Last week’s post sought feedback from faculty and students on two goals of the Technology-Enhanced Learning Initiative (http://www.georgetown.edu/tel-principles)
This week I’m seeking similar input on three other goals of the Initiative:
- To explore educational technologies that can offer low-cost extension of our mission to wider audiences around the world.
- To evaluate the learning effectiveness of each pedagogy we employ in order to optimize our use of alternative methods.
- To give Georgetown students tools to more quickly learn the basics of each discipline so that faculty can focus on higher‐order learning at the cutting edge of their fields.
The first goal is associated with the potential of MOOCs (massive open online courses). Georgetown faculty have already been experimenting with Internet connections to students in other countries. MOOCs are using web-based platforms that are associated with consortia of universities; some have enrollments of hundreds of thousands of students worldwide, with or without a connection to a physical classroom and on-campus students. These platforms have tools that can assist our faculty in creating rich, interactive online sessions. Some of these tools customize the learning to individual students’ ways of absorbing material. By offering some courses to a world audience, Georgetown could make parts of its unique educational contributions available to millions of others. This is an unprecedented opportunity consistent with the Ignatian tradition and the increasingly global character of the University’s research and teaching. Current faculty and students can help discern whether MOOCs can live up to their potential to support Georgetown’s mission.
The second goal above is central to the entire Initiative, which seeks not to change that which is uniquely valuable at Georgetown, but to discover how we could do better. As a community, Georgetown has spent the last several years strengthening efforts to be clear about goals and assessing what works (http://assessment.georgetown.edu). With real evaluation of what we are now doing, we can have benchmarks for whether we can do better. For example, rich, multifaceted faculty-student interactions on complicated concepts may not profit from technological assists. For some classes based solely on those approaches, no changes may be desirable. For others, blends of technology-assisted learning and traditional learning can be tailored to the students and the material. We can’t do this wisely without a devotion to assessment and evaluation.
The final goal relates to a subset of what we teach. It seems most pertinent to those courses that introduce students to a new conceptual framework and sometimes to acquire basic facts and skills prior to asking the students to integrate concepts to discover new insights. In these courses, finding ways for students to understand and master the conceptual framework through exercises of the nomenclature and logical connections among concepts is key to success. When technology can help students exercise knowledge of these concepts interactively and cumulatively, it’s feasible for the course to spend more time on higher-order learning. Pioneering work has been going on for years in the teaching of languages, which blends self-paced practice with conversation and instruction. Now we have a growing digital toolset for creating these kinds of interactive modules that might deepen student learning in basic concepts and shifts in classroom time. Although these will be applicable for some kinds of basic knowledge and not others, there is no reason to believe that courses across the sciences, social sciences and humanities could not make use of them. When this works, Georgetown students can learn more about growing fields of knowledge. That can give them the edge they need in the modern world.
The kinds of strategies implied above will make it possible for us to shift some of our teaching resources towards a greater emphasis on research-based learning. Faculty around campus, and throughout the curriculum, are integrating research-based learning approaches in their course work as a tool to cement learning of basic concepts, create moments of integrative new learning, and simultaneously give students research skills that can be used more generally. This integration of research with teaching creates meaningful bridges between our educational and scholarly missions. The side benefit of this is that it can more fully engage both faculty and students in active partnerships in the learning enterprise—and sometimes the research enterprise.
In short, these last three goals of the Technology-Enhanced Learning Initiative retain the Georgetown devotion to being the very best educational environment for students and faculty, a true student-centered research university. They are the heart of the Georgetown success story. The initiative seeks to maintain those while evaluating whether new tools can help us achieve them.
What do you think?
Regarding item 3, on using technology to let students teach themselves the basics of a discipline, I second Hans Engler’s comments. It all depends on the discipline. The provost mentions use of technology in language classes, by which I suppose he means various kinds of language lab, now no longer on cassette tape but otherwise not much changed: you still listen to recordings or watch shows and practice listening to and repeating the language, and for some textbooks there are drills you can do. The bulk of teaching the basics still happens in small class settings, where grammar and constructions are explained to supplement textbook explanations, and with conventional homework. I know how Georgetown does this first-hand, as I recently completed the first two years of our marvelous intensive Russian program. I spent six hours a week in the classroom; there were two instructors teaching some 30-40 students (fewer students in second year, I believe). So though “technology” certainly enhances language-learning, the best programs still rely on lots of faculty-student face time in the first years. That calculus has not changed since cassette tapes gave way to computers. There’s no way a language teacher can have a student in first-year Russian or Chinese or Japanese or Arabic “get the basics” on-line while working on higher-order material in class, simply because students can’t do higher-order work until they’ve mastered the basics, which takes time and can be practiced, but not taught, by machines.
