Mid Morning Session: Active Teaching Online

Active Teaching Online                                 Dawn J. Kempe, UMUC

Typical Online Classroom: Reading—Discussion—Activity such as a paper

In effective teaching the student does most of the work and activities allow participants to acquire knowledge and skills, not simply receive them.

Most of what I’m hearing so far is interesting information about learning. I think it’s information we’ve all heard before, and I admit, it is worth hearing ever so often. Still, we all know that simply lecturing and testing doesn’t go very far. The question I have is this: how do some of these things change when the course moves from the classroom to the computer screen.

First Strategy: Introduction Bingo. 

Okay, as much as I resist ideas like this, the way she is doing it sounds like it could work. She sets up the squares so they connect to the content of the class. For instance, in a first year writing class you might ask, “Have you ever written a paper using the Five Paragraph Model?” or “Have you ever published a poem?” The goal is to familiarize students with the class content and give the instructor information about the students’ prior knowledge.

Kempe recommends the following book, from which she takes many of her activities:

Second Strategy: Guided Note taking. Not much new about this. In her example she describes an eight minute video on teaching philosophy followed by a worksheet with questions for notes about that video. For instance, “How does X idea affect how you think about the class you are designing?”

Third and Fourth Strategy: Debates and/or case studies.

At this point I’m seeing the strategies here as an example of a f2f class delivered online. In other words, I don’t see what she is describing as an online class. Whether you handed out the handout or downloaded it to Blackboard, it’s still a handout. How do we make this activity more engaging, more active, more interesting, online? Looking specifically at this activity, how do we make it an online activity?

  

Sure, I can place the directed note taking in a discussion area. This is usually what we do with discussion areas. In the past I’ve been satisfied with that. Now, I’m not. I’m wondering how “online” that discussion area actually is. So, my dissatisfaction with what she is doing is making me dissatisfied with what I am doing. That strikes me as a good thing. Maybe my dissatisfaction will force me to innovate.