series of low-value quizzes so he can painlessly assess student reading, lecture attention, and concept mastery. Not only are these quizzes useful for James, but they also allow students to self-assess their grasp of the concepts so they can reach out if need be. Continue reading →

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Highlights from the 2013 NMC Conference

Every year, the New Media Consortium’s summer conference includes a plenary session known as “Five Minutes of Fame” in which a series of presenters have five minutes each to show off an innovative project or idea. To add a bit of levity and suspense, an official timekeeper shuts down any presentation that hits the five-minute mark by striking a large gong with a mallet. As a kid, I loved watching reruns of The Gong Show, so Five Minutes of Fame is easily my favorite part of any NMC conference. (For those of you too young to remember The Gong Show, picture America’s Got Talent, but with a lot more polyester.)

This year, the NMC conference also included another rapid-fire showcase known as the Emerging Leaders Competition. Continue reading →

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A Rectangle Is Not a Square

In grade school, I remember learning the following: a square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square. This logic lesson learned in elementary school can be applied to today’s debates about online education and MOOCs (massive open online courses). While MOOCs are online courses they are not what most universities consider online education. Unfortunately, most of the press these days about MOOCs, unfairly villianizes online education. Take for example the recent NPR Marketplace segment on Duke University’s announced decision to decline the invitation to offer online classes through the company 2U. What bothers me about the piece is not that Duke has decided to think about what the 2U partnership would mean to them, but rather the tying of this decision to Amherst’s decision not to team up with Harvard and MIT to offer free MOOCs.

This is where the square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square analogy comes into play. Continue reading →

I Love Technology

I love technology! I am always one of the early adopters. I must have the newest and shiniest gadget or software that is still in beta. Right now, I have a preorder in for the Leap Motion Controller, an input controller that senses your individual hand and finger movements so you can interact directly with your computer. How do I plan to use it? I have no idea, but it looks “cool.” Such is my relationship with technology. Cool is good.

This obsession with the latest and greatest technology sometimes clashes with either practicality or, more importantly, common sense. As instructional designers, we are always looking for ways to help our faculty be more productive in designing and implementing blended and online courses. Likewise, we are always seeking creative and innovative approaches to improve student engagement. Continue reading →