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Issue Contents
Can the Online Environment Move the Undergraduate Laboratory from a Square Dance to a Tango? Devon A. Cancilla, Scientific Technical Services, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA
Tango has been described as the dance of discovery, emotion, and passion. Because of the complex interaction of dancers that is formalized in its approach but free in its movement, it has been said that to dance tango is to understand life itself. In contrast, consider the square dance: square dancers move at the orchestrated commands of a caller, intent on a single task which is completed when all of the dancers have finished a predetermined pattern. Most science teaching labs today are square dances, moving masses of students through a series of orchestrated activities with the single intent of reaching predetermined experimental outcomes. If we are to engage students in science, we need to convey the excitement of discovery - that is, the emotion and passion of science - as well as the orderliness and discipline of orchestrated experiments. To do this, undergraduate laboratories should be more like a tango. But how do we learn to teach the tango when we were also trained as square dancers? Can the online environment help us make the transition to the tango? Perhaps we need to understand something about how we, as teachers, became square dancers ourselves. One of the most common square dance calls voiced by science teachers today is that science has to be "hands-on." The orthodoxy that a student must be in the laboratory to gain hands-on experience conducting science is deeply held as the correct way to teach science. This belief is so ingrained at many institutions that most science-based programs dedicate a significant proportion of their facilities and budget to supporting some type of laboratory experience. In fact, the American Chemical Society (ACS) requires students to have at least 500 hours of laboratory experience to qualify for a certified degree in chemistry. At the same time, most scientists and science instructors would be hard pressed to articulate the specific knowledge, skills, and values important in hands-on laboratory activities or to explain why teaching laboratories have evolved into their current form. At most institutions today, the commitment to the hands-on laboratory experience is embodied in a relatively standard requirement that students devote three to four hour blocks of time to following prescribed procedures to reach predetermined experimental outcomes - the science square dance. Undoubtedly this format has responded in part, if not primarily, to time management concerns. Given the fact that a limited number of lab hours are available, science programs have doled out the time in a way that at least brings all of the students into a higher education version of a working laboratory. Students may work in large groups that prevent many of them from using, or even putting much thought into the use of, laboratory equipment; they may not have to think much about the reason for their lab experiments or to wonder what they would do next if they were in a "real" lab. Any hands-on laboratory experience has been deemed more valuable than having no hands-on experience, however, even if this experience is far removed from the experience in actual laboratories. This is where the online environment may help us to move from the square dance to the tango. If we look at the mechanics of delivering laboratories to large numbers of students, it is clear that the time that students spend in the labs should be used wisely. Unfortunately, existing bottlenecks slow the movement of students though a typical lab and therefore limit the opportunities to use the available laboratory time more effectively. For example, access to specific resources, such as instrumentation, is one such bottleneck. Instruments can often only analyze one sample at a time and some of these analyses can take minutes to hours to conduct. Further, access to these instruments is generally only available during the specific class time. Because the use of instrumentation is often one of the essential hands-on activities in a lab, movement in the labs tend to be slowed until every student, or more realistically, group of students, has had a chance to use the instrument to analyze a sample. This is one example of a bottleneck that the online environment can remove, thereby radically changing the way we conduct labs. When instruments and associated training materials can be remotely accessed twenty-four hours a day for the analysis of samples, the instrument access bottleneck is removed from the lab. Of course this means redefining the hands-on experience as one that includes the use of remote instrumentation. However, this also means that more time is available to develop realistic experiences within the face-to-face lab, such as conducting real research, field studies, or engaging in higher-level experimental design. Access to training and instructional materials, simulations, group work forums, web conferencing and other collaborative online tools can also be more effective. Increasingly, science is conducted in a dispersed environment with collaborators located around the world sharing resources through these and other online tools. Shouldn't the teaching labs of today embrace these technologies as the reality of how science is conducted and as essential to the education of new scientists as the hands-on experience? Using online tools does come with the cost of rethinking how to more effectively use laboratory time to enhance the laboratory experience; perhaps rethinking the purpose of the lab experience and articulating the knowledge, skills and values important for student learning in this context. There is no question that the online environment will provide new avenues for teaching and conducting science labs, moving from the comfort of the square dance to the mysteries of the tango, a transition that may not be easy, but that will be far more interesting and engaging for students and teachers. Join Sloan-C in our online workshop - Moving the Laboratory Online: Changing the Laboratory Learning Experience Using the Online Environment, April 18 - 27. Devon Cancilla of Western Washington University and Simon Albon of University of British Columbia will host.
