Dean Shareski is one of my heroes. His “Ideas and Thoughts From and EdTech” has been in my ‘gator for years now. This post from yesterday has been haunting me as I think about the role of the teacher. It starts like this:
According to many definitions of good teaching, I don’t qualify:
- I don’t clearly state objectives
- If I do state them, they are as fuzzy as all get out
- I have a hard time measuring student progress
- My course syllabus changes almost daily
- I never use tests<
- I constantly stray off topic
There are likely a multitude of sins I have not listed.
I relate to this list. Sorta.
I’ve been accused by past classes of not stating objectives clearly. Actually, I think that’s probably true, up to a point. As you’ve probably learned by now, the class itself is an exemplar of what I believe about online instruction. That first week when I tell you what I want you to do seems to me like a very clear set of objectives in terms of activities. I ask you to set up your blog, aggregator, instant messenger, and TappedIn office. I further assign you a series of specific activities with each of those tools. I don’t tell you what you’re supposed to learn from that activity nor do I tell you how to do it, beyond some very general pointing to resources you might find useful. The reasons for that should be obvious by now. What I wanted you to learn was:
- You could do it largely on your own
- Environments that violate your expectation are highly instructional
- There is great personal satisfaction in accomplishing these kinds of tasks
The paradox here is that you wouldn’t have learned these lessons if I’d told you about it in advance. It’s more akin to getting to the top of the mountain and looking down the other side. Whatever I tell you about what you’re going to see from there is meaningless until you get there to see for yourself. More, if I condition you to see only certain things, your perception of that view will be colored in a way that’s counter productive. The best I can do is keep saying “You’ve gotta see this! It’s amazing!”
As a teacher, I have to differentiate my instruction to accommodate your individual ZPD in order to give each of you the opportunity to make as much progress as you can. It’s not my intent that each of you should make the same progress. Unlike typical classes where the goal is to cover some prescribed set of content, this course is intended to give you as much new knowledge in this area as possible because I recognize that it would take years, not weeks, to instill in each of you the depth and level of knowledge represented by a course entitled “Principles of Distance Education.” As a result, I need to prioritize, organize, and introduce that domain to you in a way that maximizes your learning, builds a foundation for future exploration of this cognate, and perhaps inspires you to continue learning about and growing into this space after the course is over.
You may or may not realize that what each of you is doing in this course is building what’s known a a “personal learning environment” — more specifically, a “personal learning network” — which you will be able to use after the course is over for any content domain you desire, not just those prescribed by your course of study. Sadly, I recognize that most of you will drop your engagement like a hot potato as soon as the course is over, but at some point in the future, you may recognize the need you have for ongoing study and you’ll have the foundation you need in order to become effective learners in thi information dense environment represented by the general moniker of “21st Century Learner.”
In short, unlike the typical course where the instructor expects you to all end at the same place, I expect that every person will leave the course in a different place, but a place which represents the highest possible level of advancement you can achieve given your individual circumstances, skill levels, and knowledge base.
But I didn’t tell you that and as an “objective” it’s - as Dean puts it - “fuzzy as all get out.”
October 10th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Hey Nathan,
The “fuzzines” of objectives is the challenge. I don’t worry so much in the higher ed environment but in K-12 it’s an issue. Like you say, “I expect that every person will leave the course in a different place”. The problem with that thinking in K-12 is that it becomes difficult to assess and measure and we all know how important it is to measure.
Even when you try and have broader objectives the challenge of assessment is there.
Lisa Thuuman wrote a nice response on my blog that made me feel a lot better.
Sometimes it’s so much about semantics. Good teaching is good teaching. It’s like trying to analyze a great athlete. While I could perhaps give you reasons why Tiger Woods is a great golfer, I’d rather just enjoy watching him. Teaching remains an art. The science of teaching does lie somewhere in the effort to analyze and break down objectives but is usually way too over analyzed.
October 10th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Yea, well, assessment is art, too. One of the Dark Arts and I’m not sure that there’s some fundamental evil involved — perhaps a blood sacrifice — that I’ve not been willing to make yet.
I think you’re right about semantics and over analysis, too.
I think it goes back to “School is a Factory” model but we fail to account for the full range of variation in the raw materials when we layout the specifications for the final assembly.
October 11th, 2008 at 9:24 am
School is a factory is exactly what we are dealing with. Teachers may see that the class structure need to be different to ensure that all students can learn to their own level but the state does not allow that. The state makes the Teacher Standards by which teachers must follow (they are assessed on) and the colleges use these standards to create the guidelines for their Teacher Education Programs; it is a never ending cycle. One of those standards is “Clear defines goals and objectives” so how do we get away from that?
I think that it is good to have goals and objectives even though they may be “fuzzy” as you say. Anytime you embark on a journey you need an end point in mind. That does not say that you have to have a specific roadmap. I think classes should start with a goal but how to get there needs to be “tentative” especially because what works with one group of students, may not work with the next.
October 11th, 2008 at 9:37 am
“Anytime you embark on a journey you need an end point in mind.”
True.
But what happens when you’re not all going to the same place?
The System requires everybody to wind up at the same place at the same time. The Problem is that not everybody is going there and some of those alternate destinations are really good places to be.
October 12th, 2008 at 8:43 am
I don’t think that a teacher really can do it wrong as long as the students are learning. Some of the classes that I have learned the most in have been out of my comfort zone and I survived. The role of the teacher is not to make all of their students fall in love with them. Their role is to get the students learning and thinking. I think that when teachers set fourth too many pre-set objectives at once that often get so wrapped up in completing those objectives that they forgot about their students. It doesn’t really matter to these teachers if the students are all lost..they must move on to get the next objective complete in time. I think that it is okay to have objectives in advance, but it is also okay if the objectives are a little fuzzy because they may need to be changed.
October 12th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Having recently gone through an education program there are a lot of structured activities you have to follow. They include things just as you mentioned such as clear objectives and assessments. However, I do not think that you are doing things wrong. If you were I wouldn’t be learning and I am learning a lot from this class.
I think there is a lot of room for improvement in our education programs today (and in education in general). Everything is not black and white–there is always a lot of gray and this is what we seem to learn the most from.
October 13th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
All of these strategies that are incoporated into this course are effective for our learning, but we still struggle to quantify what we are learning. I can sympathize with my gifted math student who sinks into tears when he encounters something that is difficult for him. That frustration level is very stressful for some of us. For those who value learning for the sake of learning, this instructional style is ideal. The open-ended-ness lets us all go as far as we can go. That is something we don’t provide students, at least in elemenatry school - the opportunity to take a thread of knowledge as far as they want to go for the primary sake of their intererst in the topic.