Preponderantly Perkus

Every time  I teach an online class, I mention in my letter of introduction that while I can provide a structure to the class, a series of assignments, varied and interesting questions and group opportunities, I can not make the class hum.  To make an online class hum there needs to be what I affectionately call the pace horses–those who bolt out of the gate and leave the pack behind.  They reply to EVERY posting, write MORE than the minimum, and in some inexorable way, create the impression that this and this alone is the only acceptable way to conduct oneself in an online environment.

To follow through with the initial analogy, the pace horse is usually run in order to get the other horses to run faster; however, the pace horse rarely wins the race.  In online classes, however, these pack leaders virtually always keep up their enthusiasm–in some ways feeding off their role as gadfly, coach, instigator, friend.  I can’t think of a single case wherein a pace horse faded in my class.  Some students speed up to catch the pace horse, but I don’t recall ever seeing a pace horse slow down and move to the back of the pack.

To be fair, these students are usually among the stronger writers and readers of the class, but unlike face-to-face classes wherein they might try to dominate the discussion, or intimate other students, or become noticably discouraged if they are not holding the floor, in online classes their over-arching enthousiam is both diffuse and always productive (from my point of view at least).  I do recall one online pace horse feeling like her classmates started avoiding her because of her penchant towards critique, but as far as I could tell, they were ignoring everyone (not among my best online classes) and she was certainly doing more good than harm.

For those of you who are about to teach online, or who have already been through a few days at the track, keep a look out for those racing out of the gate.  Online classes need them (just like tennis needs John McEnroe) and I suspect the best teachers in this format have developed interesting strategies for harnessing their intruiging combination of technological saviour faire and genuine excitement for being vital to a learning community.

So I’m always a bit behind the wave–I know that about myself and have almost come to terms with it. Case in point, last night I finally finished watching the last episode of the second season of LOST (and thus I am a year and a half behind). Somehow, I have managed to stay in my cocoon–none of my friends or acquaintances have spoiled it for me–we just don’t talk about it. Meanwhile, they have LOST parties, LOST blogs, LOST bonding sessions. I feel like time is running out–this conversation wont be happening forever, and so my choice might be between (1) checking out season III from the library (I just requested that they order it), mole myself into a little hole and watch 26 hours of drama in a few weeks–then try to figure out what has happened this year–then somehow arrive at the party where people might just happen to be discussing it or (2) jump in tomorrow, watch the show live, and just hope that I will figure out the material I have missed. I can always fool myself into believing that I will watch all those episodes in between during the slower summer season.

{Insert snapping transition here} Imagine a student in an online class. She has missed several classes–say just enough to allow her to still pass, but only if she can manage to make every future deadline and write exceedingly well to boot. When situations like these present themselves to me (and they do every semester), I always say: “don’t try to make up all the work you have missed–the train has left that station. Figure out where we are and join our conversation there. Then I usually give some hooey about how the student can make up some of the missed work later or through extra credit projects. The purest in me suspects that these truant students are missing something vital in the communal conversation we have been having throughout the course of the semester. However, I’m thinking about me thinking about watching LOST tomorrow. Sure, I won’t be able to reference all the previous episodes, but like Hopscotch, perhaps this is not a book meant to be read forward. Perhaps the fact that I just saw the episode about Desmond’s affinity for Our Mutual Friend will prove fruitful to some salon I might join.

Applied to a class, I think it is a worthwhile experiment to discuss whether someone needs to be on the train from beginning to end to demonstrate that he has had the educational experience thus getting the 3-credit passport stamp. I am not proposing allowing a back door hatch to the central chamber, or if I am, I would maintain that the journey to that back door hatch might in itself warrant networking opportunities as we slice and dice the whole question of where the class begins and ends in on online, social media, web 2.0 world. These students as read the course randomly–providing a post-mortom reflection of where the rest of us have been–remind us and engage us. Old journals will seem new to them–hidden openings might be discovered.

In the meanwhile, don’t tell me what happens just yet–LOST competes with poker night and I have been playing well lately.

Years ago, when I was the only person at my college teaching online, a colleague expressed interest in this format, but said that the main reason he would never be willing to give it a try was because “there is no way to stand on the desk to make a point.” Back then, I responded that he might want to reconsider his pedagogy if it required standing on a desk to make a point. I was pretty smug back then. I’m still pretty smug, but I think I may have to revisit my comment.