New Online Learning Survey Reports Released Two regional Sloan online learning survey reports show considerable growth in online enrollments. Making the Grade: Online Education in the United States, 2006, Midwestern Edition More college students are taking online courses at college and universities in the Midwest than ever before, according to the report published by the Sloan Consortium in partnership with the Midwestern Higher Education Compact (MHEC-pronounced meck). "The Midwest is known for providing students with a high quality education, and online learning extends that opportunity to even more students, especially to those whose job and personal responsibilities make it difficult to attend college in a traditional classroom setting," said MHEC President Larry Isaak. "This first Midwestern edition of the Sloan Consortium's online survey and report allows readers to compare their own views to others in the Midwest as well as to the national sample of colleges and universities." More details and free download. Making the Grade: Online Education in the United States, 2006, Southern Edition More than 1.1 million students were enrolled in online classes at two- and four-year colleges in the 16 member states of the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states in 2006, a 68 percent increase over the previous year - and nearly double the 35 percent national gain. The report shows that the percentage of students using online courses at public institutions is higher on average in SREB states than in the nation. Growth and acceptance patterns also indicate that online learning has made greater inroads in SREB states than in the nation as a whole. "SREB states recognize that many college students can benefit from online learning, especially adult learners and those who do not have easy access to higher education," said SREB President Dave Spence. More details and free download. Making the Grade: Online Education in the United States, 2006 The national edition of the Sloan survey of online learning continues to be available for comparison with the regional results. "This is the largest study to date and it tells us online learning is growing without any sign of a plateau," according to Jeff Seaman, chief information officer and survey director, The Sloan Consortium. "There were nearly 3.2 million students taking at least one course online this past fall, up from 2.3 million just last year." More details and free download.
To Teach, Perchance to Learn... Ask the next professor you pass in the hall this question: "Did you learn more {insert appropriate academic discipline here} as a student or as a teacher?" I predict that many will respond with the second option, and suspect that those who tell you that they learned more as a student had skilled teachers who ALLOWED them to learn. Classes aren't Glasses! Learning is teacher-centered when the teacher acts like a pitcher and "pours" or pushes knowledge into her or his students (the glasses.) I think this still happens in some college and university classrooms a lot, and I see it as pretty ineffective for many adult learners most of the time. Online classes in which the majority of the content is provided by the professor are the asynchronous close cousin to this classroom approach. Student Teaching! Google "teaching presence." This idea has hit a nerve with online educators. It's not the same thing as "teacher presence" - though both are important factors for creating a successful online learning environment. Adult students have the ability, and the desire, to add high quality teaching presence to any college level course. The professor has to ALLOW them the opportunity to do so, and then orchestrate the process skillfully. How great would it be if every student in a class added significant teaching presence to the class - everybody teaching each other and everybody learning from each other - is that nirvana! The professor provides the necessary tools and initial training (critical thinking skills, discussion facilitation techniques, effective questions) and the student teachers do the rest! Radical Andragogy: Malcolm Knowles suggested back in the '70's that adults learn best when they are self-directed. Adult learning apparently thrives as a pull process - where the learner obtains relevant knowledge from the environment experientially. This is a student-centered philosophy. To the extent possible, shouldn't professors offering online classes for adult learners adopt andragogically appropriate strategies to maximize their student's learning opportunities? One such strategy - I call it "Student Led Discussions" - has at its core a simple and logical three step approach to take advantage of each adult student's propensity to pull learning from the environment: read / question / discuss. The 'radical' feature is that the students play the major role in deciding what to read, which questions to ask and answer, and then they, not the professor, facilitate the discussions. What's the catch? Here is the catch. When students are responsible for determining at least some of the course content, and then teaching it to each other, and it really isn't the professor's job to "pour" all of the knowledge, then the professor's "responsibility to the discipline" may be called into question. To what extent can students be permitted to determine what they read, what questions they discuss, and in general what they learn? Can (undergraduate, community college, ESL, "my" etc.) students ask good questions and facilitate productive discussions? These are important issues that need to be understood and discussed. I now have about 10 years of online teaching experience with a diverse array of courses and students. I have rarely been disappointed with the choices my students made or the results they achieved. Join Sloan-C in our online workshop - Dynamic Collaboration, Discussion and Facilitation Practices, May 23 - June 1. Bill Pelz of Herkimer Community College, John Thompson of Buffalo State University, and Kathy Yang of Towson University will host.