And what about my own field, history? Research-based teaching has long been our gold standard. We want to send students out there to do original research and write it up themselves. Juniors, seniors and graduate students do that all the time. But we don’t often give research papers to introductory students, because they have trouble writing even short papers on well-defined assignments that we hand them. How to analyse a source, how to develop one’s own ideas about it, how to write a well-conceived, well-organized, grammatically clean paper about it–these are the fundamentals of our field, and it makes more sense to have students practice this in a smaller, more controlled format that we can mark-up intensively. None of this can be farmed-off to technology. It requires paper-marking and paper conferences, face-to-face.
Large introductory courses are also about providing frameworks of knowledge and interpretation. In our lectures we convey facts, but we also discuss varying interpretations and arguments in the field; we go through texts or analyze images together with the students in Q and A format. The way we do history lectures at Georgetown in our introductory courses is highly interactive–even Socratic.
It has been suggested that the way to leverage “technology” in fields like history is to take the lectures out of the classroom, have faculty record them and make the students watch them in their own time. This of course is not a new technology either–it’s been possible since the VHS, though students could watch on their laptops or even phones now. New or not, however, it’s no solution. Leaving aside the fact that that in order to update lectures every year, as we do, faculty would have to re-record them annually, amounting to a considerable increase in workload, a lecture recorded in a booth strips away all those interactive features which make our lectures worthwhile in the first place. Rather than force students to watch us talking into a camera, it would be preferable all around to simply give them something to read. And thus the lecture class becomes a discussion class–but one with enrollments too large for everyone to engage in discussion at once.
It would be great if all our introductory history classes could be taught in small format, like at a Reed or a Williams–but recording lectures would only assure that students put off or skipped watching them; it would not address the arithmetical question of instructor to student ratios. At GU, there will still be 45-60 students in that introductory class, one faculty member, a TA or two, and 3 class hours a week. Technology cannot transform that arithmetic by magically teaching “the basics” outside of the classroom, especially when, as in history or language, it is precisely “the basics” that require direct teacher-student interaction.
Some comments on the specific goals set forth in this post by the Provost:
Regarding item 1: Many of the technologies are here already (see for example Khan Academy videos on YouTube). More tools that we can’t quite imagine yet will appear. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. We should not shy away from learning from others, including from teachers that are not even working in a university.
Regarding item 2: The “gold standard” methodology for evaluating effectiveness is a comparative experiment. However, this may be much too slow for evaluating technology. (It’s like doing a clinical trial for a flu virus that evolves into a new strain every month.) For example, YouTube has only been around for seven (!) years, and look what it has done to our habits and expectations. MOOCs only began to gain broad attention about a year ago. To speed things up without messing them up, we may have to learn from each other, from others, and from our own previous efforts, failures, and successes. CNDLS is a good resource, but it’s largely based on voluntary involvement. The University should give thought to fostering a culture of learning, sharing, and also risk taking among the faculty when it comes to instruction.
Regarding item 3: Not all disciplines are equally well-suited for teaching (some of) the basics with instructor independent technological tools. It’s certainly possible to use self-guided educational software with good success in some courses – my colleagues and I have been doing this in statistical service courses, and it has contributed to making these courses more rewarding for students and instructors. But it may be much harder to do this in a writing intensive course. So, some disciplines may profit more from these new tools than others. Importantly, the resource implications may also differ from discipline to discipline. The playing field for faculty and for departments may become less even.
Technology is a diruptive force in higher education–the anonymous poster above seems resistant to what is an inevitable change in how students learn (and more importantly, expect to learn) in this century.
A global environment in higher education may not require, nor realistically expect, students to spend four years of residence on a US campus to receive a degree or some sort of certification. More than likely, an adaptive model might see students begin on campus in Washington, study variously in London, Dubai, Delhi, Shanghai, and Rio deJaniero, and return to Washington to complete their studies. The power of the MOOC is that these students can have access to the same Georgetown professors, regardless of their location. One could quickly see how this opens up a world of opportunity (figuratively and literally) for Georgetown students while lessening the need in the physical plant as it currently exists. Will this change the role of the faculty? Yes. Is it bound to change anyway? Absolutely.
The larger issue for the Provost is the glacial pace of curricular innovation at Georgetown and the numerous silos in the University which are resistant to institutional change. The undergraduate deans argued over a 4-4 curriculum for 20 years and it still does not have buy-in. Those discussions pale in comparison to MOOC-style learning.