This story dovetails into the old synchronous/asynchronous debate. Ten years ago, the technology was such that those of us early adopters were advised, with very good reason, to keep it simple. Email, discussion board, photos, links, etc. I set up my class to run asynchronously– students never had to be at the same place at the same time. This wasn’t because I didn’t want them all in the same place at the same time–it was because there was no justification for forcing them to be at the same place at the same time since the chat/im/two-way audio/video tools were so primitive and took up huge bandwidth (whatever that means).

Several interesting benefits resulted from this inability to bring people together real time:

• Shy students participate as fully as gregarious students
• non-native speakers spend time off line translating what the were reading and saying to allow for a greater degree of clarity
• the teacher is not the center of the wheel (see earlier post on Parking lot)
• a record of all student work makes formative and summative assessment easier
• students (and faculty!) complete a class based on their schedule (work, family, social, etc.) –a great marketing tool by the way

So now, I must admit that the tools have changed dramatically. Probably the most noticable difference is the ubiquitous instant messaging / text messaging phenomenon. I have begun using VISTA’s (a WebCT format) “Who’s Online” feature which opens into an IM page. So far, students have been stunned and flattered to find that their instructor will invite them to chat. The chats have been informative, entertaining, generative…

I’ll admit it…I play on Second Life. Without going into the whole nine yards of it, I have been entertaining the idea of teaching a class in Second Life wherein everyone would meet at the same place at the same time. I could stand on a desk. I could have public conversations with the class. I could have private conversations with individuals or groups. They could talk with each other. We could experience the aporia of silence necessary for epiphanic bliss. There might, in fact, be community.

I had this idea (of teaching in SL) almost a year ago. I haven’t done it yet. In fact, I suspect I won’t in part because I am still concerned that the amount of time I would have to spend on the tech side will erode the academic experience. I also fear losing what I have come to love about online classes–the lack of performative stress, classroom management, and the rigidity of the schedule–not to mention all the benefits listed earlier. I also suspect that the types of communities that form asynchronously are just as vital and valid as real time ones (hence the facebook factor)–especially if there is an option for real time discussion embedded within the structure of the course management system.

Again, I would love to hear other people’s opinions on all of this:

• if you teach online, do you or will you incorporate synchronous technology
• if you haven’t taught online, how important is synchronous technology to your pedagogy

For the three years that I served on the Board of Trustees for my children’s independent school, the most common phrase I heard from other board members as well as faculty members is that we needed to stop all the parking lot conversations going on among the disgruntled parents. Like Zeus hiding in that cave in Crete as Cronus held a rock in his belly, those parents were engaged in ways we couldn’t control. From a pedagogical point of view, however, these same conversations bear witness to the importance of having numerous points of contact for reflection, experimentation, confirmation, debate, community and entertainment. They are spontaneous, voluntary and unregulated.

“Significant knowledge within individual disciplines serves as the foundation, but integrative learning goes beyond academic boundaries. Indeed, integrative experiences often occur as learners address real-world problems, offering multiple solutions and benefiting from multiple perspectives.” (Huber and Hutchings– my emphasis)

So join me down this primrose path for a few minutes. If we all agree that we, as teachers, are responsible for presenting the content found within our individual disciplines through lectures, assignments, class activities, etc., then to get from that place to a place of integrative learning requires students to do something active, relevant, and engaged as well. This can be facilitated by the teacher through small group work, discussion partners, and a variety of other strategies to be sure, but just like the parking lot conversations, sometimes important learning also occurs in the margins, the blind spots, the caves and the causeways of club academe. Enter cyberspace stage right.

Anyone who has taught online knows firsthand that there is no “center” per se. Yes, we put up content. We create links. We digitize films. We post lecture notes. We craft provocative questions and then sit back and wait. While we may go into this endeavor with a build it and they will come approach, the asynchronic nature of most online platforms leaves the teacher in a position similar to actors on a stage in an empty theater (which I have coined my Rosencrantz and Guildenstern moment).