Learn From the Experts - The Sloan-C 2007 Workshop Series A new workshop, Virtual Reality (VR) Worlds: Benefits and Uses for the Higher Education Professional, has been added! Have you ever wanted to fly, walk through an active volcano or maybe visit outer space? Now you can without ever leaving your desk! Virtual Reality Worlds, such as SecondLife and ActiveWorlds, offer educators endless opportunities to explore, invent, and collaborate. This interactive online seminar, focused on virtual reality (VR) worlds, explores some of the possibilities available to online students and faculty. Dr. David Cillay, of Washington State University will take you through the key issues that you and your colleagues should be aware of when incorporating VR worlds into your online courses. This workshop leverages the expertise of Sloan-C's effective practices and provides both a pedagogical, practical, and hands-on experience, enabling workshop participants to walk away with new skills and understanding for immediate application to their own online academic environment. Click here for details and registration. Moving the Laboratory Online* - April 18 - 27 Is it possible to create authentic and engaging "hands-on" scientific experiments over the internet using remote instrumentation? Can the internet be used to overcome some of the traditional approaches to lecture and laboratory teaching practice? How can we provide educators and students with shared access to instructional materials, expertise and modern scientific instrumentation to enhance the science learning experience? What are the implications of using remote instrumentation for research? The use of remote instrumentation is emerging as a legitimate alternative to the traditional "hands-on" laboratory learning experiences for teaching and learning in the basic and instrumental sciences. This workshop will provide participants with information on the mechanics of connecting instruments remotely, security issues, experiences from the field, curriculum development, collaboration, research opportunities and impact on student learning. *This workshop is part of the Select Series and College Pass Members must use their additional 50 seats provided to take advantage of this workshop. Click here for details and registration. Getting Started: Online Course Development Basics - April 25 - May 18 Based on research and the Sloan-C effective practices, this workshop provides the foundation for designing and delivering online courses. Faculty gain enhanced pedagogical knowledge and learn effective strategies for creative, online classroom facilitation. During the three-week workshop, facilitators will review the benefits and challenges of online curriculum development and teaching and address the qualities of effective online education. The workshop is designed as an 'active' learning experience, enabling faculty to explore actual online courses in several disciplines and institutions, as well as build a syllabus leading to the major outcome of the workshop: building a complete online course module relevant to their own educational interests. Click here for details and registration. Using the Quality Matters Rubric to Improve Your Online Course - May 30 - June 15 Recognizing quality is much like recognizing art - you know it when you see it, but everybody sees something different. And when it comes to online courses, your students, faculty, administrators, peers, and accrediting bodies may certainly not see what you do. In fact, they might not even know what to look for in assessing quality. Sloan-C announces an interactive online workshop focused on learning how to improve your online course(s). Learn how to use the rubric tool developed by the nationally recognized, FIPSE-funded Quality Matters (QM) project. The QM rubric provides a research-supported framework with annotations and examples for applying quality practices to specific course design standards. Affirm the strong areas in your course(s) and generate specific ideas for improvements. The QM rubric is the centerpiece of the QM process. Additionally, this course serves as a stepping stone for faculty interested in becoming certified course peer reviewers. Click here for details and registration. |
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