this is a guest post by corbette doyle, a lecturer in leadership, policy & organizations, and steph milne, her ta. in addition to her ta role, steph recently earned her undergraduate degree and is currently a second-year graduate student in lpo.<\/em><\/p>\n
this thursday, october 20th, at 4:00 p.m., corbette and steph will be discussing their use of social media in teaching as part of vanderbilt’s “digitalvu” month. the session will be here at the cft, and rsvps are requested<\/a>. update: the discussion with corbette and steph can be viewed here<\/a>.<\/strong>
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<\/a>corbette (the teacher): <\/strong>ever teach a course you think is fascinating but the students don\u2019t seem to agree? that\u2019s where i found myself after last semester, so i decided to completely revamp my course on leadership. my goal? find a pedagogy and\/or tools that would increase critical thinking and student engagement. i settled on an approach featuring case studies, but knew that wasn\u2019t enough to guarantee the lively discussions i envisioned.<\/p>\n
<\/a>steph (the student): <\/strong>coming from a large public university, with class sizes in the hundreds of students, i will be the first to admit that i have sat in class and not \u201cheard\u201d a single word the professor was saying. a passive, lecture-based class where attendance and participation are optional is just as dreary for professors as it is for students. cases, although a viable solution to overcoming the passive lecture, are not a definite slam-dunk. for cases to be successful, students must actively link the case story to previous coursework and theories\u2026 admittedly, not all students make the connection.<\/p>\n
corbette: <\/strong>a huge fan of the value of asking good questions (in the spirit of ken bain’s keynote<\/a> at the cft’s recent 25th anniversary), i decided to replace my prior \u201centrance ticket\u201d strategy for the course (i.e. clicker questions on assigned readings) with a requirement that, before each class, the students post a question that applied course theory to the case to be discussed in that class. students would then vote on the questions they wanted to tackle in class.\u00a0 my goals? encourage higher order thinking by asking them to apply the readings in advance of the class\u2014and engage them by giving them some control over the discussions.<\/p>\n
the harder part was finding technology that met my goals without frustrating the students or me! i considered turning technologies newest clickers<\/a>, which allow text-message-like responses; the discussion groups on oak; and twitter. all three had problems for my purposes\u2014and then i came across a review of a twitter application called hootcourse<\/a>. viola\u2014solution identified!<\/p>\n
i then tested several alternatives to clickers to allow the students to vote on their favorite questions by texting in the answer from their phone. i haven\u2019t found the perfect solution yet, but am currently using poll everywhere<\/a>, which is free for up to 30 respondents and accepts responses via text or web applications.<\/p>\n
corbette: <\/strong>to get started, i logged into hootcourse using my twitter account<\/a> (facebook is the other option) and clicked \u201ccreate a new course.\u201d\u00a0 this created a link i was able to copy and paste into oak with instructions to log on via twitter or facebook. (students can remain anonymous by creating a fictitious twitter account and giving me that name.) only students who have the link can access the hootcourse course site.<\/p>\n
corbette:<\/strong> hootcourse offers several advantages that make it attractive for classroom use including the following: a view of all tweets that end in question marks, a \u201cstudents\u201d dashboard that tracks activity by student, and a \u201cclassroom mode\u201d that is perfect for projecting tweets real-time in class (ideal for a backchannel<\/a> strategy).<\/p>\n
<\/a>\u201cclass mode\u201d on hootcourse<\/em><\/p>\n
<\/a>\u201cstudent mode\u201d on hootcourse<\/em><\/p>\n
corbette: <\/strong>my biggest disappointment is that hootcourse does not yet allow students to \u201clike\u201d other tweets. my original plan was to have students \u201clike\u201d three other tweets. those with the most votes would be the ones we discussed in class, which would make the technology easier to use without the support of a ta.<\/p>\n
the biggest disadvantage of the free version of poll everywhere is that it does not allow you to track votes, thus you don\u2019t have the option of using it for attendance or for graded questions. i may consider upgrading in the future as i also have classes with more than 30 students.<\/p>\n
steph: <\/strong>there have been students who have \u201cre-tweeted\u201d previously posted questions in slightly different words, but this is not a shortcoming of hootcourse itself. plagiarism is a challenge that comes with engaging students in any public domain.<\/p>\n
for those students who do happen to leave home without their cell phone (on the rare occasion), poll everywhere allows students to email in answers. the hope being, students carry at least one internet-capable device with them to class.<\/p>\n
overall:<\/em> the strategy seems to achieve the desired critical thinking results given the quality of class discussions. the results of the first quiz are less exemplary, however, with grades approximating a bell curve\u2014which isn\u2019t necessarily a negative outcome.<\/p>\n
concerns:<\/em> what happens without a ta or in large classes? the option to \u201clike\u201d or \u201cretweet\u201d in hootcourse – as discussed above would be a partial solution. using twitter without hootcourse but with class-specific hashtag, is another option, one that would support retweets. unfortunately, it would lose the narrowed focus of tweets the students get to vote on.<\/p>\n
next steps:<\/em> hootcourse is one option that facilitates an ongoing digital dialogue during<\/em> the class. this backchannel capability seems to be a better alternative for large classrooms where it isn\u2019t possible to allow all students to voice their thoughts, as a strategy to allow the more reticent students to voice their opinions, and\/or as a way for groups to post updates during and outside of class.<\/p>\n
we occasionally feature guest posts here on the blog as part of our efforts to cultivate dialogue about teaching and learning among vanderbilt faculty, students, and staff. we recognize that everyone\u2019s teaching context is different, but we hope that hearing others\u2019 perspectives on teaching and learning will help our readers reflect on their own teaching. if you would like to contribute a guest post, please let us know.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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