Along with the dreaded Freirian Banking Theory of Education, wherein the teacher pours knowledge into the empty vassals, the most commonly rejected (but enduring) educational metaphor might be the spokes of the wheel icon wherein all exchanges are between student and teacher, never between or among students exclusively. It is often evidenced when, during a class discussion, every comment is directed towards and commented by the teacher before it is put back in play–as if the whole class were on one side of the tennis court and the professor was on the other. In an online class environment, and I would argue that this happens spontaneously, students are always already in the parking lot. There is the pitcher of knowledge, but it isn’t being actively poured. There is the tennis court, the rackets and balls, but the rules of the game are dynamic and fluid.

Perhaps I ought to explain the phenomenon first and create the linkages later. In online classes that I have taught (and my first one was in 1999), students talk with each other spontaneously and incessantly. I know this because (1) I have asked and (2) it is apparent in their responses to each other’s journals. Certainly, I “make” them talk with each other. Whenever they post a journal, they are required to read and respond to three of their classmates journals, and reply to everyone who responded to them. That is not what I am talking about, or perhaps not exclusively what I am talking about. If integrative learning is evidenced by a problem being approached by multiple perspectives, and these perspectives are to be organic to one’s real lived experience, then it stands to reason that a sound integrative learning pedagogy must foster such authentic interactions among students. This happens organically in online classes because students are always already in the parking lot. The teacher isn’t there to tell them what to say, how to say it, when to say it, where to say it. If the content is alive, the conversations are integrative because they are born from a natural curiosity towards the other as well as an innate yearning we all have to be understood as well as to understand.

So to spark what I hope will be a lively debate, I encourage comments in general, and I am specifically interested to hear the extent to which you expect and encourage your students to learn from each other–and how much of that learning is scripted by you.

Among the most important and transformational decisions our FLC4 made during our first year together involved selecting a process by which decisions get made. Since there were only four of us, and we were committed to a horizontal power-sharing approach, we needed a way to ensure that any decision we made would involve a reflective process and be community enhancing. As a member of my children’s school’s Board of Trustees, I had recently been exposed to the consensus model, and I thought there were several aspects of this process which would work particularly well for our burgeoning needs.

Our main concern in setting up the FLC4 was to ensure that each member felt integrated into the decision making process. With consensus, no decision moves forward without all members demonstrating their full support. Here is how is works…

Somewhere along the road of discussion, an idea becomes a proposal. Once the proposal has been sufficiently discussed (everyone has had the opportunity to comment, modify, qualify, etc.) the facilitator reads the motion and asks if there is consensus. At this point, each member of the group has three options: thumb up (support), thumb parallel to ground (stand aside) and thumb down (block). Thumb up indicates that the member agrees with the proposal and is willing to move ahead. Thumb aside indicates that the member is still undecided. This could be because of a lack of understanding, a general ambivalence, etc. Thumbs down blocks the proposal. This loosely translates into “over my dead body will this motion pass.” Generally, it is expected that community members will only block two or three times in their life. Thus, it should be used sagaciously.

When all thumbs are out, the facilitator needs to assess the situation. Obviously, all thuumbs up is consensus and the motion has the full, unequivocal support. When this happens, the proposal is now owned by all although it might be carried by only one. Some times there will be a member or two “standing aside.” When this happens, the facilitator asks them why they are standing aside. Often, there are points of clarification needed, or the process may just be moving too quickly for them. Their concerns are heard, and attempts should be made to bring them into full support (either through discussion or modifying the proposal).

If, however, anyone is blocking then the action shifts to discuss why he or she is blocking and what it might take to win their approval. This might involve a compromise proposal or a mandate group (which the blocker must attend) charged with further mulling. Both a stand aside and a block slows down the process and ensures further discussion. The essential difference between them is that a motion can been seen as consensual with members standing aside (it is like an abstention in that sense), but not if there are any blockers.

Part of the responsibility of the facilitator is to ensure that the consensus process is followed. That means that ever high-level action item is stated as a motion and brought to a vote. It also means that sufficient opportunity is provided before the vote to ensure that all voices are heard and considered. Any opposition should be addressed prior to the vote as a failed vote simply puts the motion back into discussion.

The main benefit of consensus is the assurance that any high-level decision is fully supported by all members of the community. Decisions can always be reverse later if necessary, but there is no way for unresolved conflict to result in an action by the committee. On the other hand, consensus certainly places a great deal of “power” in each individual. Everyone has a hand on the brake. It is expected that members focus on a common vision and goals. If someone finds him or herself continually in the blocking or standing aside mode, foundational work most likely needs to ensue to determine where the roots of the discord lie.