The only “normalization” that exists in Digital Humanities seems to be its constant transformations and temporalities. In tapping into that temporal and transitional sphere with our pedagogy may prove to be a viable option for guiding students toward the genuine collaboration that we set in our course goals.
Coming from someone who is not a blogger, not a fan of numerous online discussion board posts, and not a fan of having to read 15+ posts (500+ words) of others in addition to class readings, I can empathize with student resistance to online classroom tools. Even in the graduate community, where I am so inclined to read the responses of my peers and have candid interest in my own learning community, I still find that it is often just another thing I can cross off of my to-do list. With this being said, I am still open to the idea of academic blogging and the use of other tools. I’d like to have a different opinion of them than those evidenced by my experiences. I think the crux is finding a way that these tools can work for you and your students in meaningful ways.
We discussed incentives in class on Tuesday. While “grades are the least interesting part of what makes a course a course,” as noted in Owens, in our education system and in the eyes of students, grades are undoubtedly necessary and important. This is nothing new, so I’m not going to delve into this issue. However, the focal issue is going beyond the grade and fostering something genuine and collaborative.
To create a viable online learning community, it may be helpful to take coursework in technological steps to achieve the collaboration that is representative in your goals for the course. If were to implement a course blog in the future, I want it to be easily understood to students that that space should be as open and collaborative as the online social media platforms that they access. An idea to bridge the “interactive” gaps between blogs and social media for students may be to begin on social media. In my class, now, I use Twitter with my students for several pedagogical purposes–truncating criticisms and responses to 120 characters or less, publishing student “work,” student accessibility, and most importantly, relevance. Students (at least mine) are constantly on Twitter. The platform and experience is already natural for them. By utilizing it as a classroom tool, and using our class twitter feed as a way to transcend inside/outside-of-class discussions, I have one foot in their online collaborative community and the other in our collaborative classroom community. What could be a viable option is to then gradually transfer the activity on Twitter to a blog, with slightly different constituents and expectations. The transition, however, wouldn’t be as unnatural as just starting from the blog on day 1, considering that students blog as much as I do (which is not at all). Here, I think it is about acclimating to the unnatural by practicing what is natural and assimilating new tools into what we already know/do to provide avenues for convergence between the two (natural/unnatural). Taking something that students use every day and transforming how they use it to bridge a gap to 1) the classroom and 2) another platform of communication may prove to be helpful. The transition from Twitter to blog would be tangible for my students (and any Twitter-using student). Tags can be used in blogs, blogs can be connected to Twitter, and students can use the two inter-connectedly. A blog, in this fashion, would be an elongated version of the kinds of collaboration that they do on our class Twitter, which makes available the extension of conversations in class and online in a new space that provides different user opportunities for collaborative learning.
Michaela,
You know that I love the way you are using Twitter in your class. Also, I do like how you plan on framing the use of a blog as open and collaborative, so students would be able to equate it with their other social media experiences. This seems to be a viable solution to get students engaged in a course blog and for them to take ownership. I agree that it is difficult to read everyone’s posts (even for this class) and offer any sort of insightful commentary, but maybe by posing the reading of a blog as part of the reading for class, it would alleviate this “extra” work for students and for us as professors.
Alexi,
Your suggestion of including reading peer blogs/responses as part of the required readings for class is capital. It would certainly place more importance on the value of one another’s responses vs. just using them as a supplement to other required texts.
I will seriously consider that in the future, if/when I do make the transition into the blogosphere and take my classes with me.
I also think, in these cases, the response to peer response also poses as an issue, even after the reading load has been lifted. While I find the sort of responses that we do for this class (this thread of thoughts, for example) are really collaborative and that actually engage a conversation, I often find that not happening in peer-to-peer responses online–even in classes that we have had at the graduate level. It’s almost like: “OK. Great idea. You summarized everything. I liked this. It’s something I didn’t consider,” etc. But, it doesn’t go anywhere after that. While modeling what we really want to happen can be effective, it still doesn’t fool-proof our classes from waiting last minute to post a haphazard response that has little to no depth. We can threaten/positively reward this issue with grade incentives, but that also brings us back to square one of our conversation on Tuesday. It’s a tough gauge, either way.