Finally, i would urge the Provost to enlist the input and participation of the Alumni Association, as these type of courses not only have the ability to engage students globally, but alumni as well. Georgetown has 160,000 constituents which, for the most part, have a positive experience in GU learning, and these courses offer additional means to reach an audience wherever they reside.
Change is coming, and it’s not a matter of if, but when. And it’s better to be ready than resistant when it does arrive.
I applaud universities decisions to make MOOCs because it is a value and a belief in education they are supporting, not a business model. It’s the choice to impact society, and you can argue that if the information is available ‘for the students enrolled’ only made open to the public, then the appropriate model for it is as a real course website for real on campus students.
on another topic,
I think focusing on technology is very very misguided. power point doesnt make me a better lecturer (in fact, many of us believe power point makes lectures worse), nor do fancy and expensive video or A/V equipment. Years ago when I was an undergraduate I had a professor who was thoroughly awful receive innovation awards for incorporating the internet and other fancy things. He still stunk at teaching, just stunk in new ways.
The university rewards primarily research and in my field funding. Teaching evaluations are from students, and this is much closer to a popularity contest — it is easier for me to get perfect evals and teach an easy-A course than to force students to work hard and receive harsher evaluations of my teaching. So there is no way to groom and evaluate the ‘real’ effectiveness of teaching.
for a very long time, universities have moved away from the notion ‘in loco parentis’ that we are to form the characters of young men (and women), and we no longer really get to know students or shape their beliefs. all too often a student gets a vocational education without having their beliefs challenged, and it’s very easy for students to not have personal relationships with any professors, meaning there is little direct interaction or feedback.
a good book –one of many– recently which deals with this and many more issues is: College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be by Andrew Delbanco
so, go spend a lot of money on technology and draft lengthy and well crafted documents on technology enhanced learning to the neglect of figuring out who effective teachers are, or what they do that makes them effective, or if people who teach well but dont research/get-$$$ well have a place in the modern research university. My best professors were clear and well prepared; they held students to higher standards.
I would like some data on this and not just opinion. Why would anyone use technology in a bad way if they have a route to find out whether or not it is effective? It is called principled and useful assessment and evaluation. There are ways to find out and to fine tune what we do. And if we can articulate — rather than opine about — this, then all the better.
I found that people adopt the technology easily enough but that there is never any ‘feedback loop’
so one professor had us typing in math assignments the way i post my comment on this blog. at the time this pre-dated math typesetting software and it was not very clear –hard to express mathematics without equations. students complained but who was there to listen?
another professor I had would make us check in on a website daily –which was difficult if you had other coursework or jobs and made for short quick daily responses instead of deeply and slowly thinking.
there were professors without functioning grasp of english (science/math/engineering) who were brilliant, but again –no one watched them, and there was no evaluation.
powerpoint came along after my time, but I find that people read through and print out the slides. the slides are themselves abridged textbooks (frequently but not always), so instead of reading a book and taking notes which go beyond the book, now we have shortened the material to only the set of lecture slides for the C student. A students are always fine, im not worrying about them.
what would be better is instituting a way to measure ‘real’ learning outcomes. you have to listen to student complaints but balance the ‘popularity contest’ i mentioned from student evals with another objective evaluation of learning outcomes. one way to do this is with a set of department defined learning outcomes and a semi-fixed curriculum which also anticipates fast-paced rapid developments in a field (core corses + topical seminars). you can evaluate the core material and leave special topics un-evaluated since they are new and flexible. this way students take a final exam and also a second (not for credit?) department ‘standard exam’ making sure they mastered some reasonable set of material.
this is a long discussion. here on a blog it’s also one-sided since I cannot speak to someone face to face. so im going to end it here.
my original post is that technology is tangential to the effectiveness of a teacher.
The intellectual and moral benefits of expanding our educational outreach to thousands of additional students are clear. It is unclear, however, what Georgetown’s business model is with regard to joining MOOCs. Developing such a model is critically important. The mass delivery of intellectual content is a big business with potentially transformational consequences for the viability of what we do on our campuses. MOOCs are part of a series of broader changes that may well affect the business of education in ways that are comparable to those currently underway in the audio, visual and print industries. Exploring their successful and failed efforts to adapt may well worth the effort. Like them, it is important to consider how our value added (as educators, mentors to our students, researchers, and other) is changing as access to information and the nature of intellectual property rights continue to evolve.